stevev@tekchips.UUCP (Steve Vegdahl) (10/22/85)
Well, the first two World Series games are history, with the Cards winning both on the road. The subject of this posting is the win-loss patterns of World Series teams at home and on the road. I have heard that no team has ever won the series after dropping games one and two at home. Can anyone corraborate that? Along the same lines I have also heard that no team has ever won a series without winning at least one road game. In other words no team has won its first two games at home, then dropped three on the road only to come back and win the last two at home. Again, any corraborators? I am curious as to the distribution of world series "patterns" has been. Let A be the team who is home for games 1, 2, 6 and 7; let B be the team who is home for games 3, 4 and 5. This gives rise to 70 possible patterns. The first paragraph of this article states that the patterns BB.BAA.AA, BB.ABA.AA, BB.AAB.AA, BB.AAA.BA or BB.AAA.A have never occurred in WS play. The second states the AA.BBB.AA has never occurred. Does anyone know how many of the 70 patterns have occurred in the 80-odd years of WS play? Which one has occurred the most often? With respect to paragraph two, even though it is my understanding that AA.BBB.AA has never occurred, both AA.BBB.B and AA.BBB.AB (the only other possible outcomes after AA.BBB (home team wins in each of first five games)) have occurred multiple times (e.g., 1978 LA/NY, 1981 NY/LA and 1965 MN/LA, 1971 Bal/Pit). I also find it interesting that the pattern AB.AAB.BB has occurred at least twice (StL/Det 1968 and Bal/Pit 1979). Steve Vegdahl Computer Research Lab. Tektronix, Inc. Beaverton, Oregon