REGIONAL #129:  This bracket promised to be an interesting mix of teams, with the feature attraction being the 1992 Blue Jays, a pennant-winner and WS champs.  Plus, if they were to be upset, there was backup, because the 1994 Jays were also here–from a season in which there was no Series.  There was also a Royals team that had won a pennant a few seasons earlier, versions of the Orioles and Yankees that were in-between pennant runs, Angels and Cubs squads that were probably decent, and a bad 1968 Yankees team from their CBS years in the wilderness.  Other than those Yanks, I thought that anyone could win this, but I took the easy way out and picked the champion ‘92 Jays over the Orioles in the finals.  For the first time in a while, the ELO numbers agreed with my picks, although I found it interesting that the ‘92 Jays were only ranked as the 5th best team that season.

First round action  

The matchup between the 2017 Royals and the 1994 Blue Jays featured two teams in decline after having won pennants two years prior.  The Royals went a mediocre 80-82 and although they still had some weapons, their starting rotation was not what it had been, with Jason Vargas (18-11, 4.16) getting the #1 starting role.  The Blue Jays went a similar 55-60; at the plate they were still led by Joe Carter, and Pat Hentgen (13-8, 3.40) was on the mound, but he had a rough introduction as the Royals 1 and 3 hitters, Lorenzo Cain and Mike Moustakas, both hit solo HRs in the top of the 1st to give KC a quick 2-0 lead.  That lead evaporates in the bottom of the inning as the Jays rap three hits, including a leadoff triple by Mike Huff, and CF-2 Cain makes a two-base error, and the game is tied up 2-2.  Things stay that way until the 5th, when Paul Molitor finds Vargas’ solid 5-9 HR result; Vargas stays in until the 6th when a LF-4 Melky Cabrera error puts two Jays in scoring position, but Mike Minor comes in to a similar RF-4 Jorge Bonifacio error, and Minor simply loses it as the Jays bat around and leave the inning with a 9-2 lead.   It ends that way as Hentgen recovers from his first inning beating to hold the Royals to three hits the rest of the way.

The 1976 Orioles won 88 games to finish in the AL East; they had two 20-game winners and Reggie Jackson–who I had forgotten made a brief stop in Baltimore between the A’s and the Yanks– so you’d think they’d be a pretty good team, but it was testimony to the dropoff in their lineup that good field/no hit SS Mark Belanger actually had the 3rd highest batting average on the team.  The 1991 Yankees, on the other hand, lost 91 games and they had one decent starting pitcher, Scott Sanderson (16-10, 3.81) who nonetheless did not compare favorably to the O’s Jim Palmer (22-13, 2.51).   The bottom of the 1st has both good news and bad news for the Yanks, as Steve Sax and Mel Hall both hit doubles off Palmer’s very good card to give NY a 1-0 lead, but they lose cleanup hitter Matt Nokes to injury for the rest of the regional.  Meanwhile, Sanderson is perfect until a walk to Ken Singleton in the 5th, but that leads to nothing and then a Pat Kelly solo HR, again off Palmer’s card, makes it 2-0 in the bottom of the inning.  In the 7th, Singleton misses a SI* 1-16 split with a 19 roll, and the no-hitter persists.  In the bottom of the 7th, Jesse Barfield crushes a moon shot to lead off the inning, and the Yanks put in all the defensive hands they can muster to try to support Sanderson.  He puts the O’s down 1-2-3 in the 8th, and so in the 9th it’s the heart of the Baltimore order standing in the way of the tournament’s first gem.  Belanger goes down; Reggie whiffs in spectacular fashion, and the last remaining obstacle is Lee May:  the roll, 3-11, another whiff and Scott Sanderson becomes the first pitcher in tournament history, after more than 800 games and 1000 different teams played, to pitch a NO-HITTER.  He allows only three baserunners on walks, and the Yanks move on with a landmark 3-0 win.

The 1992 Blue Jays were the lone pennant winner in the bracket, but although they won 96 games and the Series, the ELO ranks listed them as only the 5th best team in baseball that season–far behind the Braves team that they defeated in six games in the WS.  They had a solid rotation, and gave the start to Juan Guzman (16-5, 2.64).   The Jays would face Greg Maddux (18-8, 3.18) and the 77-85 1988 Cubs, but Maddux has a rocky 3rd inning when RBI doubles from John Olderud and Dave Winfield, and a 2-run single by Joe Carter, make it 4-0 Jays.   They add another run in the 7th when Roberto Alomar singles, steals second, and scores on an Olerud single, but the Cubs get that one back in the 8th with a leadoff triple from Ryne Sandberg, who scores on a Vance Law single that makes it 5-1.  However, the Jays then pour it on in the bottom of the inning, including a 2-run Kelly Gruber triple, and by the time the inning is over Goose Gossage is on the mound struggling to end the inning and the Jays lead 9-1.  The Cubs go down meekly in the 9th and head back to storage as a second Jays team reaches the regional semifinal with Guzman’s 3-hit, 9-1 win.

