Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1884. Grays shine in 1st World Series

The Providence Grays baseball club was closing the 1884 season with a nine-game lead in the National League, and its first league championship since 1879.

Tucked under a chart of the league standings in the Oct. 13 Providence Journal, 10 lines of type reported from New York told of a challenge from Jim Mutrie, the manager of the New York Metropolitans, the champs of the American Association, a separate baseball league.

"He proposes to play one game in this city and one in Providence, and the entire receipts of the two games to be equally divided between the players of the two clubs."

Five days later, at the end of a long story on the homecoming of the pennant-winning Providence Grays, was a short news item:

"Mutrie's Challenge Accepted.

The Providence Club has accepted the challenge recently issued by Manager Mutrie, of the Metropolitans, to play a series of games for the championship of the United States. The games will be played on the Polo grounds on the 23rd, 24th and 25th of October."

That was the extent of the pregame hype for what some baseball historians call the first World Series.

Throughout the 1884 season, nearly every edition of The Journal included baseball box scores and game stories. There was no sports section; the scores were news, reported in the news pages.

Grays' pitcher Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn shut out the Metropolitans 6-0 before 2,500 fans in the first game of the series in New York, which was reported on the front page next to an advertisement for overcoats on sale.

Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society

In 1884, the Providence Grays won the National League title, as well as what some baseball historians call the first World Series. The team is shown in 1897.

"A cold, raw wind blew across the grounds with considerable force and made even the players shiver at times and prevented any fine play . . . Radbourn pitched in fine form, as usual. His curves were enigmas to those who faced him."

Providence took the next two games 3-1 and 11-2. Radbourn pitched them both for the Grays. He threw 679 innings that season.

"The American teams are now convinced," The Journal reported, "that the Providence [team] can play a kind of base ball that they utterly fail to comprehend."