Baseball History I Never Knew

Today's fun fact - and the rest of the story. Topic: Baseball!

The last World Series to be played without a single home run was in 1918 when the Boston Red Sox defeated the Chicago Cubs four games to two. Babe Ruth was the winning pitcher in games one and four, but he didn't play the rest of the time despite his league-leading 11 home runs and .555 slugging percentage.

George "Lucky" Whiteman, a 35-year old career minor leaguer, was one of the Series heroes. He usually played left field on the days Ruth pitched. For this series, though, Sox manager Ed Barrow played Whiteman in every game and sat Ruth out. Why? Because the Cubs' manager, Fred Mitchell, used lefty pitchers for the entire series. It was the lefty-lefty thing carried to an extreme.

Fortunately, Whiteman had a good series. Though he was a mediocre hitter he had several big hits and figured in most of the Sox runs. He also made a spectacular, diving catch in the eight inning of game six to preserve a 2-1 Red Sox lead. A hit by him had driven in the only Red Sox runs of the game.

Whiteman never played another game of major league baseball. Babe Ruth, as we all know, when on to bigger things.

And now you know the rest of the story.