The ALCS stands at two games apiece for just the fifth time in 28 best of seven series, after the Detroit Tigers posted a (7-3) win in game four vs the Boston Red Sox. It also is the first (2-2) ALCS since 2003.
Meanwhile in the NLCS, the Dodgers stayed alive winning game five at home but the Cardinals still lead the series three games to two.
The results of yesterday’s games assured both networks of at least a six game series. Money made, now maybe more of it for them. What else is new?!
The Cardinals have won five, best of seven NLCS (1985, 1987, 2004, 2006 and 2011) and did not have a (3-1) series lead in any of them.
Twice they have dissipated (3-1) NLCS leads, doing so vs the Atlanta Braves in 1996 and last year against the eventual world champion, San Francisco Giants.
They also have blown a (3-1) lead in the World Series on two occasions in 1968 vs the Tigers and in 1985 vs the Kansas City Royals.
The proud Cardinals’ franchise, arguably with the second greatest baseball history behind the Yankees, really would be set back by another such loss.
The Dodgers, with Clayton Kershaw vs Michael Wacha in an anticipated pitching duel (the total runs for the game have been perceived as five and a half by Las Vegas oddsmakers) are 7 to 5 favorites in game six.
The Cardinals, in a game 7 they hope is not played, would be slightly bigger favorites with their game 3 losing pitcher, Adam Wainwright, opposing game three winner, Hyun-jin Ryu of the Dodgers.
Last night was the 12th time in a best of 7 series involving the Dodgers that a team came home for game three, trailing two games to none. All 12 times the team trailing the series won game three at home.
Last night was the eighth time the Dodgers, either while playing in Brooklyn or Los Angeles won the game. Four times, their opponent won in such a situation.
Six of the previous 11 teams won the series, eight of the 11 at least squared the series with a game four win.
Only the 1916 Brooklyn Dodgers vs Babe Ruth and the Red Sox, the 1988 Oakland A’s, and 2008 Dodgers (vs the eventual world champion Philadelphia Phillies) lost in five games.
No team had ever come back from a (2-0) deficit in the World Series until 1955 and then it happened two years in a row.
First, the Brooklyn Dodgers came back to win all three at home and eventually game 7 behind John Podres, to finally beat the New York Yankees and win their only Brooklyn title.
However, the next year, the Yankees came home down (2-0) but won all three at Yankee Stadium–the final home game being Don Larsen’s perfect game. The Yankees took the title in 7 games as Yogi Berra hit 2 home runs while Bill “Moose” Skowron hit a grand slam homer, the only such blow in game seven of a World Series.
The Yankees again came back from an (0-2) deficit vs the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1978. They returned home down (0-2) in the World Series and won all three at home. The Yankees clinched the title with a game six win in LA. They were the first team to lose the first four games of a World Series and win the next four.
However, and please check with George Santayana, who some say “GHOSTwrites” this stuff, “history repeated” and the Dodgers reversed the situation three years later. L.A. won all three at home and clinched the ’81 title at Yankee Stadium in game six.
The other two times among the previous 11, that a team trailing (0-2) and coming home in a best of 7 series involving the Dodgers, won the entity, occurred 20 years apart in the 1965 World Series and 1985 NLCS.
In the former, LA won all three at home with Claude Osteen, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax getting the wins. It was the great Koufax, pitching on two days rest, who won game seven in Minnesota vs the Twins. Sandy hurled a three hit shutout that day.
In 1985, the Cardinals did to the Dodgers what the Dodgers hope to reverse, these 28 years later, in 2013. As stated here before, 2013 has the same calendar as 1985.
28 years ago, the Cardinals returned home and won all three games, the last ending on the first ever left handed hitting, home run by legendary Cards’ shortstop, Ozzie Smith. Also as stated here before, “St. Loo” won the series in six with Jack Clark’s, top of the ninth inning three run homer, the deciding blow.
