1912 World Series

In the 1912 World Series, the Boston Red Sox beat the New York Giants four games to three (with one tie).
This dramatic series showcased great pitching from Giant Christy Mathewson and from Boston fireballer Smoky Joe Wood. Wood won two of his three starts and pitched in relief in the final game. In the deciding game, Boston rallied for two runs in the tenth inning thanks to two costly Giants fielding misplays.
Mathewson started three games, completed all three, and compiled a 0.94 earned-run average for the Series. He got two losses and a no-decision for his efforts.
Nearly all of the games were close. Four games in this Series were decided by one run. A fifth ended in a tie. A sixth was decided by two runs. Game 7 was the only one with a margin greater than three runs. Two games, including the decisive Game 8, went to extra innings. In Games 1 and 3, the losing team had the tying and winning runs on base when the game ended.
This was the first Series that was decided in the last inning of the final game, in "sudden death" fashion. It was also the first Series where a team within one inning of losing came back to win. The next time a team that close to elimination recovered to win was Game 6 of the 1985 World Series. Other World Series that have ended with a Game 7 (or in this case, Game 8, due to the tie) going to extra innings include the Series of 1924, 1991 and 1997. Other World Series won by the home team in its last at-bat in a Game 7 include the Series of 1960, 1991, 1997, and 2001.
This was one of only four World Series to go to eight games, and the only best-of-seven Series to do so. While the 1912 Series was extended to eight games due to a tie game being called on account of darkness, the 1903, 1919 and 1921 World Series were all best-of-nine affairs that happened to run eight games.
The 1912 Series was plagued by rumors that Game 7 was not played entirely honestly.[1] Some observers, including famed Boston sportswriter Tim Murnane, theorized th...

Once again, the New York Giants stood atop the standings as the most dominant team in the National League. Still reeling from the devastating loss in the previous World Series, they managed to take comfort in the less-than stellar performance of their rival Philadelphia Athletics. The two-time Champions were slated at the beginning of the season for a three-peat, but later fell to third place and finished fifteen games behind the pennant winning Boston Red Sox.

The Giants had a lot of other reasons to smile during the regular season as left-handed ace, Rube Marquard set a long-standing Major League record by going undefeated in his first nineteen starts and later went on to finish with twenty-six wins. Veteran Christy Mathewson had twenty-three victories and rookie Jeff Tesreau had won seventeen games while leading the National League with an ERA of 1.96. At the plate, New York boasted solid performances by Larry Doyle, who batted .330, Fred Merkle who had a .309 average and Chief Meyers who delivered a .358. Merkle and Doyle had combined for twenty-one home runs and Red Murray led the team with nintey-two runs batted in. New York had won one-hundred three games and the National League pennant by ten games. Boston was also stacked after a magnificent year on the mound by Smoky Joe Wood who had won thirty-four out thirty-nine games and pitched ten shutouts. Offensively, Tris Speaker had dominated the American League pitchers with a .383 batting average.

Boston Manager Jake Stahl gave the Game 1 start to superstar Joe Wood while New York's John McGraw chose newcomer Jeff Tesreau over Series veterans Marquard or Mathewson. Rookies, even seventeen game winners, rarely started World Series openers and it would prove to be a fatal mistake in the eyes of many Giants fans as Woods and the Sox took a 4-3 first game advantage. Game 2 was a roller-coaster ride as the Giants overcame a 4-2 deficit in the top of the eighth only to allow the tying run during the Sox's ha...