Baseball ‘Offs Update And Notes

Three of the four “div” series are first time post-season clashes between the teams.

Only the “2” seed Philadelphia Phils vs “3” seed and defending champion L.A. (Dodgers) has previous and its pretty memorable post-season history. (All 5 such were NLCS, the first two going to L.A. (’77 and ’78) the most recent three to the Phils (’83, ’08.’09).

The only time of the four that the Phils/L.A. winner won its next round and claimed the title was in 2008. This time while on paper, these look by a hair as the two best teams, the winner of their series will still need victories in 2 subsequent rounds (8 needed wins) to win it all.

Elsewhere after the Yankees became the first team in 20 non covid year best of 3 baseball series, to lose game 1 but advance, they are pretty big “faves” vs the Toronto Blue Jays in their div series, which as with the other three, begins today.

“Tor” and the Yankees finished tied but a tiebreaker yielded “Tor” as a first place team. Now only the Chicago White Sox, among the 14 other A.L. teams, have never been a Yankees post-season opponent.

In 2 other first time post-season matchups, after the 1935 and 1945 World Series opponents, the Detroit Tigers and Chicago Cubs won decisive third games after winning the other odd number 12/8 series tilt, and respectively will face the A.L. “2” seed the Seattle Mariners (the only one of the 30 big league teams never to have even reached the World Series), and N.L. top seed, Milwaukee Brewers in the “quarters”/”div” series, again commencing today.

Detroit in 1935-1936 is the only city to win as many as 3 titles (the then maximum, no NBA until ’47) within a year (the actual was 4 days more than a half year) as first ever Red Wings’ NHL and Lions’ NFL crowns manifested, in addition to the above cited Tigers’ first ever title.

Additionally, while he did not become heavyweight boxing champion until 1937, Detroit native Joe Louis, fought 13 times in ’35 and was a rising star in the boxing world.