REGIONAL #8:  This grouping was stacked with three pennant winners, two division winners, and one of the 50 worst teams of all time, the first-year expansion Jays.   The lone Old Timer team in the bracket, the deadball 1909 Pirates, took hope in that the team they bested in the World Series that season, the Tigers, had won Regional #5.  However, they faced an 88-win 1979 Angels team that had won the AL West, but the Pirates rode the arm of spot starter Deacon Phillippe, who tossed a 2-hit shutout and Pittsburgh wins 3-0.  In the next game, the pennant-winning 1968 Cardinals decided to save Bob Gibson rather than use him against the 107-loss expansion 1977 Blue Jays, but that proved risky when Jerry Garvin shackles a rather punchless Cards lineup and the Jays score two late inning runs against Steve Carlton to tie things up and send the game into extra innings.  By the 13th inning, it’s a battle of relievers Joe Hoerner for the Cards and Pete Vuckovich for Toronto, and the Cards finally muster an RBI single from Curt Flood that provides the margin in a 3-2 extra inning battle.  Next, another high-profile matchup features the pennant-winning 1972 Reds against the AL West champs 1975 A’s, and despite two powerful lineups it proves to be more of a pitching duel, with Ken Holtzman prevailing and homers by Bill North and Joe Rudi leading the A’s to another 3-2 win.  Finally, two more appearances by Year of the Pitcher teams, the 1968 Red Sox and the 1968 Braves, predictably leads to a low-scoring affair, with Atlanta’s Pat Jarvis holding the A’s to 7 hits in a 3-1 win–completing a pitching-dominated first round in which no team managed to score more than three runs.

The semifinal between the 1909 Pirates and the 1968 Cardinals featured two pennant winners facing off, and although the Pirates were ELO rated as one of the 5 best teams of all time, they had to face Bob Gibson at his nastiest.   And when the Cards scored in each of the first three innings to jump out to a 4-0 lead, fans knew that there was no way Gibson was going to lose this game.  Indeed he didn’t, finishing out a 6-hitter for an easy 8-1 win with key doubles from Mike Shannon and Tim McCarver providing way more runs than were needed.  The other semifinal saw the AL West winning 1975 A’s against the 1968 Braves, and the Braves knocked Dick Bosman out in the 4th inning, piling on runs that ended in a 10-3 blowout, with Hank Aaron contributing four RBI.

The final thus came down to two NL teams from the same season, the pennant winning 1968 Cardinals and the 81-81 1968 Braves, with Nellie Briles against Phil Niekro for the regional crown.  For the second game in a row, the Braves jump out to a big lead, up 6-0 by the end of the 4th inning, and they cruise to the 6-3 victory despite entering the regional as the #7 seed according to ELO ranks.  Aaron is the leading run producer for Atlanta, although neither he or any of the other Braves managed to hit a homer in any game in the regional.