Why do they call it the World Series?

Question

It is only between North American teams (US and Canada). So, why would it be called the World Series when there is not much world involved in it? Self-centered? I think so.

To Craig S: I am trying to avoid ignorance, hence I ask. DUH!

Answer 1

Craig S pretty much got it right.

Back when it was first named the World Series... baseball wasn't played anywhere else in the world. It was pretty much just the US. So instead of having a boring name like the MLB Finals or MLB Championships, they went with World Series. The US was basically the world, in baseball.

Now, obviously, many other countries play baseball, but there's too much history to just change the name of it.

Answer 2

When the World Series was created back in 1903, Americans were the only ones playing baseball on any kind of professional level. It may have been Barney Dreyfuss who came up with the term, although it had been used in previous years by news publications. They were looking for something simple and catchy, and "World Series" sounds a heck of a lot better than "North American Baseball Championship" or something like that.

Even today, the title fits. Any World Series champ would crush club teams from other countries.

Zaxx - Sorry if I insulted you, but this question comes up every so often from people just trying to provoke a heated response. It's really not meant to be a self-centered thing, but there's no way they could change it now.

Answer 3

The title of this championship may be confusing to some readers from countries where baseball is not a major sport (or even where it is), because the "World" Series is confined to the champions of two baseball leagues that currently operate only in the United States and Canada.
The explanation is that when the term "World's Championship Series" was first used in the 1880s, baseball at a highly-skilled level was almost exclusively confined to North America, especially the United States. Thus it was understood that the winner of the major league championship was the best baseball team in the world. The title of this event was soon shortened to "World's Series" and later to "World Series".
The United States continued to be the only professional baseball country until some decades into the 20th Century. The first Japanese professional baseball efforts began in 1920. The current Japanese leagues date from the late 1940s. Various Latin American leagues also formed around that time.
By the 1990s, baseball was played at a highly skilled level in many countries, resulting in a strong international flavor to the Series, as many of the best players from the Pacific Rim, Latin America, the Caribbean, and elsewhere now play on Major League rosters. The notable exception is Cuban nationals, due to the political situation between the USA and Cuba (despite that barrier, over the years a number of Cuba's finest ballplayers have defected to the United States to play in the American professional leagues). Players from the Japanese Leagues also have a more difficult time coming to the Major Leagues because they must first play 10 years in Japan before becoming free agents. Reaching the high-income Major Leagues tends to be the goal of many of the best players around the world.
Early in 2006, Major League Baseball conducted the inaugural World Baseball Classic, to establish a "true" world's championship in the way the term is normally used for other international sports. Teams of professional players from 16 nations participated, and Japan won the first World Baseball Classic championship. Olympic baseball was instituted as a medal sport in 1992, but in 2005 the International Olympic Committee voted to eliminate baseball, and it will be off the Olympic program in 2012.
The World Series itself retains a US-oriented atmosphere. The title of the event is often presented on television as merely a "brand name" in the same sense as the "Super Bowl", and thus the term "World Series Championship" is sometimes used. However, the origin of the term lives on, as with these words of Frank Thomas in the Chicago White Sox victory celebration in 2005: "We're world's champions, baby!" At the close of the 2006 Series, Commissioner Bud Selig pronounced the St. Louis Cardinals "champions of the world". Likewise, the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine for November 6, 2006, features Series MVP David Eckstein and is subtitled "World Champions".
A recent myth has arisen that the "World" in "World Series" came about because the New York World newspaper sponsored it. There is no evidence at all supporting that hypothesis. The annual publication called the World Almanac was originally published by the New York World. Its ambiguous title and U.S.-centric content may have inspired the World Series myth, either facetiously or naïvely.

Answer 4

Your an idiot, any player in the world would leave there country to come play here its the world series because the best players in the world play in the MLB

Answer 5

why do they call it the miss universe pageant when only eathlings compete in it? they just do.

we run this planet, so we're the only ones in the world who matter, that's why we call it the world series.

Answer 6

Joe H get a life...they say world series because they like it better. same thing with superbowl...

Answer 7

Because America thinks it's the whole world and nobody else matters.