Some Baseball Tournament Trivia and Predictions

As with the superb comedian, Robert Klein, whose routine included “I Can’t Stop My Leg,”  my “can’t help it,” penchant for post-season trivia continues below.

The cities of Houston and New York will be meeting in a “preliminary round”/to be one of 8 remaining teams in a sport’s playoff, for a third time with tonight’s such clash between the Astros and Yankees.

In the two previous such meetings, the nature of the sports, football and basketball, made it extremely unlikely the preliminary round winner would go very far in the playoffs.

That is not the case with baseball. Last year the two “play in game”/preliminary game winners advanced to the World Series, clearly the first time two preliminary round winners (i.e. to become one of eight teams) ever advanced together to their sports’ final round, in baseball’s parlance, the still great but clearly diminished event, known as The World Series.

Houston and New York have also met in a league’s final (the Houston Rockets won in 7 games vs the New York Knicks in 1994) and semi-final (the Mets winning a scintillating 6 game NLCS en route to their last World Series win in 1986).

For the record, the two “prelims” were the Rockets’ best of three, decisive third game win vs the Knicks in 1975 and the Houston Oilers win vs the New York Jets in 1991. Both the ’75 rockets, who lost to the Celtics and the ’91 Oilers, who blew a big lead and lost to the Denver Broncos, were eliminated in the quarterfinal round.

No prediction on tonight’s game but I do predict both play in game winners, no matter which team wins the Astros/Yankees or Cubs/Pirates will upset their league’s Missouri based one seed (The A.L. Kansas City Royals, who pulled the upsets last year before losing to fellow play in game winner, the S.F. Giants in the World Series and the N.L. St. Louis Cardinals).

“Bet” you favorites backers are evoking Missouri and saying “show me” regarding those predictions. Sadly, not as high up on the list as money, it still is one reason they play the games.

Robert Klein, likely still a Yankees’ fan