Baseball continued to dominate the American sports scene in the 1910s. 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). The American League dominated the World Series, winning eight of ten titles in the decade. 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). 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.

Aside from baseball, American professional sports were just getting started in the 1910s. Professional hockey got its start in...