That Clark home run was exactly 28 years ago tomorrow and again the Cardinals will play a day, NLCS game at Dodger Stadium on a Wednesday October 16th. If the Cards win tonight in game 4, they will again have a chance to eliminate the Dodgers in the NLCS at Dodger Stadium on a Wednesday afternoon, October 16th.
For the record, the Dodgers in both 1947 and 1953 returned home to Brooklyn and won both games 3 and 4 vs the Yankees in the World Series. Each time they lost both game 5 at home and the series.
In 1947 the series went seven games games while it ended in six games in 1953. Alfred Emanuel Martin, better known as Billy Martin, capped a great individual series by driving home the title clinching run in 1953.
The two lone remaining unbeaten teams in the NFL both reside in the AFC West. One almost certainly will win the divisional title while the other most likely will be at best, a “five seed” in the playoffs, no matter how good their record might be.
The Denver Broncos were nearly four touchdown favorites and for the second straight game did not come close to covering the point spread, in a (35-16) win vs the (0-6) Jacksonville Jaguars.
Earlier in the day, the Kansas City Chiefs had covered the spread with a (24-7) win vs their old rivals, the Oakland Raiders.
Next week the Chiefs, who have covered the spread in five of their six victories, host the disappointing Houston Texans.
The Texans, who were prohibitive favorites to win the AFC South, are (2-4) and have failed to cover the spread in all six games. That evokes the woeful Houston Astros, who finished the baseball season with a (51-111) record. They lost their last 15 games. Predictable next sentence: “Houston we (your teams) have a problem.”
Next Sunday night, the Broncos’ great regular season quarterback, Peyton Manning returns to Indianapolis where he played for 13 seasons before missing the entire 2011 season.
The Broncos will face the Colts who have a much hyped, but fine young quarterback, named Andrew Luck. As cited before, Manning deserves great credit for coming back from injury to play the past two seasons.
Denver will be about a touchdown favorite vs the (4-2) Colts, who unlike the (6-0) Broncos have undisputed possession of first place in their division, at this still relatively early point in the season.
Both teams are huge favorites (the Broncos 7 to 1, despite being tied with the Chiefs) to win divisional titles.
Yesterday was quite a day for Boston team sports. First of all, the great, modest and classy Bobby Orr, who led the Boston Bruins to Stanley Cup titles in 1970 and 1972, was featured on the national show, “CBS Sunday Morning.”
Perhaps that was an omen as both the (5-1) New England Patriots and the Boston Red Sox pulled out miracle wins led by multi-championship winning Boston sports stars.
Tom Brady, who has been the quarterback on 3 Pats Super Bowl winners, engineered a 70 yard, one minute eight second touchdown drive, without any time outs.
It culminated with a game winning pass to Kenbrell Thompkins, with 5 seconds left in the game. The Pats win in the last minute was against the previously unbeaten New Orleans Saints.
The Red Sox then topped that by overcoming a (5-1) eighth inning deficit in a near “must win” game two of the ALCS vs the Detroit Tigers.
David Ortiz, an integral part of the only two Red Sox World Series winners in the previous 94 seasons, hit a game tying grand slam home run with two out in the bottom of the eighth inning. Boston won (6-5) scoring a run in the bottom of the ninth inning.
The series is now tied at one game apiece with the next three games to be played in Detroit.
The St. Louis Cardinals won a pair of one run games within 24 hours and have taken a (2-0) NLCS lead vs the favored Los Angeles Dodgers.
Carlos Beltran was the star as the Redbirds won game 1 in 13 innings, a Friday night into Saturday morning game that lasted nearly 5 hours. Yesterday afternoon, Michael Wacha and Trevor Rosenthal combined to shutout the Dodgers (1-0) in a two hour, 40 minute tilt.
The Cardinals have won all six home games vs the Dodgers in series with the National League pennant on the line. Before this year, the previous two such series were in 1946 and 1985.
St. Louis won the best of three playoff for the pennant opener, at home in 1946, before clinching the series in Brooklyn in the next game.