The 2012 Angels went 89-73, but they looked like a better team to me, paced by a remarkable 20-year-old rookie named Mike Trout and able to send Jered Weaver (20-5, 2.61), who finished third in the AL Cy Young balloting, to the mound in the first round.  Their opponent was the 1968 Yankees, whose 83-79 record was better than I remembered, and after looking at their punchless Year of the Pitcher lineup, probably better than they deserved.  However, given the year it’s not surprising that Mel Stottlemyre (21-12, 2.45) was a plenty capable starter, who in fact finished 10th in the MVP voting.  The Yanks manufacture a run in the 4th when Mickey Mantle walks, takes third on a Joe Pepitone single, and then scores on a sac fly from Andy Kosco.  They get another in the 6th from a Roy White triple followed by an error from Angels’ SS-2 Eric Aybar, but the Angels get that one back when Trout walks, goes to 3rd on a Pujols single, and scores on a Mark Trumbo sac fly.  However, a developing rally is killed by a Howie Kendrick gbA, and the Yanks cling to a 2-1 lead after six.  On a whim, the Yanks decide to pinch hit for Jake Gibbs with aging slugger Rocky Colavito, ineligible to start with only 91 ABs, but Rocco makes Ralph Houk look like a genius with a soaring solo blast to give NY some padding.  It immediately looks like it will be needed, as in the bottom of the inning the Angels load the bases on 2 singles and a walk; Aybar hits a fielders’ choice to score a run, and then with two outs Pujols crushes a double off the top of the wall and two more runs score to give the Angels their first lead at 4-3.  When Weaver walks Roy White to lead off the 8th, the Angels take no chances and bring in closer Ernesto Frieri to try to finish things out.  Frieri whiffs Mantle, but then grooves one to Joe Pepitone, who crushes it for a 2-run homer and the Yanks regain the lead.  In the 9th, a Frieri error and a Horace Clarke single give NY another run, so the Angels come up in the bottom of the 9th down two with the top of the order up and Stottlemyre trying to finish what he started.    He does so, setting down the Angels in order for the 6-4 win, and sends another Yankee team to the semis, where they will each wrestle with Blue Jays teams to see if one franchise can score a regional sweep.

The survivors

The first of the two New York-Toronto semifinals featured the 1994 Blue Jays against the 1991 Yankees.  The Yanks were trying to figure out how to follow-up on their first round no-hitter, but the dropoff in their rotation was substantial and it seemed like swingman Greg Cadaret (8-6, 3.62) would give them their best shot at the finals.  The Jays decided to go with a “like father, like son” theme, starting Todd Stottlemyre (7-7, 4.22) whose dad had won for the other Yankee team in the first round.  However, Todd does something in the bottom of the 1st that his father didn’t do in his game:  allow a home run, a 2-run blast by Mel Hall and the Yanks grab an early lead.  Caderet’s wildness loads up the bases for the Jays in the 2nd, and another walk and a squib single by Mike Huff quickly ties the game back up.  NY puts together a rally in the 5th and RBI singles from Hall and Roberto Kelly give them a 4-2 lead, and Cadaret just gets better and better, not allowing a hit after that second inning.  However, when he walks Joe Carter to lead off the 9th, the Yankees move to their erratic closer Steve Howe, and he sets the Jays down 1-2-3 to clinch the 4-2 win for the Yanks and an unexpected trip to the finals after two upset wins.

It’s now the second of the two New York-Toronto semifinals, and the 1968 Yankees are once again underdogs to the top-seeded, pennant winning 1992 Blue Jays, although a very different Yankee team upset a very similar Jays squad in the other semi.  The Jays had Jack Morris (21-6, 4.04), 5th in the Cy Young voting at age 37, on the mound but NY’s Stan Bahnsen (17-12, 2.06) probably had the better card.  And the Yanks find some of the problems with Morris’s card in the bottom of the 1st, rapping 5 hits, including a 2-run homer by Mickey Mantle and an RBI triple from Bill Robinson, and the upstart New Yorkers jump to a 4-0 lead.  The Jays finally get something going in the 5th, and Roberto Alomar’s 2-run triple narrows the NY lead to 4-2.  In the top of the 7th, Pat Borders misses a HR 1-13/DO split but scores on a Manuel Lee single, but the Yankees increase the gap with a 2-run blast from Andy Kosco in the 8th that chases Morris.  The Bahnsen Burner then puts the Jays down quietly in the 9th, and the Yanks win 6-3 to go on to a final that is all New York, New York.

The list of Yankee pennant winners who failed to capture their regional is lengthy, and includes some of their most famous teams, such 1927, 1936, 1961, and virtually all of the pennant winners from the 50s and the Jeter years.  Given their history of success, their opportunities for disappointment are also extensive, but this regional suggests that maybe the secret for tournament success isn’t in their great teams, but in their mediocre ones.  And so it is that the regional final pits the #5 seed 1968 Yankees against the #8 seed 1991 Yankees.  Given than the ‘91 team had only allowed a total of 3 hits in the two previous games, it might be difficult to believe that their bad pitching earned them their low ranking–but by the time they get to a third starter, with Eric Plunk (2-5, 4.76) chosen, the options are not good.  In contrast, the ‘68 team has a deep rotation, with Fritz Peterson (12-11, 2.63) better than many #1 starters in recent regionals.  Things are quiet until the bottom of the 4th, when Joe Pepitone leads off with a long homer, and Bill Robinson later adds his second RBI triple of the regional and the ‘68s take a 3-0 lead.  A 2-run blast from Mickey Mantle makes it 5-0 and chases Plunk in favor of John Habyan, who slows down the ‘68s for a while, at least until the 7th when back to back doubles from Andy Kosco and Robinson, and a 2-run homer from backup catcher Frank Fernandez, and it’s now 9-0 in favor of the ‘68s.  Peterson loses his shutout in the 8th when he drops a 2-out Mel Hall grounder that opens the door for a 2-run Roberto Kelly homer, but that all the ‘91s can do as the 1968 Yankees win 9-2 and capture the regional as the team I had singled out as LEAST likely to do so.  The Yanks award the MVP to Mickey Mantle for his pair of two-run homers in the regional, perhaps out of sentiment for his final season, but arguably Pepitone and Kosco were equally deserving.

Interesting card of Regional #129:  In July 2000, I went to a Rockies-Dodgers day game at Coors Field with my dad, my brother (both sadly now gone), and my oldest son.  We had pretty good seats, maybe 15 rows from the field down the right field line, and although I was by far the biggest baseball fan in the group, everyone was enjoying the festivities as it was an unusual Thursday day game on a beautiful clear day.  My son, who was probably about 13 or 14 at the time, decided he wanted to visit concessions and was walking down a large aisle parallel to the field, with his back to home plate–where Shawn Green of the Dodgers was at bat.  Green promptly rips a screaming liner into the stands in our area, where it clocks some poor woman, ricochets high into the air, and drops neatly into the hands of my surprised son, who after all was a Little League first baseman.  He’s about 20 feet away, and turns to us waving the ball triumphantly, while behind him Coors Field medical staff is helping the woman to the infirmary.  To this day, I’ve never landed a ball from an MLB game, and this ball (pictured) is the only one that anybody going with me has ever snagged.  I hope the woman who got the assist was and is okay; I will say that she probably would have been a lot safer if this Shawn Green card, his first, was at bat that day.  Although you wouldn’t guess it from this card, Green turned out to be a very good hitter, retiring with a career .850 OPS–quite a bit better than the .239 OPS he put up in 1994. 

