13. Major League Baseball drew tourists to all of its franchised cities
The 1920s was the first Golden Age of Major League Baseball in the United States. Called the National Pastime, it was far from a National Game. Its most Northern outpost sat in Boston, its most Southern in Washington DC, and it went no further west than St. Louis. Professional minor leagues, amateur factory leagues, community leagues and others presented baseball outside of the Majors. Yet the Majors drew tourists to their ballparks, arriving in the cities by train and automobile simply to see a ballgame played by the heroes they knew from newsreels and newspapers. Throughout the country, fans flocked to cities where the Yankees’ Babe Ruth appeared. That year, the World Series featured the New York Giants against the New York Yankees.
For the World Series of 1921, the Pennsylvania Railroad and its rival, the New York Central, altered the schedules of their trains and added cars to accommodate the increase in passenger traffic. Thanks to tourist levels, hotels throughout the New York area sold out. Fans traveled from the West Coast, from Cuba, and from Mexico to watch the games. Most came to see Ruth, who did not appear in the final three games, other than as a pinch hitter in the final inning of the series. He hit into a groundout. The New York Giants won the series, the first-ever in which the Yankees appeared. To date, they’ve played in 40, winning 27 of them.