Five years later, when the Dodgers were again to be involved in a “best two of three” playoff for the pennant, this time with their arch rivals, the New York Giants, the Dodgers won a coin toss and elected to play the first game of the playoff at home.
Thus the potential last two would be on the road. That decision was based on their loss in 1946, when they opened at St. Louis and lost the series in two straight games.
Of course, the Dodgers lost the 1951 playoff when Bobby Thomson hit a game winning home run off Ralph Branca in the bottom of the ninth inning in the decisive third game, which was a road game for the Dodgers.
Maybe the Dodgers would not have won the 1951 playoff, had they chosen to host the potential last two games.
However, one certainty is that a game ending home run such as Thomson hit, the impact of which still reverberates through time, would have been impossible.
The Cards won all three home games vs L.A. in the 1985 NLCS and two so far in 2013. Add the 1946 playoff home victory and St. Louis has a “Big Six.” That was the great pitcher, Christy Mathewson’s nickname.
The pitching, at least for three games in both LCS (the Tigers, like “St. Loo” (1-0) winners yesterday, used 5 pitchers who allowed but one hit and combined to fan 17 Red Sox batters) has been “Mathewson like.”
Carlos Beltran
It will be the first ever Boston vs Detroit baseball post season clash in the 2013 ALCS. The Detroit Tigers earned a berth opposite the Boston Red Sox, with a (3-0) win at Oakland vs the Athletics, in the decisive 5th game of their division series last night.
For the second straight year, in a Thursday night decisive game of a division series, Justin Verlander (this time for 8 innings) and the Tigers shutout the A’s.
It is the sixth time in as many decisive games of a division series, that the Athletics have fallen. Their team was built around a concept called “Moneyball,” and it is to be credited for the Oakland team’s success with a relatively small payroll.
However, with six losses in as many decisive games and with only one division series win, the era could better be described as “Non money ball.” Incredibly, five of the decisive losses were on the Athletics’ home field in Oakland.
The ALCS opens in Boston on Saturday night and perhaps Jim Leyland should be upset that Tim McCarver, in his last year as a baseball analyst, will be in the broadcast booth.
This is not because Leyland, unlike me, is critical of McCarver as an analyst. No, it would be because a Leyland managed team has never won a post season series with McCarver as an analyst. They are (0-6) in such series encompassing all six of Leyland’s post season series losses.
McCarver worked Leyland managed, Pirates’ NLCS losses to the Reds in 1990 and the Braves in 1991 with Jack Buck, Joe’s father.
In 1992, the Braves broke Leyland and the Pirates’ hearts scoring 3 runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, the final two on an all time clutch 2 out, 2 run single, by the otherwise obscure, Francisco Cabrera.
The ’92 NLCS hero Cabrera, is not exactly in the same hitting class as current Leyland managed, Tigers player, Miguel Cabrera. The latter Cabrera had the game’s key blow, a two run home run in the top of the fourth inning last night.
McCarver worked the 1992 NLCS with a terrific broadcaster named Sean Mc Donough. See there are some broadcasters I like, even a son of a famous sportswriter as is the case with Mc Donough.
Talent is talent and his exciting call on the ’92 NLCS deciding hit is “one for the ages,” not quite like Abraham Lincoln (it was said Mr. Lincoln “belongs to the ages”) but “pretty darn good,” as Larry David might say.
So Leyland was (0-3) in Mc Carver worked series, two with a Buck, in that case Jack, while managing the Pirates in post season.
Leyland is also (0-3) with Mc Carver working with Joe Buck, having lost the 2006 World Series to the Cardinals, the 2011 ALCS to the Texas Rangers and last year’s World Series to the San Francisco Giants. All of those losses occurred as Detroit Tigers’ manager.
Leyland has won a World Series, and in fact is the only one of the managers from the four remaining teams to have even made a World Series.
His triumph was with the wild card Florida Marlins in 1997. Their NLCS and World Series triumphs featured Bob Costas, Joe Morgan and Bob Uecker on the broadcast team. None of the team’s divisional series wins that year were in “McCarver/Joe Buck” games.
