With Roy Halladay and Chris Carpenter facing off in a must-win game for both teams, we knew we might see something special tonight.
This Game Might Be Truly Historic
This special, though?
With seven-and-a-half innings in the books, there’s now an excellent chance this game will finish 1-0.
In the whole history of postseason baseball, beginning with the first World Series in 1903, before this game there had been 78 sudden-death postseason games.
Only two of those games resulted in a pitcher throwing a 1-0 shutout, and both of them are incredibly famous.
The first was Game 7 of the 1962 World Series. With the Yankees ahead of the Giants 1-0, Matty Alou led off the bottom of the ninth inning with a bunt single. Yankees starter Ralph Terry struck out Felipe Alou and Chuck Hiller, but Willie Mays doubled, with Matty stopping at third.
Next up, Willie “Stretch” McCovey, one of the scariest lefty hitters anyone’s ever seen, and what happened next inspired two of the great cartoon strips about baseball ...
The second was Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, and is roughly 50 percent of the reason why people think Jack Morris belongs in the Hall of Fame (the other 50 percent is that Morris won more games in the 1980s than anyone else).
This game can’t match those games, because it’s just a Division Series. Still, baseball doesn’t get a whole lot better than this, right now.
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