1904 World Series

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The 1904 World Series is a championship series that didn't happen in American Major League Baseball. The Boston Americans won the American League pennant in 1904 and New York Giants won the National. Owing to business rivalry between the two leagues, especially in New York, and to personal animosity between Giants manager John McGraw and American League President Ban Johnson, the Giants declined to meet the champions of the "junior" or "minor" league. McGraw even went so far to say that his Giants were already the World Champions since they were the champions of the "only real major league".

Boston had defeated National League champion Pittsburgh in the 1903 "World's Championship Series", a Series arranged by the two clubs rather than the leagues. President John T. Brush of the Giants made the announcement in summer 1904, when the local upstart New York Highlanders led the American League. The possibility of losing to their cross-town rival may have been particularly irksome, but the Giants preferred not to recognize that club even by defeating it soundly, and preferred to claim the world championship rather than risk it against any American League winner. (Boston won the AL pennant from New York on the last day of the season. Those two clubs would later be nicknamed Red Sox and Yankees respectively.)

The Giants maintained that rules for the World Series were haphazardly defined. This criticism was essentially valid. In the 1903 Series, as well as the 1880s Series' between the National League and the American Association, the rules for a given season's "World's Championship Series" had been whatever the two participating clubs had agreed upon. Stung by criticism from fans and writers, Brush in January 1905 drafted rules that both leagues adopted that winter. The rules compelled the two winning clubs to participate and governed the annual determination of sites, dates, ticket prices, and division of receipts. The rules essentially made the World Series the premier annual event of Major League Baseball.

Boston slumped in 1905, while New York repeated its NL championship and then won the last "first" World Series, against the Philadelphia Athletics. The Series has been played every year since then except 1994 when the 232-day players' strike ended the season in mid-August.