REGIONAL #128:  This group includes the 1,024th team to play in this tournament, which means that the ultimate survivor among all those teams will have to win 10 games in a row to stay alive.  However, for this particular regional only three wins are required, and this bracket was the inverse of the prior regional in that 7 of the 8 teams were from the 20th century.  And they looked to be pretty interesting teams at that; there were Braves and Marlins teams that were one season removed from a pennant, two different Giants teams that were two years removed from one, and Diamondbacks and Senators that each had won a pennant three years prior.  I felt that the bottom of the bracket was stronger than the top, and I put my chips on the lone 21st century team, the Diamondbacks, over the ‘91 version of the Giants in the finals.   The ELO rankings found my pick of the Dbacks laughable, as they were ranked as the worst team in the regional by far and one of the 100 worst of all time.  Instead, those rankings selected the Senators to take the final over a middling 1955 Reds team.

First round action

The 80-82 1996 Marlins and the 75-79 1955 Reds both had solid lineups anchored by a slugger who couldn’t field, Ted Kluszewski for the Reds and Gary Sheffield for the Marlins.   However, one big difference in the teams was that the Marlins had Kevin Brown (17-11, 1.89), runner-up for the NL Cy Young award.   The Reds rotation wasn’t bad, but Joe Nuxhall (17-12, 3.47) would need his best knuckler to keep pace with Brown.  That doesn’t seem to be happening, as two singles and a walk to lead off the top of the 1st brings up Jeff Conine, who crushes a non-knuckler into the cheap seats of Crosley Field for a grand slam and a 4-0 lead before an out is recorded.  The Reds get one of those runs back in the bottom of the inning on a Wally Post fielder’s choice, although both pitchers then settle in.  However, a bit of wildness from Nuxhall loads the bases for the Marlins in the 6th, although they can only convert for one run on an Edgar Renteria sac fly, and it’s now 5-1 and Florida is putting in the defensive replacements.  Gus Bell then hits the first pitch of the bottom of the inning out of the park, and the Marlins wonder if it might have been too early, although the next batter hits a fly out to defensive replacement Jesus Tavarez and he makes a great play on the ball to keep the score at 5-2.  In the 7th Sheffield scores on a Devon White single, but in the bottom of the inning the Reds put together a two out rally that culminates in a 3-run homer by Wally Post, and suddenly it’s 6-5 and the Marlins are wondering if Brown is really up to the task of finishing out the game.  A walk and a single in the bottom of the 8th helps them decide that the answer is “no”, and Rick Helling comes in to try to quash the rally.  A squib single by Johnny Temple loads the bases, but once again Taverez makes a great play on a Bobby Adams flyball to end the inning and the Marlins still cling to the lead.  Nuxhall does his job in the top of the 9th, and so in the bottom of the 9th it comes down to Helling vs. the meat of the Reds order.  Big Klu leads off with a single, but the horribly slow Reds bench has no reasonable pinch-runners so he’s on his own out there.  Post then draws a walk to bring up Gus Bell.  Helling delivers, 3-5, HR 1-14, Bell converts the split and it’s a walk-off homer as the Reds complete an amazing comeback to take the 8-6 win against what may be the best starter in the regional.

The 1991 Giants went 76-87 and had a good core in Will Clark, Matt Williams, and Kevin Mitchell, but from there the supporting cast was uneven.  Still, that seemed like more weapons than the 72-81 1955 Cubs, who had Ernie Banks and not a whole lot else.  The pitching matchup between the Giants’ Trevor Wilson (13-11, 3.56) and Chicago’s Bob Rush (13-11, 3.50) looked quite even, but Wilson gets torched for five hits and four runs in the top of the 1st, including a 3-run homer by Jim King.  A Kevin Mitchell sac fly in the bottom of the 4th puts the Giants on the board, and a solo shot by Will Clark in the 6th narrows the score to 4-2.  Wilson has settled down in the meantime and pitches seven shutout innings, but when he allows a hit in the top of the 9th the Giants turn to Dave Righetti to stymie any insurance for the Cubs.  He does so, and it now comes down to Rush against the heart of the Giants order in the 9th.  Singles by Clark and Mitchell brings up Kevin Bass with one out, and Bass rips a triple that ties the game and puts the winning run on 3rd.  Backup catcher Terry Kennedy is up and the Giants have no decent PH options on the bench; Rush delivers and Kennedy lofts a deep fly to RF, Bass tags and scores easily, and the Giants take the walk-off win 5-4.  This marks the second game in a row where a team scoring 4 runs in the top of the 1st manages to lose the game in a walk-off.  

I make my predictions for regional winners totally blind, with no research and without looking at the cards, and nowhere was this more apparent than in my selection of the 2004 Diamondbacks to win this bracket.  See, I knew the Dbacks had won the NL sometime early in the 2000s, and the 2007 team that had made the semifinals in the previous regional wasn’t too bad, plus the steroid era teams usually carry an advantage.  Little did I know that they went 51-111 and were the #8 seed according to ELO ranks, one of the 100 worst of all time.  However, they did have Randy Johnson (16-14, 2.60) who was the NL Cy Young runner-up despite playing for the league’s worst team; with his opponent being the 1949 Braves’ Warren Spahn (21-14, 3.07), the NL leader in wins and 7th in MVP voting, it was a high-powered pitching matchup.  The Braves had won the NL pennant the prior year but this squad was a mediocre 75-79, although they had a potential secret weapon in Jeff Heath.  The Braves jump to a quick lead on a 2-run homer by Bob Elliott in the top of the 1st, but that proves short-lived as Spahn’s wildness in the bottom of the inning loads the bases for the Dbacks, which are then cleared by a Chad Tracy grand slam off Spahn’s card.  The Braves load the bases against Johnson in the 5th, but only convert for one run on an Elliott squib single, although when the Dbacks Robby Hammock misses Spahn’s HR 1-12 split and gets stranded at second in the bottom of the inning, the Braves feel like the momentum might be shifting.  But Johnson wasn’t going to allow that, striking out 13 Braves and holding them hitless for the final four innings.  He does issue a walk, and with two out Elbie Fletcher hits Johnson’s 4-7 DO 1-9/flyB roll with Al Dark (1-18 with two out) on first off with the pitch, but the split roll is a 12 for the final out and the Dbacks score a 4-3 win, with both pitchers ending with 5-hitters despite rocky first innings.

