Unlike professional baseball, the early pro football leagues allowed black players to participate, and several black players starred on early teams. Professional football was still limited to a small league in the Midwest. Horse racing also gained respectability in the decade thanks to the introduction of the Triple Crown, a series of horse races that included the most famous race of all, the Kentucky Derby.Ĭollege football continued to be the most popular fall spectator sport, with Notre Dame becoming a dominant team in the decade behind the play of Knute Rockne (1888–1931), who became the team's coach late in the decade. Ray Harroun (1879–1968) won the initial race-and the $10,000 prize-by averaging an amazing 74.6 miles an hour. Auto racing also got a boost in the decade with the founding of the Indianapolis 500. Professional hockey got its start in 1911 with the founding of the Pacific Coast Hockey League, which overshadowed the fledgling National Hockey League, founded in 1917.

Baseball received a black eye in 1919 when several players on the Chicago White Sox were involved in 'throwing' (intentionally losing) the World Series for money the event became known as the Black Sox Scandal.Īside from baseball, American professional sports were just getting started in the 1910s. The games biggest stars were Ty Cobb (1886–1961) of the Detroit Tigers, Walter Johnson (1887–1946) of the Washington Senators, and an emerging star-George Herman 'Babe' Ruth (1895–1948) of the Boston Red Sox (and later the New York Yankees). The American League dominated the World Series, winning eight of ten titles in the decade. Attendance at professional baseball games remained high throughout the decade, rising slightly from 6,206,447 in 1910 to 6,532,439 in 1919 the numbers might have been higher without the interruptions of World War I (1914–18). Baseball continued to dominate the American sports scene in the 1910s.

Card games popular in the 1910s