September 21, 2010

September 21

It is the morning of September 21, 2010, and the Red Sox are 6.5 GB Tampa Bay in the Wild Card standings with only a dozen games left on the schedule.
      W   L   PCT   GB  TO PLAY
TBR 89 60 .597 --- 13
BOS 83 67 .553 6.5 12
On the morning of September 21, 1964, the Cardinals trailed the Phillies in the National League by 6.5 games, with 13 games to play.
      W   L   PCT   GB  TO PLAY
PHI 90 60 .600 --- 12
CIN 83 66 .557 6.5 13
STL 83 66 .557 6.5 13
Over the next 10 days, St. Louis went 9-1, Cincinnati went 8-2, and Philadelphia went 0-10.

At the end of the day on September 30, the National League standings looked like this:
      W   L   PCT   GB  TO PLAY
STL 92 67 .579 --- 3
CIN 91 68 .572 1.0 3
PHI 90 70 .563 2.5 2
The Cardinals ended up winning the pennant, finishing 1 GA of both the Reds and Phillies -- and then they beat the Yankees in the World Series.

As we can see, a comeback of the type the Red Sox need is not impossible. However, Bostucket's September roster is unlikely to reel off ten in a row; the season's longest winning streak is six.

Plus, of the Phillies' 10 losses, three were to the Cards and three were to the Reds. The Red Sox have no games against the Rays. And the universe can probably arrange to make that kind of collapse/comeback happen only once, and 1964 was it.

Or was it?

3 comments:

SoSock said...

I like your thinking :)
"Never, never, never give up" - Winston Churchill

SoSock said...

Of course Churchill also said "I may be drunk, miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly".....so who knows how seriously we should take him :)

Michael Holloway said...

"..arrange to make that kind of collapse/comeback happen only once.."

In Chaos theory an event can happen countless times in an infinite time line. Never say never, sometimes you roll sixes six times.