Tuesday, September 13, 2011

A new countdown

So that was fun. I liked my last countdown, even if it wasn't always entirely clear what I was counting down. The next one I'm going to start is a little more straightforward: the best League Championship Series Game 7s.

(Well, not quite straightforward. From 1969 to 1985, the LCS's were best-of-fives, so I'll be including several Game 5s in my list. Still, that's easier to figure out than my list of LDS/playoff/regular season elimination games, right?)

So. The LCS started in each league after the expansion of 1969 split each league into two divisions. As I just mentioned, the series was a best-of-five affair until 1985, when it got changed to best-of-seven. Out of 82 possible series (41 seasons), 24 ended with a winner-take-all game. That's 29 percent, which seems like it's higher than it should be. But I'm no math expert, so we'll pretend that it's high and just move on.

So there it is. I'll start tomorrow with the list. I won't spend as much time on the games lower down on the list so that I can dedicate more time to (hopefully) make the write-ups about the higher ranked games better. We'll see.

Oh, and I'll show my hand a bit and give a list of the games still left to be written about, to encourage people to guess what game will be next. Or something like that.

1972 NLCS: Cincinnati vs. Pittsburgh
1972 ALCS: Detroit vs. Oakland
1973 NLCS: Cincinnati vs. New York
1973 ALCS: Baltimore vs. Oakland
1976 ALCS: Kansas City vs. New York
1977 ALCS: Kansas City vs. New York
1980 NLCS: Houston vs. Philadelphia
1981 NCLS: Los Angeles vs. Montreal
1982 ALCS: California vs. Milwaukee
1984 NLCS: Chicago vs. San Diego
1985 ALCS: Kansas City vs. Toronto
1986 ALCS: Boston vs. California
1987 NLCS: St. Louis vs. San Francisco
1988 NLCS: Los Angeles vs. New York
1991 NLCS: Atlanta vs. Pittsburgh
1992 NLCS: Atlanta vs. Pittsburgh
1996 NLCS: Atlanta vs. St. Louis
2003 NLCS: Chicago vs. Florida
2003 ALCS: Boston vs. New York
2004 NLCS: Houston vs. St. Louis
2004 ALCS: Boston vs. New York
2006 NLCS: New York vs. St. Louis
2007 ALCS: Boston vs. Cleveland
2008 ALCS: Boston vs. Tampa Bay

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