70 free World Series trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
63 free World Series trivia questions with answers. The World Series has been decided 121 times since 1903, and almost every one left behind a story worth a trivia question. This quiz covers the whole run: the best-of-nine beginnings, the 1919 Black Sox, the Yankees' 27 titles, Don Larsen's perfect game, Bill Mazeroski's Game 7 walk-off, the Buckner error, the Cubs finally ending 108 years of waiting, and the Dodgers' back-to-back titles in 2024 and 2025. Easy questions ask which team has won the most championships and what caused the 1994 cancellation; the hard ones want the pitcher who served up Babe Ruth's called shot, the only MVP from a losing team and the first year a Series game was played at night. It works for a bar quiz, an October watch party or settling arguments in the group chat. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the World Series, its champions, its MVP award and the individual series, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01In which year was the first modern World Series played?
1903
It came two years after the American League declared itself a second major league; the two circuits had spent the interim raiding each other's rosters.
Q 02Which team won that first modern World Series in 1903?
Boston Americans
Boston came back from a 3–1 deficit to take the series; the franchise would later be renamed the Red Sox.
Q 03The 1904 World Series was never played because the owner of which club refused to take part?
New York Giants
Owner John T. Brush snubbed the upstart American League; the Giants relented and played (and won) in 1905 under new rules.
Q 04What is the prize handed to the World Series winner?
Commissioner's Trophy
Unlike the Stanley Cup, a new one is made each year for the champion to keep.
Q 05A players' strike wiped out the World Series in which year?
1994
It was the first time the Series had gone unplayed in 90 years; the Montreal Expos owned baseball's best record when play stopped.
Q 06From 1919 to 1921 (as in 1903), the World Series used which format?
Best of nine
The longer format was abandoned after 1921, and the 2–3–2 home-game pattern was made permanent in 1925.
Q 07Which team beat the scandal-tainted Chicago White Sox in the 1919 World Series?
Cincinnati Reds
Cincinnati took the series 5–3, and the result has been an asterisk in the record book ever since.
Q 08Which gambler allegedly led the fix of the 1919 World Series?
Arnold Rothstein
First baseman Chick Gandil handled the payoffs on the players' side; the story became the book and film Eight Men Out.
Q 09Who banned the eight 'Black Sox' players from baseball for life?
Kenesaw Mountain Landis
The former federal judge acted even though a jury had acquitted the players; the White Sox then went 88 years without a title.
Q 10The Red Sox drought blamed on the Curse of the Bambino ran from 1918 until which year?
2004
Boston first became the only team to win a seven-game postseason series after losing the first three, then swept St. Louis.
Q 11Whose error let Mookie Wilson's grounder roll through his legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series?
Bill Buckner
Boston had been one strike from the title; a Bob Stanley wild pitch had already let the tying run in before the grounder.
Q 12Who was named MVP of the 1986 World Series after leading the Mets with nine hits?
Ray Knight
Knight scored the winning run in Game 6 and homered in Game 7; the Mets then let him leave as a free agent that winter.
Q 13Who pitched the only perfect game in World Series history, in Game 5 of 1956?
Don Larsen
He had been knocked out in the second inning of Game 2 three days earlier, then used a no-windup delivery to retire all 27 Dodgers.
Q 21Whose three home runs in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series earned him the nickname 'Mr. October'?
Reggie Jackson
He was the first to hit three in a Series game since Babe Ruth 49 years earlier, and finished with five for the Series.
Q 22Babe Ruth's 'called shot' in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series was hit at which ballpark?
Wrigley Field
It was Ruth's tenth and last World Series; Lou Gehrig quietly hit .529 with three homers in the same sweep.
Q 23Which Cubs pitcher threw the pitch that Babe Ruth supposedly called in 1932?
Charlie Root
Root insisted to the end of his life that Ruth never pointed at the bleachers, saying he would have knocked him down if he had.
Q 14Which catcher leaped into the pitcher's arms after the final out of the 1956 perfect game?
Yogi Berra
The last out was a called third strike on pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell, and the photo became one of baseball's most famous images.
Q 15Bill Mazeroski's ninth-inning home run in Game 7 of 1960 won the title for which team?
Pittsburgh Pirates
It remains the only Game 7 in World Series history to end on a home run, and it came against a Yankees team that outscored Pittsburgh 55–27.
Q 16Who is the only World Series MVP ever chosen from the losing team?
Bobby Richardson
The Yankees second baseman drove in 12 runs in 1960 while his team lost Game 7 to a walk-off homer.
Q 17'The Catch' in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series robbed which Cleveland hitter?
Vic Wertz
The over-the-shoulder grab came in the deep Polo Grounds center field, and the Giants went on to sweep a Cleveland team that had won 111 games.
Q 18In 2017 the World Series MVP award was renamed in honor of which player?
Willie Mays
He never won the award himself; it did not exist until 1955, a year after his most famous World Series moment.
Q 19The first World Series MVP award, in 1955, went to which Brooklyn pitcher?
Johnny Podres
Podres shut out the Yankees in Game 7 to give Brooklyn its only championship before the move to Los Angeles.
Q 20Which pitcher won the World Series MVP award twice, in 1964 and 1967?
Bob Gibson
Only three other players have won it twice, and no one has managed a third.
Q 24The 1927 World Series is the only one to end with the winning run scoring on what?
A wild pitch
The 'Murderers' Row' Yankees, 110–44 that year with Ruth's 60 homers, completed the first AL sweep of an NL club.
Q 25The 1969 'Miracle Mets' upset which 109-win team in five games?
Baltimore Orioles
The Mets, in their eighth season, became the first expansion team to win a division, a pennant and a World Series.
Q 26Who managed the 1969 Miracle Mets?
Gil Hodges
Hodges had been a star first baseman on the Brooklyn Dodgers; he died of a heart attack less than three years later, at 47.
Q 27Which team won five World Series in a row from 1949 to 1953?
New York Yankees
No club has won more than three straight since; the same franchise also took four in a row from 1936 to 1939.
Q 28How many World Series titles had the Yankees won by the end of the 2025 season?
27
That was from 41 appearances; the St. Louis Cardinals were next with 11.
Q 29Which National League club has won the most World Series?
St. Louis Cardinals
Their 11th came in 2011, when David Freese twice rescued them from a final strike in Game 6.
Q 30Which MLB franchise had never appeared in a World Series through the 2025 season?
Seattle Mariners
Seattle reached the ALCS several times, including after a 116-win season in 2001 and again in 2025, but never the Series.