By the ELO rankings, the best matchup of the first round had the #1 seed 1927 Senators against the #3 seed 1953 Giants.  The Senators went 85-69, good for 3rd place in the AL, led by Tris Speaker and Goose Goslin, although a 39 year old Walter Johnson was ineffective and was unlikely to make an appearance.  The Giants did not fare as well in their season, going 70-84 and seriously missing Willie Mays, who was in military service, although even without Mays the Giants had five guys on their team with more homers than the Senators’ leader.  It was the Nats’ Hod Lisenbee (18-9, 3.57) against NY’s Ruben Gomez (13-11, 3.40), and they both get through the first inning without allowing a run, the first time in this regional that has occurred.  The Giants do score in the 2nd when DH Bobby Hofman laces a leadoff triple and scores on a Monte Irvin sac fly; the Senators then threaten in the 3rd but the inning ends disastrously for them when Speaker (almost literally) kills the rally with a tournament-ending injury (split of 20).  The Nats have a chance to tie it again in the 6th but Earl McNeely, in for the injured Speaker, is gunned down at the plate trying to score from second (1-15) on a Joe Judge single.  Another Washington threat in the 8th has the Giants warming up Hoyt Wilhelm, but they decide to stick with Gomez and he records the third out with a roll that would have been a game-tying hit on Wilhelm.  The Nats make one more effort in the 9th when Ossie Bluege pushes a double into the gap that Don Mueller can’t get to, but Gomez bears down and finishes out the inning to clinch a 1-0 win for the Giants, one in which both starters toss 6-hitters.

The survivors

Oliveras didn't have a Klu

The first semifinal matches two teams that came back from big deficits to score walkoff wins in round one, with the #5 seed 1991 Giants glad to be at home and batting last against the #4 seed 1955 Reds.  The Reds go with swingman Johnny Klippstein (9-10, 3.39) against the Giants and Bud Black (12-16, 3.99), and it’s the Reds double play combo that puts them on the board first when SS Roy McMillan doubles to lead off the 3rd inning and 2B Johnny Temple singles him home.   The 4th inning goes similarly for the Reds, with this time Stan Palys leading off with the double and Chuck Harmon singling in the run, and it’s now 2-0 Cincinnati.  And, in the 5th it’s Bobby Adams who leads off with the double, and although Kluszewski’s single isn’t enough to bring him home, the succeeding Wally Post fielder’s choice does and the Reds have a three-run lead.  In the bottom of the 5th, Klippstein issues his 4th and 5th walk, and Willie McGee adds an RBI single that is the Giants’ first hit of the game to make it 3-1.  However, in the 6th Chuck Harmon swats a solo HR into the teeth of the wind in Candlestick, and the Giants yank Black for Jeff Brantley, but LF-4 Kevin Mitchell horribly misplays a McMillan flyball and Bobby Adams find’s Brantley's HR result, and when the dust clears it is now 6-1 Reds.  Things don’t get any better for the Giants when they lose Matt Williams to injury, and then Brantley walks the bases full in the 7th and then walks in a run, so it’s Dave Righetti’s turn.  Righetti holds the Reds scoreless in the 8th (for the first time since the 2nd inning), and the Giants try to mount their comeback in the bottom of the inning with a leadoff triple from Robby Thompson; he scores on a Will Clark single, and then a Mike Felder single is followed by a 3-run Kevin Mitchell blast and suddenly it’s 7-5 with still nobody out.  The Reds eye their bullpen but hope that Klippstein can recover his form; two straight walks and they have to try something different, so Bud Podbielan takes the mound.   Steve Decker greets him with an RBI single, Podbielan issues a walk to load the bases and then a passed ball by Smokey Burgess and the game is now tied.  McMillan finally turns a DP to end the inning, but it’s a whole new ballgame.  Righetti sets the Giants down in the 9th in order but he is now burned for the regional, so it comes down to Podbielan against the 3-4-5 hitters for the Giants in the bottom of the 9th–but with Matt Williams missing from the cleanup spot.  They get singles from Clark and Kevin Bass, but can’t score, and the game heads to extra innings.  The Giants bring out Francisco Oliveras as their 4th pitcher, and he sets the Reds down in order in the 10th but Podbielan does likewise.  In the 11th, Oliveras hangs a curveball to Kluszewski, who deposits it deep in the stands for a solo shot, and the game heads to the bottom of the 11th with Podbielan in his last inning of eligibility for the regional.  He gets the first two out to face Mike Felder, in for the injured Williams, and Felder squibs a SI* 1-15 with a 13 split to get on base as the tying run and Mitchell at the plate.  But Mitchell grounds out to defensive replacement 3B Rocky Bridges, and the Reds seal the deal with an extra-inning 8-7 classic.  