For the third time the Dodgers and Cardinals will play a series of games to determine the National League Pennant winner.
Their 2013 NLCS begins Friday night in St.Louis where on Wednesday, the Cards raised their “winner take all” series or “play in” game record to (15-6) beating the Pittsburgh Pirates (6-1).
The first time the two teams played for the pennant was in 1946 when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. The two teams had finished tied over the course of the 154 game regular season. A best of three playoff was played and the St. Louis Cardinals prevailed in two straight games.
The other previous clash for the N.L. pennant was in 1985, when the Cardinals won the NLCS in six games.
I still can not believe Dodgers’ manager Tom Lasorda allowed Cards’ slugger, Jack Clark to swing the bat and not walking him when L.A. at home, was clinging to a one run lead, and “St. Loo” had runners at second and third with two out.
The home run Clark hit just landed somewhere in outer space and Lasorda, despite that decision, is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
My rooting for the Dodgers ended that day with that stupid decision to pitch to Clark. I “cut off my nose to spite my face,” and that is my tough luck.
Still, the decision confounds me and remains in my not so humble opinion, one of the worst managerial decisions in baseball history.
All three years of these Dodgers vs Cardinals series/playoffs for the pennant (1946, 1985 and 2013) have the same calendar.
The Dodgers are seven to five favorites in the upcoming series. Their current manager, Don Mattingly, who pitched ace Clayton Kershaw on three days rest vs Atlanta will not repeat that, at least for game one. Kershaw will start in game two.
Two divisional series have gone to a decisive fifth game (the St. Louis Cardinals host the Pittsburgh Pirates tonight while tomorrow night, for the second straight year, the Detroit Tigers will play in Oakland vs the A’s in a decisive game). Both the Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox won their divisional series in four games.
The American League top seed, Red Sox, who finished five and a half games ahead of the Tampa Rays in the A.L. East, but had to beat them in a short series, did so, wrapping it up with a (3-1) win in game four last night. The Junior Circuit pennant winner will have the home field advantage in the World Series.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers won just their third post season series since Kirk Gibson, Orel Hershiser and company upset the favored Oakland Athletics in the 1988 World Series. In doing so the Dodgers handed the Atlanta Braves a 6th straight divisional series loss.
Atlanta also lost the “play in” game last year and worse in my opinion, have but one world title to show for 17 post season appearances in what will be 22 completed baseball seasons from (1991-2013). (There was an incomplete major league baseball season in 1994).
The Red Sox, as alluded to earlier, will have the home advantage vs the Tigers/A’s winner in the ALCS which will open Sunday night.
In my last post I “knocked” announcer Joe Buck and am grateful that the football/baseball doubleheader from Boston this Sunday will not have Buck on both games. He was allowed to do that once (in San Francisco) a few years back.
However, and you can call me envious and bitter, but the play by play man on football from the Boston area (it is an intriguing (5-0) New Orleans Saints at the (4-1) New England Patriots game) will be Thom Brennaman, who isn’t any better.
The sacrosanct New York Times, which once misspelled Wayne Gretzky’s name, ripped into Brennaman’s performance in a relatively recent, college football national title game.
A friend of mine had a succinct thought on Brennaman’s work. After enduring three hours plus of Brennaman on last week’s Eagles/Giants tilt, he told me, “the play by play action is an afterthought to his incessant talking.” When will these guys learn that less is more?!!
Meanwhile the Dodgers await the result of tonight’s decisive game in St. Louis to not only see whom they will play, but also the location of the game.
The L.A. manager, Don Mattingly, was very grateful, not only to have advanced, but to have avoided a plane trip to Atlanta, after the clinching victory vs Atlanta.
Toward that end, he had started ace pitcher Clayton Kershaw on three days rest. The Dodgers went from a roughly three to two to a five to two favorite in the final game vs Atlanta.
