The 2026 World Series Is Set, So Here's a Sporcle Quiz to Commemorate It!

The Tampa Bay Rays just closed out their ALCS win against the Cleveland Guardians, giving them their third pennant in team history. They'll be moving on to face the long-since clinched Milwaukee Brewers, who took their second-ever pennant and first since their move to the National League back in 1998. 

I've already been updating my playlist of World Series Sporcle trivia quizzes to reflect this new match-up, which you may recall (if you read my Playoff Trivia article) is a new iteration of the Fall Classic. But I wanted to do a little something extra; as you may also remember, this is a match-up between two expansion teams, something that's only happened three other times in MLB history. 

And so, I've added another quiz to the list: Can You Name the World Series That Featured Two Expansion Teams? It's a quick one, a twist on one that I've made in the past; but like I said, I wanted to do something special to mark the occasion, since that's a trivia beat that I've been highlighting for a while now. 

Also, it is kind of interesting that, while this has occurred four different times, it's involved eight different teams, with no repeats to date (the first three occasions being Royals-Mets, Nationals-Astros, and Rangers-Diamondbacks). Also, either the Rays or Brewers is going to walk away from this with their first World Series in franchise history; the last time we had a match-up like that was 1980. It will also mark our fourth first-time winner in the last decade between the Astros, Nationals, and Rangers, which is kind of incredible to think about (and that stretch is even book-ended by the Cubs' drought-ender!).

Brewers/Rays is the 8th World Series between teams that have never won one before 1903 Americans (Red Sox)/Pirates 1905 Giants/Athletics 1906 White Sox/Cubs 1907 Cubs/Tigers 1909 Pirates/Tigers 1920 Indians/Robins (Dodgers) 1980 Phillies/Royals 2026 Brewers/Rays (good idea @mikemedvin.bsky.social)

— James Smyth (@jamessmyth621.bsky.social) October 19, 2026 at 8:05 PM

Either way, you can expect an update here shortly whenever the World Series concludes, featuring this year's version of the Best Active Players Without a World Series quiz. If you'd like a reminder whenever that goes live, you can subscribe to the email list with the box below! 

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The Annual 2026 MLB Playoff Trivia Round-Up and Preview!

I’m a little busy this year (not entirely due to my Summer Playlist article that just went up over at Out of Left Field, but it was another thing to do, so it would be cool to go check that out as well if you have time!), but I would really like to keep up with my yearly tradition of Playoff Trivia. So I’m going to try and make it happen through a mix of pre-writing as much as I can and being a little more efficient than I’m used to.

So with that in mind, let’s jump right in… after a quick reminder that you can subscribe to the Hot Corner Harbor email list for updates when a new article goes up (and only when an article goes up, no spam!). It’ll be useful for the offseason, where I have a couple of article ideas in mind on top of my usual Hall of Fame coverage and Future Hall of Fame series (not to mention the eventual follow-up on this playoff trivia piece!).

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DROUGHTS

It feels like kind of a boring year on the drought front, in spite of the fact that all three of our longest active World Series droughts are represented in the playoffs this year, in the Guardians, Brewers, and Padres. A big reason for that is probably because eight of the past ten World Series winners are represented in this season’s postseason field (and with the also recently-crowned Rangers just narrowly missing out as well).

That brings the overall numbers down a bunch, despite those three big ones trying to push in the other direction. But it’s really just those three and the Rays (who, like the Padres and Brewers, are searching for their first ever championship, albeit with a much shorter history). Everyone else here has won at least one title since the turn of the millennium. In fact, our median drought for this set falls right in between the Phillies (2008) and Yankees (2009). It’s actually kind of difficult to wind up with a group of teams with a sub-20 year median drought, given that this is a 30-team league and there have been plenty of repeats in that span. This just isn’t a group that skews towards the long-suffering, in general.

2025 World Series Trivia Wrap-Up + Best Players Without a World Series

With the final game of the 2025 Season in the books, I can follow up on my initial column with another trivia tradition here at Hot Corner Harbor: the Annual Best Active Players Without a World Series Sporcle Quiz! I’ll include a little more writing here before we get to the break (to give the spoilers within some breathing room), but I’ll also add that if you’d like more World Series fun facts, you can take a walk down memory lane through a full Sporcle playlist collecting past years’ editions of this quiz (I think it’s actually kind of neat to watch the list of names change slowly over time), as well as an entire second playlist of various other playoff quizzes that I’ve made.

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