The semifinal between the 2004 Diamondbacks and the 1953 Giants featured two squads that pulled off upsets in the first round.  The Dbacks were aided in that effort by Randy Johnson, but that weapon was used up and it was now Brandon Webb (7-16, 3.69) against NY’s Al Worthington (4-8, 3.44), who had similar cards with identical patterns.  The Giants rack up five hits in the 2nd, some courtesy of bad Arizona fielding, but only push across two runs as they leave the bases loaded.  The Dbacks strike back in the 4th, when an error by Giants 2b-2 Davey Williams opens the door to triples from Chad Tracy and Shea Hillenbrand, and Arizona takes the lead 3-2.  Bobby Hofman ties it in the 5th with a solo shot which could have been more if not preceded by the Giants third GIDP of the game.  Webb is yanked after allowing three singles in the 6th to relinquish the lead, and Greg Aquino comes in and prevents any further damage.  A walk and a single in the top of the 8th pushes the Giants to bring in Hoyt Wilhelm, and he fans Alex Cintron so the Giants cling to the one run lead.  They try to add insurance in the bottom of the inning and get runners on first and third with one out, and the Dbacks summon Jose Valverde, whose card is pretty much either a strikeout or a home run, and Jose lands two of the strikeouts to send the game into the ninth with Arizona still down by just one run.  However, Wilhelm is in command and notches the save as the Giants move on with a comeback 4-3 win; they outhit Arizona 13-5 but the double-play ball killed multiple rallies, an issue they would like to correct for the finals.

 The regional final matched two NL teams from the ‘50s, and featured two workhorses on the mound with the 1955 Reds and Art Fowler (11-10, 3.90) against the 1953 Giants and Jim Hearn (9-12, 4.53).  Things start out rough for Hearn in the top of the 1st when leadoff hitter Johnny Temple finds Hearn’s HR result, but 2B-2 Temple taketh away in the 3rd when he drops a 2-out grounder with the bases loaded.  That opens the floodgates, culminating in a 3-run triple by Al Dark, and the Giants take a commanding 5-1 lead.  Given the runs, Hearn turns unhittable, allowing only two hits in the final eight innings to close out the game with a 4-hitter and the Giants take the regional by that 5-1 score.  The Giants decline to designate an MVP as the three wins were very much team efforts, but a pitching staff that only allowed five runs in the three games deserves special mention. 

Interesting card of Regional #128:  This card represents the final season for an outfielder who seemed like he could have been one of the all-time greats.  Instead, he had an erratic career and he was apparently an erratic and difficult person, frequently missing spring training by holding out and repeatedly getting into fistfights with teammates.  After wearing out his welcome following a long stint with the Indians and a few seasons with the Browns, none of which led to a World Series appearance, Heath was traded to the NL Braves and promptly led the Braves to their first NL Pennant in four decades.  As fate would have it, their opponent in the Series would be those same Indians who had given up on Heath a few years previously, setting up an eagerly awaited chance for retribution–but it was not to be.  With the pennant wrapped up and four games left in the season, Heath slid awkwardly into Brooklyn catcher Roy Campanella trying to score, resulting in a gruesome compound ankle fracture and Heath left the field on a stretcher.  Thus, he was on crutches as his remaining teammates could hit only .230 against the Indians pitching staff, losing the Series in six games.  Sadly, Heath never fully recovered from this injury (note his 3-8 roll).  In the following 1949 season in which Heath appeared as DH in this regional, he made his first start on July 15th and, although he obviously could still hit, he was largely immobile and the Braves released him at the end of the season.  Even as DH, Heath was unable to prevent his Braves from making a quick exit from this tournament, but as the final Strat card of his career this one isn’t a bad way to go out.   

REGIONAL #127:   Regional #127 had the highest density of 21st century teams thus far in the tournament, with seven of the eight entries from the current millennium, and I have to admit that there are fewer teams from recent years that I find as memorable as those from the distant past.  There were two representatives from the Diamondbacks, one of the few remaining franchises that has never won a regional, and also two from the Pirates, including the 1930 team that a few years earlier had been swept by the Yanks in the 1927 Series.  There was also the 2020 Red Sox, only the second pandemic year squad to play in the tournament, and a couple of fairly recent entries from the Blue Jays and the Rockies.  Because none of these teams were very familiar to me, I felt like predicting a winner would be akin to flipping a coin, but to maintain tradition I had to choose someone, so I went with the 2007 version of the Diamondbacks over the Red Sox in the finals.  The ELO rankings disagreed completely, as they seemed to recall that the Blue Jays had made the ALCS and were really the only good team in this group, and predicted those Jays over the old-school Pirates in the finals.

First round action

The 93-loss 2016 Diamondbacks and the 93-loss 2008 Orioles were teams that were bad in highly similar ways, in that each boasted a couple of strong hitters and neither had much gas in the starting rotation.  The top of their rotations pitted Dback Zack Greinke (13-7,4.37) against Jeremy Guthrie (10-12, 3.63), and Greinke is not helped by SS-4 Chris Owings 2-base error in the 2nd that sets up an RBI single from Kevin Millar to give Baltimore a 1-0 lead.  In the 4th, another Arizona error, this one by the usually reliable 1B-1 Paul Goldschmidt, sets up another run, and meanwhile the Dbacks don’t even get a hit off Guthrie until the 5th inning.  The O’s finally get an earned run in the 8th when Aubrey Huff belts a solo shot, and entering the 9th with a three run lead, they contemplate going to their closer, but decide to stick with Guthrie, who is pitching a gem.  Guthrie thanks them by striking out the side in the 9th to lock down the 3-0 win, icing on the cake of his 3-hit shutout. 

