The First Subway Series

The 1921 World Series pitted the Giants against the Yankees, the first time two teams from the same city had ever met for the championship, and since both clubs called the Polo Grounds home that year, the entire series played out at one Manhattan ballpark. It opened October 5 and ran through October 13, with John McGraw's Giants beating Miller Huggins's Yankees five games to three in a best-of-nine format, the last World Series ever played that way before the game switched back to best-of-seven. Babe Ruth played through an infected arm and a battered knee against his doctor's orders, pinch-hitting and pinch-running when he could barely swing. Beyond the field, the series carried a bigger first: it went out over the radio, picked up by stations including Pittsburgh's KDKA and Newark's WJZ, so for the first time New Yorkers could follow a World Series as it happened instead of waiting for the next day's box score.