N.Y. Beat Brooklyn in Pre-Subway Series

Oct. 21, 2000 — -- In the officially handed down version of baseball’s storied history, the New York Giants defeated the New York Yankees five games to three in New York’s very first modern Subway Series in 1921, and the Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers four games to three in 1956, the last all-New York World Series.

But in the precambrian mists of baseball -- before the Yankees, the American League and even New York’s subway system -- the Giants beat a team called the Brooklyn Bridegrooms six games to three in an 1889 World Series championship.

It was the original “Subway Series” -- sans subway, of course.

America would have to wait until the 20th century for the American League versus National League World Series that exists today.

However, each year from 1884 to 1890, the National League champion played the top finisher from another professional league, the American Association. Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball calls those championships the “World Series.”

‘Cannonball’ Vs. ‘Adonis’

The 1889 Series was the only one of the period between two teams from the same metropolitan area -- although at the time, Brooklyn and New York were considered separate cities.

The Bridegrooms, the same franchise later named the Dodgers, got its nickname after seven of its players were married around the same time in 1888, according to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ official Web site.

The Series pitted now-largely-forgotten stars like Roger Connor, “Orator” Jim O’Rourke, Monte Ward and Ed “Cannonball” Crane of the Giants against Dave “Scissors” Foutz, Tom “Oyster” Burns and William “Adonis” Terry of the Bridegrooms.

Like the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1940s and 1950s -- who went to the World Series year after year but only managed to vanquish the hated Yankees once, in 1955 -- the 1889 Bridegrooms offered their fans initial cause for optimism, then disappointment and perhaps even a cry or two of “Wait ‘til next year!”

The 1889 team won three of the first four games against the Giants in the best-of-eleven series, only to lose the next five, and the series, to the cross-river rivals.

“It’s kind of a pattern, isn’t it?” laments the author Roger Kahn, an expert on the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s.

More Success, Disappointment

In 1890, the Bridegrooms once again made it to the World Series -- this time as National League champs, having switched leagues. Their first-place finish put them well ahead of the Giants, who slipped to sixth out of eight teams.

However, the Bridegrooms could not win it all. Bad weather and poor fan support caused the suspension of the World Series without a winner, according to Total Baseball. The Bridegrooms and the American Association-champion Louisville Cyclones had each won three games, with another game declared a tie after it was called on account of darkness.

The American Association folded after the 1891 season, leaving just one professional league and putting an end to the 1880s version of the World Series.

The first modern-style World Series played between champions from the American and National leagues took place in 1903, when the Boston Pilgrims defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates. New York’s first modern World Series victory came in 1905, when the New York Giants defeated the Philadelphia Athletics. And the first modern same-city World Series happened in 1906, when the Chicago White Sox beat the Chicago Cubs.

‘Old Hoss’ Shuts Down Mets

Although, in a broad sense, the 1889 Series may have been the first all-New York-area World Series, it was not the first time a championship of that era involved a New York team.

In 1884, the National League’s Providence Grays were proclaimed “world champions” after sweeping three games from that year’s American Association champs, a short-lived franchise with a now-familiar name -- the New York Mets.

“The people from Providence came down with brooms and said, ‘Sweep, sweep, sweep,’” says Kahn, who recounts the exploits of Providence’s ace pitcher, Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn, in his latest book, The Head Game.

“Radbourn won three and the series was over,” Kahn says.