Two interesting teams from two unusual seasons, one pandemic shortened and one with crazy hitting, faced off in this first round game.  The 80-74 1930 Pirates had a top of the order consisting of three straight Hall of Famers, all of whom hit in the .360s, but after that things dropped off considerably and their starting pitching was a mess.  The 2020 Red Sox went 24-36 and finished last in the AL East, although they competed for the division in both the prior and the succeeding year, suggesting that the bad performance was a low sample size anomaly.  Only the second pandemic-season team to play, Boston had the low-AB/IP wonders but also had very little flexibility in setting lineups or the rotation because of tournament usage guidelines.  Thus, the Red Sox had to start Martin Perez (4-5, 4.50) as their highest IP starter, although he was probably their best anyway; the Pirates got to “choose” Larry French (17-18, 4.36), who allowed 325 hits in 275 innings and was still the Bucs best pitcher.  The Pirates waste no time exploiting Perez’s faults in the top of the 1st, with back to back doubles by George Grantham and Adam Comorosky–both off Perez’s card–give Pittsburgh a 2-0 lead.  It’s deja vu all over again in the 2nd, when back to back doubles, again both off Perez, give the Pirates another run and Lloyd Waner an RBI.  In the 3rd, Comorosky gets another RBI double, this time off his own card, and the Pirates are up 4-0.  Two more runs on a Grantham RBI single and a run-allowing error by Sox 1B-3 Michael Chavis and it’s goodbye Perez, hello Nick Pivetta who finally pitches a scoreless inning.  Heartened, the Red Sox get on the board in the bottom of the 5th on a solo shot from Jackie Bradley, although Pittsburgh responds with a run scoring on a Pie Traynor grounder in the 6th that makes it 7-1. Grantham continues his hot hand with a 2-run double in the 8th, and when Ryan Brasier comes in to pitch the 9th for Boston all hell breaks loose, with the Waner brothers getting back-to-back doubles, both off the pitcher’s card once again, and the inning only ending when Gus Suhr hits a bases loaded double, again off Brasier’s card, but 1-17 Comorosky is out trying to score from first.  The Sox trot out a succession of low-AB wonders as pinch hitters in the bottom of the 9th, but French sets them down in order and the Pirates move on with a 13-1 blowout in which they rapped 20 hits.

I had blindly picked the 2007 Diamondbacks to win the regional, not knowing that they won 90 games and the NL West, and that they had a shot at the pennant but got swept in the NLCS.  However, setting their lineup I didn’t find it particularly impressive; there were five guys hitting under .255 and their rotation wasn’t very deep, as Randy Johnson was still there, but with only 57 IP he wasn’t even eligible to start.  However, at the top of their rotation was Brandon Webb (18-10, 3.01), runner-up in the Cy Young voting, and he also had the advantage of going against the 2001 Pirates, a 100-loss team that finished last in the NL Central.  The Pirates’ best option on the mound was swingman Dave Williams (3-7, 3.71), but Tony Clark greets him with a 2-run homer in the bottom of the 1st; two innings later he does the exact same thing with the same 3-10 roll, and the crowd at Chase Field is going wild.  When Dbacks DH Conor Jackson leads off the 4th with a long HR, the Pirates figure that their relief core may as well see some action in the tournament while they can, and Josias Manzanillo gets first crack.  He tosses a few scoreless innings, and the Pirate come alive in the 6th with back-to-back solo HRs from Craig Wilson and Aramis Ramirez, and suddenly it’s 5-2 and looking like it might get interesting.  However, Webb quickly makes it boring once again, only allowing one hit over the last three innings and the game ends with that tally, with the Dbacks still having one chance alive for their first regional win.

I must admit that I don’t always pay that much attention to contemporary baseball, particularly if my favorite teams are down, so it somehow escaped my notice that the 2016 Blue Jays actually made the ALCS as a wild card team that won 89 games, and that in fact the Jays team from the prior year that won the AL East was the best Toronto team of all time according to the ELO ranks.  The Jays presented a nice balance of pitching, defense, and hitting that contrasted with the rather one-dimensional 2019 Rockies, who in typical Colorado fashion would need to win high-scoring games towards the back end of their rotation.  It was a bit hard to imagine scoring a lot of runs against the Jays’ J.A. Happ (20-4, 3.18), but the Rockies #1 starter Jon Gray (11-8, 3.84) didn’t look too bad for a Coors-based pitcher.  The Jays jump to a quick lead in the top of the 1st on a 2-run homer by Edwin Encarnacion, although in the bottom of the inning a solo shot by Trevor Story narrows the gap to 2-1.  The Rockies begin to mount a threat in the 2nd inning, but Daniel Murphy lines into a triple play to the disbelief of the Coors crowd.  They get a little payback in the top of the 3rd when Darwin Barney misses Gray’s HR 1-14 split and gets stranded at second, and when #9 Rockies hitter Tony Wolters smacks an RBI double in the bottom of the inning, things are all tied up.  In the top of the 4th, Michael Saunders is cut down at the plate trying to score on a Troy Tulowitzki single, but the Rockies meet a similar fate in the 5th when Ryan McMahon is nailed trying to score, so the score remains tied through five.  Toronto gets a setback when Happ is injured on the first at-bat of the 6th, so the Jays test their bullpen with Joaquin Benoit getting the call.  Benoit ends the 6th successfully, but in the 7th things come unraveled for him after an Encarnacion error, and a Raimel Tapia RBI single and a Story sac fly give the Rockies a two run lead.  That proves to be all that Gray needs, as he finishes out a 6-hitter and the Rockies upset the regional favorite to move on to the semifinals with a 4-2 win.

The survivors

The only 20th century team in the regional, the 1930 Pirates were now the top-ranked squad remaining after the first round, and they appeared to deserve that status given that in the first round they outscored the other three semifinalists combined.  Of course, it’s pretty easy to score runs when you roll a remarkable seven doubles on opposing pitchers’ cards, so it remained to be determined whether these Pirate hitters can be successful rolling on their own cards.  However, with the 2008 Orioles putting Daniel Cabrera (8-10, 5.25) on the mound as their best option, rolling on the pitcher’s card could still be a good thing, although the Bucs’ Erv Brame (17-10, 4.70) was not without his own issues.  The Pirates put up two runs in the bottom of the 1st on RBI from Pie Traynor and Gus Suhr for a quick lead, but Brame gets a rude welcome to the 21st century from a 3-run Melvin Mora homer in the 4th that puts the Orioles on top.  Meanwhile, Cabrera doesn’t allow a hit until Rollie Hemsley leads off the top of the 8th with a double, and at that point the O’s don’t want to take any chances and summon their best reliever, Jim Johnson, to pitch to the top of the Pirates order with their three HOFers.  One Waner goes down; another Waner goes down; but then Traynor walks, Grantham pushes a single past 1B-3 Aubrey Huff, and the bases are loaded for Adam Comorosky, who clears them with a double, Suhr singles him home, and suddenly the Bucs lead 6-3 going into the 9th.  Brame then just needs to get through the bottom of the O’s order, and he does so in order, and the Pirates march to the finals with the 6-3 comeback win in which all eight of their hits came in only two innings.

