AN unorthodox World Series featuring two Wild Card teams began with great promise in Texas last week, with the Rangers and the Diamondbacks splitting two games with intriguingly different tonalities and setting up what appeared to be a compelling "punch-counterpunch" rhythm.
But then the teams moved to Arizona, and that scenario swiftly fell apart, with the Diamondbacks' pesky offense suddenly sputtering in Game Three, followed by a catastrophic "bullpen game" whose 11-7 score was lucky only for the Rangers, and then...
AND then a Game Five where the Snakes were clearly rattled by their inability to score anyone despite five consecutive innings in which they had runners in scoring position. Their ace starter Zac Gallen was pitching a no-hitter, but Arizona's inability to take control of the game cast a pall over the proceedings that swiftly took on inevitable dimensions. The Rangers, working on a remarkable road winning streak, finally broke through against Gallen in the seventh, and the hissing sound that had become progressively more audible was not from the D-backs (no "snaking" back into the game forthcoming) but instead the sound of air leaking out of any and all receptacles--tires, balloons, and several orifices (not) to be named later.
Snakes' closer Paul Sewald, acquired in mid-season to reinvent the top end of the Arizona bullpen, delivered the coup de grace when he allowed four runs in the ninth, dooming the D-backs to a place in the lower depths of World Series history: the ghetto of the five-game series.
IT is now an architectural archipelago with twenty-seven separate buildings, housing 135 games in all--108 of which were won by the World Champions, and only 27 by the D-back's luckless brethren--exactly one win apiece for 27 teams who simply fell on their swords.
Very few five-game series are memorable, unless they are upsets: the ones that qualify include those played in 1969 (Mets over Orioles), 1988 (Dodgers over A's), and arguably 1942 (up and coming Cardinal dynasty shocks the Yankee dynasty).
The sense of deflation that occurs in a five-game series can be seen in the results when we quantify wins/losses on a game-by-game basis. Simply put, an event horizon just clicks into place in Game Four which pushes things inexorably in the direction of the winning team. The aggregate record in Games Four & Five of a five-game series is as starkly dominating as you can get without an outright sweep: 54 wins for the eventual champ, vs. just three for the eventual chump.
THERE are some mildly interesting sub-patterns that emerge in the constricted world of the five-game series, which we'll briefly examine. The Snakes' pattern (splitting on the road, swept at home) has happened only three times previously, all of them involving the Yankees as the winning team (1941, downing the Dodgers; 1949, rinsing and repeating with Brooklyn; and 1961, ripping the Reds a new one in their home park).
Another dramatic pattern--drop the first game and win four straight--has also happened only four times: in 1915 (Red Sox over Phillies), 1942 (Cards over the Yankees), 1969 (Mets shock the O's and the world), and 1983 (O's take to the Phillies).
Rarer still is the "win first three, drop Game Four, win Game Five" scenario--shared only by the 1910 Philadelphia A's, the 1937 Yankees, and the 1970 Orioles.
Nine teams have won the first two games, lost the third, and won the last two--we'll let you pick those out for yourself from the table above.
BUT these sub-patterns don't really deflect us from the fact that the five-game World Series is just a collection point for an escalating (and simultaneously deflating) sense of lost opportunity. The teams that win and their fan base are, of course, extremely happy, but years later they're likely to have a much fuzzier sense of how and why their teams won. That's because the win came a bit too easily: the sense of competition has been stunted, leaving a mental wasteland that is inextricably intertwined with the desiccated landscape of the "five-game ghetto."
It's been five years since the most recent five-game series; the longest span of time between such series is thirteen years (1916 to 1929). That sounds about right: let's cross fingers that we don't see another one until at least 2036...
