1903 World Series Game Two Program--Boston Red Sox' First Fall Classic Victory!...

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A true "Holy Grail" of baseball program collecting!

1903 World Series Game Two Program--Boston Red Sox' First Fall Classic Victory! The beginning of the relationship had been a contentious one. After a quarter century of unchallenged professional baseball supremacy, the National League quite reasonably considered mere existence of a viable competitor with wary disdain. Tensions grew as American League president Ban Johnson raided the talent pool of the entrenched Senior Circuit, snatching stars from Cy Young to Jimmy Collins and increasing the bargaining power of all National League players, draining black ink from team owners' accounting logs. All agreed that the brash newcomer was a thorn in the side of the National League.

The first signs of a detente came at the end of the 1902 season, as Pittsburgh Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss agreed to a four-game exhibition series against a cast of American Leaguers, emerging with a two games to one advantage, the other contest ending in a tie. Months later, the leagues signaled a truce with the formation of the National Commission to preside over organized baseball, empowered to hire and maintain umpiring crews, settle labor disputes and ultimately pave the way for the absolute rule of Kenesaw Mountain Landis that would follow the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

With the warming of baseball's cold war, the stage was set for the inaugural edition of a tradition that would come to be known as the World Series. Presented is one of just a handful of relics to emerge from that first battle between the teams flying the flags of National and American League superiority, thus one of the most significant publications from the full breadth of the baseball collecting hobby. It derives from the second contest of the 1903 World Series, a clash of Dead Ball Era titans that launched the most celebrated tradition of our national pastime.

The understated design of the program, essentially a standard four-page format with center scorecard and the usual array of local advertisements, speaks to the humble beginnings of the Fall Classic. Only in the bold cover text, "1903 Souvenir Card of the World's Championship Games, Boston vs. Pittsburg," and the twin portraits of dueling Hall of Fame player/managers Jimmy Collins and Fred Clarke, is the elite significance trumpeted.

The center scorecard identifies this as Game Two of the Series, the first Fall Classic victory for the Boston Red Sox, who dropped Game One to the Pirates. A handwritten pencil notation at upper edge reads, "Friday, October 2, 1903," while the scoring grid is unmarked but for the final tally of "3" to "0." Red Sox ace Bill Dinneen was brilliant in this complete game victory, facing just twenty-nine batters to record his twenty-seven outs while keeping the great Honus Wagner hitless.

The four-page card stock relic is split at the spine and chipped at the edges with scattered wrinkles, but these faults remain clear of the text and design features of the program and must be forgiven in consideration of the relic's supreme rarity and significance. The program derives from a New England estate which likewise provides this auction with a rare full ticket to the 1928 grand opening of Boston Garden.