Although the semifinal matchup between the 90-win 2007 Diamondbacks and the 91-loss 2019 Rockies might sound lopsided, it was interesting to me that their ELO rankings weren’t as far apart as I expected.   Motivations for the Dbacks were numerous; aside from the franchise never having won a regional, these Dbacks won the NL West but were prevented from winning a pennant when they were swept in the NLCS by none other than the Rockies.  The lack of rotation depth for both teams was in play, as both Arizona’s Micah Owings (8-8, 4.30) and Colorado’s German Marquez (12-5, 4.76) had some frightening areas on their cards.  Things don’t begin well for the Dbacks when their second batter, LF Eric Byrnes, gets injured for 10 games in the top of the 1st, and then in the bottom of the inning their 1B-3 Tony Clark boots a David Dahl grounder with two out that allows a run to score.  In the 4th, AZ’s Mark Reynolds misses a HR 1-6 split and gets stranded at second, but in the top of the 5th a Chris Snyder double is converted into a run on an RBI single from Stephen Drew, although Drew is nailed at the plate (1-16) trying to score on an Orlando Hudson double, so the score remains tied and it’s becoming clear that Lady Luck isn’t visiting Arizona today.  The Dbacks finally mount a threat in the 8th when Carlos Quentin smacks a leadoff double, and the Rockies bring in their best (by far) reliever in Scott Oberg in response.  However, Jeff Salazar, in for injured Byrnes, nails another double and Arizona has their first lead of the game.  They bring out closer Jose Valverde for the bottom of the 9th, but Dahl gets a one-out double, pinch-hitter Sam Hilliard singles and Dahl beats the throw, and the game heads to extra innings.  Oberg shut the Dbacks down in order in the top of the 10th, while in the bottom Valverde has to face Nolan Arenado with two out and the winning run on second.  The pitch–Arenado rolls Valverde’s HR 1-15 split, converts, and it’s a walkoff homer in extra innings as the Rockies move to the finals with a comeback 4-2 win.  In this season, Valverde led the NL in saves and came in 6th in the Cy Young voting, but here he earns the blown save and the loss in a terrible relief appearance as he single-handedly sends the Diamondbacks back into storage.

The regional final was between the #2 seeded 1930 Pirates and the #6 seed 2019 Rockies, who had already knocked off #1 and #3 and were going for the trifecta.  For that to happen, they were going to need a decent outing from frightening starter Antonio Senzatela (11-11, 6.71) because their top reliever was burnt and the alternatives were mostly scarier than Senzatela.  Mind you, the Pirates starter, Ray Kremer (20-12, 5.02), had his own problems, particularly the 366 hits he allowed in 276 innings, so most folks weren’t exactly expecting a 1-0 game, which is the score after the top of the 1st following a two-out RBI single by red hot Adam Comorosky gives the Bucs a lead.  The Rockies tie it immediately in the bottom of the inning when Trevor Story misses a HR 1-14/DO split but scores on a Nolan Arenado single.  Paul Waner leads off the 3rd with a homer off Senzatela’s card, and they add another run in the 4th on a Lloyd Waner RBI single.  However, in the 5th Rockies 2B Ryan McMahon hits a solo HR off Kremer’s card to narrow the Pittsburgh lead to 3-2, and with a tight game entering the 6th Senzatela is on an extremely short leash.  However, he rips off three straight hitless innings and only leaves after allowing a single to Paul Waner in the 9th, when Jairo Diaz comes in and both worsens and escapes the jam.  So the game enters the bottom of the 9th with the Rockies down a run, and Kremer comes through to finish up a 7-hitter and the Pirates survive three errors (two by Lloyd Waner) to take the unexpectedly well-pitched game and the regional crown with a 3-2 win.  Comorosky, who had a .900 OPS and led the NL in triples with 23, contributed seven RBI over the three games and he earns regional MVP honors.

Interesting card of Regional #127:  When I started playing Strat back in the late 60s/early 70s, my neighborhood buddies and I had various draft leagues in which we could pick from any players in our combined collections, which at the time mainly consisted of some Old Timer teams, the original Hall of Fame series (now known as Series “A”, but this was before there was a “B”), and some then-contemporary teams.  I remember 3rd base always being a difficult spot to fill, and I often went with the HOF card of this guy, shown below.  Playing the 1930 Pirates reminded me of old Pie, and aesthetically I think I like his 1930 card even better than the 1929 one Strat chose for his HOF edition.  Reminiscing about those childhood drafts got me to thinking about how much the available options have changed since then.  For yucks, I went to Baseballegg.com to see where Pie ranked on their list of greatest third basemen of all time, and he is currently #69.  I was struck by how many of the top 3B listed on that site came along after our early leagues–Schmidt, Boggs, Brett, Beltre, Chipper Jones–and in the unlikely event that there are any 10 year olds out there having a similar draft today, I doubt they would give Traynor a second glance.  But back in the day, Pie was a top option, and he did something most of the 68 ranked ahead of him couldn’t do–lead his team to a regional win in this tournament.

REGIONAL #126:  This grouping features the pennant-winning 2003 Yankees, who have the challenge of facing an Indians team in the first round that had won a pennant the prior season.   However, another entrant to keep an eye on was a Rays team that was bracketed on either side by versions that had done very well in this tournament, including winning the prior regional.  The teams in the bottom half of the bracket were more of a crap shoot, and other than what I suspected was a bad Senators team I thought any of the remaining three could end up in the finals.  I decided that the Indians would best the oldest team in the bracket, the 1938 Tigers, in the finals.  The ELO rankings agreed that my selected teams were pretty good, but chose the pennant-winning Yankees over a dark-horse Twins team for the regional crown.

