The Rarity of Repeating: the National League's Most Difficult Task

The Philadelphia Phillies now know how hard it is to repeat as National League World Series victors.
It is a rare feat indeed.

It is hard to believe, and probably not very well known, that the National League of Major League Baseball has only had three repeat champions in all its history. That's right; only three. These teams have been either good enough, fortunate enough, or both, to have won back-to-back World Series, and only one of them has won these victories in the last fifty years. While the American League has dominated World Series play, with the Yankees winning just about a quarter of them all, the "Senior Circuit" has had difficulty putting together any kind of a franchise run close to a dynasty of any sorts. Strange to say, but the Junior Circuit has proven the stronger over the long haul, even though the National League has been around since 1876, compared with the American League's birth in 1901 (not including the years they played as a minor league). Who are these three teams who have given the older circuit its repeat champions? Who were these great teams that did what other teams could not do?

The first team to repeat as World Champions in professional baseball in our current era was of course one of the most controversial and most dismal; the Chicago Cubs. At the turn of the Twentieth Century two NL teams were dominating play; the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Giants, but the series that we call the World Series was not begun immediately. The two organizations feuded for a couple years before changing their minds about inter-league competition. The Pirates won three pennants in a row for the Senior Circuit, but their weakest team, the 1903 team, was the only one that competed in the "World" series that was to come. That team played against the Boston Americans, or Red Sox, and had lost some of its pitching strength before the series began. The New York Giants who won the 1904 and 1905 pennants refused to meet the repeating Americans/Red Sox in the fall of '04 and thus lost the opportunity to become the first team to win repeating championships. When play was resumed in 1905 the Giants won, beating the AL's Philadelphia Athletics in five games. The World Series, however, prove to be popular enough to continue.

Starting in 1906, the Chicago Cubs took over as the NL powerhouse and began one of the true great teams in history. That season would see the Cubs win a record 116 games and line up against the crosstown rival White Sox in the series. However, this favored team would fall to those Sox in six games, shocking just about everyone in the baseball world.

But in 1907 the Cubs would not be denied. With the future Hall of Fame infield of Tinkers, Evers and Chance (who was also the player-manager), and a powerful pitching staff, the Cubs would take on the Detroit Tigers of Ty Cobb and company and win their first World Series Championship. With the likes of Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown, Orval Overall, and Ed Reulbach, and the extra hitting of third baseman Harry Steinfeldt, the Cubs were practically unbeatable. The team would repeat the feat by beating the Tigers in 1908 for their second series victory in a row. The strange thing about those two wins is that the Cubs franchise has not won a World Series since. Strange but true to the core, and to the sorrow of the Cubs' fans.

In 1921 the New York Giants would put together and begin the only four-time National League pennant winners in history, with the famous John McGraw getting his last champs of his NL record ten pennants as a manager. Not much is known about this team because of who they had to play in three of those four years: the rival Yankees of Babe Ruth. The 1921 season saw the Giants victorious over the Yanks, winning in eight games (the series was at that time experimenting with a best of nine format). The Giants would again defeat the Yankees in 1922, winning their back-to-back series. The heroes of those teams were such players as pitcher Art Nehf, George Kelly, Frankie Frisch and later addition Heinie Groh, along with the brother rivalry of Irish Meusel who would play against his brother Bob of the Yanks. The next two seasons, however, would see the Giants fall, first to the Yankees and then to the Washington Senators.

The third and last repeat winner in National League history would not come until the 1970s, with the building of the "Big Red Machine" of the Cincinnati Reds. Gaining division titles in the 1907s became a staple of the Reds' franchise, but winning the World Series would not be easy. Getting into the series in 1970 and 1972, the "Big Red Machine" was to fall first to the Baltimore Orioles and then the Oakland A's. In 1975, however, it seemed that the Reds had the personnel they needed to finally win, and that they would do. After defeating the rival Pirates in the playoffs (again) they went up against the Boston Red Sox, who had not won a World Series since the 1918 season. It would prove to be an exciting series, with the Red Sox hanging in there for a seven game run, finally losing to the Reds and their superb hitting lineup.

The next year this Cincinnati team would repeat with an exclamation mark, beating the upcoming Yankees in a four game sweep. The team was loaded with talent and future Hall of Famers, such as Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, and the great hitting of slugger George Foster and Pete Rose, with manager Sparky Anderson pulling the strings. This club also included Ken Griffey Sr., Dave Concepcion and Cesar Geronimo, no slouches with the bat either. The pitching staff was more than adequate to equal the task and was polished off with reliever Pedro Borbon. It by far has been recognized as one of the greatest teams of all time.

Many teams before or since have attempted to win two straight World Series but have failed. The most recent has been the Philadelphia Phillies, who won the 2008 championship but could not beat the Yankees this past season. It proves how difficult it is for a NL team to do it. Other failures have been the famous St. Louis Cardinal teams of the 30s, 40s and even the 60s, the Giants teams of the 1930s, the Reds of the preWWII era, and the great Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers teams of the 40s, 50s and through the seventies. It has been a bit easier, or at least more common, for AL teams to repeat, with the Yankees doing it several times and the Oakland A's doing it. In the early days even the Red Sox and Philadelphia A's did it more than once.

So it goes on to say that repeating as World Series champs is indeed a difficult, almost impossible, feat for the National League winners. The next team to even have a chance is two years away, and a daunting, difficult task it will be. It is to also be remembered that the Atlanta Braves who won division after division championship in the last twenty years, only were able to win one, that's right, ONE world championship in all those years. The American League has had the better of it, for sure. But the National League can keep hoping to find some team that will do the near impossible, which is winning back-to-back championships. We can only watch and see!