1883
Both the Philadelphia Athletics and Chicago White Stockings repeated as pennant winners in 1883 but the White Stockings needed an extra game. The schedule expanded this season to 98 games but that was not enough to settle the National League crown as both the White Stockings and Brooklyn Atlantics finished atop the table with identical 66-32 records.
The 1 game playoff - the first in National League history - was held in Brooklyn but it was the visitors from Chicago who emerged with a 3-1 victory in the tiebreaking game. Tony Mullane went the distance for Chicago, scattering 6 hits, for his 31st victory of the season. Mullane also had 2 hits in the contest including an rbi double in the second inning that provided the game's first run.
The star packed Philadelphia Athletics dominated the American League as the club finished first in just about every offensive and pitching category in the league and coasted home with a 9 game margin on second place Louisville.
Philadelphia had the league's two winningest pitchers in Larry Corcoran (38-10) and Old Hoss Radbourn (26-10) as well as the top 3 batters in the league in Cap Anson (.380,0,65), Fred Dunlap (.365,10,93) and Pete Hotaling (.354,2,67).
1883 WORLD SERIES
The Athletics and White Stockings split the first two games in Chicago to start the series. Larry Corcoran pitched an 8-hit complete game to lead Phialdelphia to a 4-2 win in the opener before the White Stockings evened the series with a 9-5 win in Game Two. Chicago centerfielder Harry Stovey was the star of that game with 4 hits, including a home run, 3 rbi's and 2 runs scored.
The series shifted to Philadelphia for Game Three but the change in venue did nothing to cool off the Chicago bats as the White Stockings pounded Corcoran and the Athletics 7-1. Stovey had 2 more hits and scored a pair of runs while Chicago pitcher "The Only" Nolan tossed a 4-hitter.
Game Four was a defensive mess for the hometown Athletics as they committed 11 errors in an 8-5 loss to fall behind 3 games to one in the series.
Philadelphia first baseman Cap Anson was the Game Five hero as he kept his club alive in the series by driving in the game winning run in the bottom of the 9th to give the Athletics a 5-4 victory.
The comeback fell short as the White Stockings wrapped up the series on their homefield by winning a slugfest 15-11 in Game Six. Harry Stovey had a 4 hit game for the winners and was named Series MVP after finishing with a .423 batting average.
In real life Harry Stovey was the first major leaguer to reach 100 career homeruns. He played 14 seasons in the major leagues and was known as both a prolific home run hitter and base-stealer, leading the league in both categories multiple times. Born in Philadelphia he spent much of his carer with the Athletics. In 2011, SABR named Stovey the Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legend of the year as he is not yet inducted into the Hall of Fame.