NO QUESTION, THE WORLD Series is baseball's showcase, the Fall Classic as effusive sportswriters termed it in its pristine youth after it began 101 years ago, and it often has lived up to that exalted designation.

Nonetheless, occasionally the annual confrontation between the champions of the National and American Leagues deteriorates into a mockery of how the game should be played.

Never did that seem more likely than in 1945 when the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers competed with anemic rosters still drained of talent by the military during World War II, which had ended just weeks before the Series opened. Youngsters, oldsters, and physical rejects from the services manned or maimed the diamonds and dugouts.

As a wartime hit song-which while not referring to ballplayers could readily have been applied to them-had it, "They're either too young or too old, they're either too warm or too cold ... etc."

Irreverent skeptics disparaged the October clash as the "World's Worst Series". Warren Brown, a Chicago sports columnist noted for his acerbic wit, quipped, "I don't think either team is capable of winning."

As it happens, the Tigers prevailed in a seven-game set which while not notable for elegant play, was not quite as sloppy as Brown and fellow cynics feared it would be. Yet, neither was it an example of baseball at its finest.

Tigers star Hank Greenberg, recently returned from military service, admitted the general level of performance fell short of the ideal.

There were a lot of wartime players in both lineups and the caliber of play was not as good as other years," Greenberg confessed. "There were a lot of errors, but still it was a well-fought Series, going down to the last game."

There have been worse-played Series than between the Cubs and Tigers in '45, now recalled chiefly because it was the Chicago N.L. team's final appearance of the 20th Century. It also was the seventh straight Series lost by the Cubs after victories in 1907 and 1908 following the upset by the cross-town White Soxin 1906.

So when it comes to World Series messiness, while the Tigers-Cubs clash fits in, it's hardly the worst example. Fortunately--or sadly--there's no shortage of deplorably suitable possibilities from which to compile a selection of the sloppiest World Series, there being plenty of ugly encounters among the 99 played since the first in 1903 (none in 1904 and 1994).