Odds Are the Royals and Giants Won’t Keep You Up Past Bedtime
Tonight is the last baseball game for five long cold months, so all neutral fans – which is most fans – are hoping for a World Series Game Seven between the Giants and Royals that’ll generate memories that’ll radiate heat until spring. We want a classic that’ll wring us limp with the hours of suspense only baseball can create thanks to its maddening slowness (One cinch bet about tonight is that it will be slow).
History says we can forget it, adding we should count our blessings if it’s a moderately close game and not a dismal blowout. It snottily advises we should just be grateful for any Game Seven, even if the final score is 17-2. Baseball history can be a very crabby muse sometimes.
Game Seven of the 2014 World Series will be the 37th time that the sport’s long season and its Fall Classic have produced a game where there really will be no tomorrow. A review of the previous 34 indicates two distressing trends for lovers of the game. Game Sevens are becoming increasingly rare. And since the first one in 1909 (Pirates 8-Tigers 0), many more of them have been routs than games for the ages, or even games for next week.
The 21st century has seen 15 seasons, and this will only be the fourth World Series to go the limit. By contrast, in the 15 seasons between 1955 and 1969, there were 10. This is unlikely to change. The correlation between Major League Baseball’s expansion of the playoffs, especially the creation of the divisional round in 1995, and a corresponding decline in World Series Game Sevens is strong enough for Nate Silver.
So I guess we should be grateful the Royals and Giants have given us the opportunity for the most dramatic possible the end of the season in their odd swaps of blowout wins during the Series. If only it wasn’t so likely they have one more blowout in them.
Eight of the last 36 Game Sevens were decided by a five run or greater margin, including the only World Series the Royals have ever won in 1985. That suggests there’s better than a 25 percent chance either Bruce Bochy or Ned Yost will be on their pitching change by the fifth inning, although to be fair that could happen if the score’s 1-1 by then.
As for seeing real baseball history made – history that all fans will remember and cherish – not just those in Kansas City and the Bay Area, the odds are long. History being as much art as science, demonstrating this requires statistics to give way to the more subjective and tricky process of collective memory.
When I was a kid in the late 1950s, I had a book titled “Baseball’s 100 Greatest Games.’’ Few of them were Game Sevens. I think the Senators beating the Giants in 1924, the Cardinals beating the Yanks in 1926 with Grover Cleveland Alexander in relief and the Red Sox beating the Giants in 1912 were it
(BTW bettors, the Giants have NEVER won a Series Game Seven. They lost those two and in 1962 to the Yankees).
There’s been a lot of baseball since that book was published, but I pose this challenge to all Boston fans. How many of the Game Sevens since 1960 would you put in an imaginary “Baseball’s 100 Greatest Games,’’ 2014 edition?
Off the top of my head, I’d say three. Bill Mazeroski’s home run for the Pirates in 1960 to win a 10-9 game, Jack Morris’ 1-0 10-inning complete game shutout for the Twins over the Braves in 1991, and stretching a bit, the Diamondbacks rallying to beat Mariano Rivera in 2001 and end the Yankees’ string of four World Series wins in five seasons. There’d be more Game Sixes in the book than Sevens, starting with the Red Sox in 1975 and 1986.
This is too bad for those who love sports as drama, but there’s no mystery as to why Game Sevens are more often routine than memorable. All baseball games are more often routine than memorable. The game is endless fascinating, but is only occasionally complex. One starting pitcher is a little or a lot better than his opposite number and his team wins. One batter gets hot for one night, and his team wins.
End of story, end of season.
Knowledge of the odds doesn’t slow us drama lovers down. I’ll be tuned in for the first pitch at 8:07 tonight, hoping to see something like Lorenzo Cain stealing home in the bottom of the ninth for the win.
I’ll take a game that’s still anybody’s to win in the seventh.
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