The Philadelphia Athletics won the seventh World Series four games to one against the Chicago Cubs. It marked their first World Series victory in their second appearance after falling to the New York Giants by the same result in 1905. For Chicago, it was their fourth pennant in the last five years but first loss since their defeat at the hands of the Chicago White Sox in 1906.
| Team | W | L | GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Philadelphia Athletics | 102 | 48 | -- |
| New York Highlanders | 88 | 63 | 14.5 |
| Detroit Tigers | 86 | 68 | 18.0 |
| Boston Red Sox | 81 | 72 | 22.5 |
| Cleveland Naps | 71 | 81 | 32.0 |
| Chicago White Sox | 68 | 85 | 35.5 |
| Washington Senators | 66 | 85 | 36.5 |
| St. Louis Browns | 47 | 107 | 57.0 |
The Athletics came to life in the summer, taking the lead for good on June 21st and gradually pulling away from New York and Detroit by about five games per month. Jack Coombs won a majors best 31 games, including another majors best 13 shutouts. He then won three of the five games in the World Series to finish off a nearly perfect season.
With Philadelphia's dominating campaign, the big story line in the final months was the race for the Chalmers Award. Hugh Chalmers of Chalmers Automobile announced before the season that we would present a Chalmers Model 30 automobile to the player with the highest batting average across both leagues at the end of the season. National League champion Sherry Magee finished more than 50 points behind the two competitors for the car in the American League: Nap Lajoie and Ty Cobb.
Cobb seemingly had an insurmountable advantage going into the final day of the season and sat out with nothing on the line. Lajoie, however, had a doubleheader against the St. Louis Browns. With the Browns playing back defensively, Lajoie continuously bunted to reach base and started 8-for-8 but still came up a hit short after a wild throw to first base on his final at bat resulted in an error, and thus a hitless at bat. Supposedly, the Browns tried to bribe the official scorer of the game to credit Lajoie with a hit in his final at bat, but this would not pass. Cobb ended the year batting .385 to Lajoie's .384 to win the title, though Chalmers ultimately awarded both players with an automobile after all.
| Team | W | L | GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago Cubs | 104 | 50 | -- |
| New York Giants | 91 | 63 | 13.0 |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 86 | 67 | 17.5 |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 78 | 75 | 25.5 |
| Cincinnati Reds | 75 | 79 | 29.0 |
| Brooklyn Superbas | 64 | 90 | 40.0 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 63 | 90 | 40.5 |
| Boston Doves | 53 | 100 | 50.5 |
The Cubs were tied with the New York Giants for the lead until June 10th, when they beat New York on the road. They then beat them twice more to sweep the three game series and held the lead for the rest of the way. It was still a close fight for a month, though, as the lead shrank back to just half a game by July 10th after two straight wins in Chicago by the Giants, but the Cubs won the third game of the series and soon after went on an 18-2 stretch over 20 games from mid-July to early August. The Cubs' steady infield that won its fourth pennant in five years was also immortalized in July by Franklin Pierce Adams in "Baseball's Sad Lexicon," better known by "Tinker to Evers to Chance."
The National League's three-year win streak in the World Series, all at the hands of the Detroit Tigers, ended with the Cubs' loss to the Athletics. The Senior Circuit still held a 4-3 advantage overall after the loss and has only ever been represented by three teams: the Cubs, Giants, and Pittsburgh Pirates. Not so coincidentally, these were the only three teams to really compete for the pennant in 1910.
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