Remembering the 2002 World Series

Baseball in 2002. Bud Selig was Major League Baseball’s commissioner, and Barry Bonds just broke the single-season home run record the prior season. The All-Star Game ended in an embarrassing tie. The Expos were still in Montreal, and the Houston Astros were still in the National League.

This was post-9/11 and pre-Congressional hearings into PEDs in baseball. No one knew what a defensive shift was, and analytics was known as Moneyball. And we ended with a World Series that saw the Anaheim Angels face the San Francisco Giants in an epic 7-game series where two franchises who spent decades craving a World Series championship would finally get a chance to bring one home.

A lot has changed in baseball since then, but this series doesn’t seem to have happened that long ago. The crisp California nights were a beautiful backdrop for one of the most interesting Series in recent memory. Let’s look back at the 2002 World Series.