Luckily (for them) they won, as an all time clutch player, Juan Uribe, delivered the big blow. Now there is no decisive game tonight in Atlanta with Kershaw unavailable to start. That would have been the situation had the Dodgers lost game four.
Now Mattingly and company will root for the Pirates, who exactly 39 years ago lost at Dodger Stadium in the final game of the NLCS, so they avoid the plane and open the NLCS at home. By the way, all this talk of planes evokes memories of Herve Villechaize.
If the Pirates win tonight and are the Dodgers’ NLCS opponent, L.A. will be large game, and series, favorites–especially with Kershaw starting in the series opener in Los Angeles.
If the Cardinals win, (they are a 3 to 2 choice tonight), the Dodgers with Kershaw starting game one, but on the road, will still be favored–but by not nearly that wide a margin in both the NLCS opener and for the series. 
The number of undefeated NFL teams has dwindled down to three as two previously unbeaten teams lost last week.
Two of the three (5-0) teams are in the AFC West. The Broncos have been dominant, although they had to score 51 points to fight back and win (51-48) in Dallas vs the (2-3) Cowboys.
The other (5-0) team from the AFC West, the Kansas City Chiefs (remember their huddle in the AFL and early AFC days with quarterback Len Dawson facing the other ten players) won (26-17) at Tennessee vs the Titans last week. The Titans were once the Houston Oilers and in 1962, faced the Chiefs franchise (the Dallas Texans) in a 2 overtime AFL title game.
Tommy Brooker’s field goal won the game for the Texans. Jack Buck, who begot Joe Buck, conducted post game interviews that day and was also the lead announcer for far greater Texans/Chiefs’ franchise glory when K.C. upset the Vikings in the 4th Super Bowl.
I witnessed the utter disgrace of Joe Buck, at an event honoring his father, saying “my father broadcast the Ice Bowl in 1969.”
The game was played on the last day of 1967. It was a dinner honoring your dad and yet you (Joe Buck—always talking at me) did not get the facts straight on one of the great games in history.
It has not hurt Buck very much as he makes millions as the “top” announcer in sports today. In a span of a few months, he will “call” both the World Series and Super Bowl in the same season for a record tying fourth time (Curt Gowdy also broadcast both in the same season on four different occasions) this year.
The location for that fourth Super Bowl was New Orleans and the “Crescent City” houses the other (5-0) team, the New Orleans Saints. They won by 8 points at Chicago last week.
Calendars are fun. I still look at those calendars replete with gorgeous women and beautiful scenery or art, a different entity for all twelve months in the solar based year.
I also have recall of past dates and past games and find the repeat or non repeat of “history” interesting, if not fascinating.
Please bear with me as it (history) has repeated in “same calendar,” possible NLCS pairings but not regarding possible ALCS entrants.
Since 1969 and the advent of League Championship Series, this is the sixth calendar with this configuration (for example tragic November 22nd is again on a Friday). The other such years were 1974, 1985, 1991, 1996 and 2002.
The four National League teams (the Pirates, Cardinals, Dodgers and Braves) currently playing in the divisional series, comprised 9 of the 10 entrants in the NLCS in those same calendar years (’74, ’85, ’91, ’96,and 2002) as 2013.
Thus by definition, there will be a redux of one of those NLCS in the 2013 version. Oddly, all four possible match ups occurred once each in those years (’74 Dodgers/Pirates, ’85 Cardinals/Dodgers, ’91 Braves/Pirates and ’96 Braves/Cardinals). In 2002 the Giants beat the Cardinals in the NLCS. None of the five NLCS winners in those years won the World Series.
In the American League, only one of the ten slots in the “same calendar” ALCS was filled by a team playing at this point this season.
That team, the 1974 Oakland A’s did win the World Series, giving them three straight titles, a feat matched or topped only three other times in baseball history.
All three other times it was accomplished by the New York Yankees (5 straight titles (1949-1953), four straight (1936-1939) and three straight (1998-2000).