First round action

I expected that setting the lineup for the 2018 Rays would feel very familiar after the 2017 team just won the previous regional, but I was mistaken–this was a remarkably different team, and I believe that C Wilson Ramos was the only player in the starting lineup for both teams.  They still won 90 games, and although their starting pitching depth was non-existent, their rotation was fronted by Blake Snell (21-5, 1.89), who won the AL Cy Young Award as well as the Regional #125 final.  They faced the 1995 Giants, who went 67-77 in that strike-shortened year; they were a team with some bruisers with the bat but not much in the rotation, with Mark Leiter (10-12, 3.82) getting the nod as their ace.  In the 2nd, Ramos drops a popup that would have been the third out, setting up an RBI single for Kirt Manwaring that gives the Giants the early lead.  From that point on, Snell is in command–but so is Leiter.  The Giants threaten in the 8th with runners on 1st and 2nd with one out, but Giants SS Royce Clayton turns a critical DP and the threat is ended.  In the 9th, Leiter retires the 2-3-4 hitters of the Rays in order, finishing up a 4-hit shutout and a 1-0 upset win for the Giants.  Snell only allows 5 hits himself, and no earned runs, but the Rays make 2 errors–twice as many as they did in the three games of the prior regional–and Tampa’s hopes for two regional titles in a row end quickly.

The 2003 Yankees won 101 games and the AL pennant, and the ELO ranks had them in the top 150 teams of all time, but the Yankees teams of the Jeter era just have not fared well in this tournament, and so I had predicted that they wouldn’t get past their first round opponent, the 1998 Indians.  However, after setting the lineups I wasn’t so sure anymore–the entire Yankee lineup was over .400 SLG%, they had the best starting rotation that money and PEDs could provide, and if they got a lead there was Mariano Rivera to ensure that they kept it.  Even so, the Indians had a pretty imposing heart of the order with four consecutive .500+ SLG% bruisers, although their starter Bartolo Colon (14-9, 3.71) had both a larger ERA and waistline than Mike Mussina (17-8, 3.40).  Jeter doesn’t take kindly to my slight, manufacturing a run by drawing a leadoff walk, taking the extra base on a Matsui single, and scoring on a Jason Giambi sac fly to give the Yanks a lead in the top of the 1st, and in the 2nd they add two more on a Raul Mondesi homer to go up 3-0.  A solo shot by Alphonso Soriano in the 3rd makes it 4-0, and when the Yanks begin the 4th with two walks and a Jeter RBI single, it is obviously time for a Colon-ectomy, and in desperation the Indians summon closer Mike Jackson who ends the inning without further damage.  Jackson finally holds the Yanks scoreless in the top of the 5th, courtesy of an acrobatic play by SS-1 Omar Vizquel, and in the bottom of the inning the Indians get on the board when Sandy Alomar Jr. convert’s Mussina’s HR split for a solo shot.  In the 6th, David Justice hits an RBI single and the Indians then load up the bases, so the Yanks yank Mussina and Jose Contreras comes in to induce a DP ball from Alomar that keeps the score at 5-2.  In the 8th, NY brings in Jeff Nelson to set up, but he allows a run on a Joey Cora fielder’s choice and the score narrows to 5-3, and it stays that way into the bottom of the 9th, when closer Rivera comes in to face the top of the Indians order.  They go down 1-2-3, and Rivera preserves the 5-3 win for the Yankees and a date with the Giants in the semifinals.   

In my initial scan of the regional entries, I seemed to have underestimated the 2010 Twins and overestimated the 2003 Brewers.  The Twins won 94 games and the AL Central, and had a pretty solid balance of hitting, pitching, and defense; the Brewers lost 94 games and had to hope that Richie Sexson could hit enough homers to compensate for a bad steroid-era pitching staff.  Minnesota’s Francisco Liriano (14-10, 3.62) and Ben Sheets (11-13, 4.45) for the Brewers provided the pitching matchup, and the Brewers draw first blood when Scott Podsednik singles, steals second, and scores on a Sexson single in the 1st.  The Brewers threaten again in the 4th, loading the bases but Twins C Joe Mauer hangs onto a Podsednik two-strike foul tip for the third out.  When Wes Helms doubles in the 6th, the Twins decide that with their offense struggling they can’t afford to let the game get away from them, and bring in closer Brian Fuentes, and he records two straight strikeouts to end the threat.  Then it’s the Brewers turn in the 7th to summon their closer, Dan Kolb, when the Twins get runners on 1st and 3rd with two out, even though Sheets is still tossing a shutout.  That move doesn’t work as well for the Brewers, as Michael Cuddyer raps a hard single off Kolb’s card (a roll that was an out on Sheets, by the way) and the game is tied.  The Twins do nothing in the 8th except lose CF Denard Span to a tournament-ending injury, but the Brewers are similarly stymied and the score remains knotted 1-1 after 9 innings.  Kolb retires the Twins in order in the top of the 10th, and Minnesota has to dig deeper in their pen in the bottom of the inning, turning to Jesse Crain to face Richie Sexson.  Sexson puts it into the beer garden at Miller Park for a walk-off 2-1 win that keeps the Brewers’ hopes alive for their first regional win–although closer Kolb is now toast for the rest of the regional with some really bad starting pitching on deck.

The 1938 Tigers had a great top of the order, led by Hank Greenberg’s 58 HR season, but the back end and the starting rotation were less impressive, resulting in an 84-70 record good for 4th place in the AL.  They were comfortable favorites over the 1954 Senators, who nonetheless were not as bad as I expected from a team with “last in the American League” as part of their motto; they went 66-88 to finish 6th, not last, and as might be expected given that they played in cavernous Griffith Stadium, they had limited power but an excellent starting rotation, with Johnny Schmitz (11-8, 2.92) drawing the first round start against Detroit’s Tommy Bridges (13-9, 4.59).   The Senators strike first in the 3rd when Jim Busby scores on a Mickey Vernon sac fly, and the Tigers’ effort to retaliate in the bottom of the inning is cut short when Chet Morgan (1-14) is cut down trying to score on a Dixie Walker double.  In the 6th, Roy Sievers, who had gotten on courtesy of a Mark Christman (3B-2) error, scores on a Pete Runnels grounder and it’s now 2-0.  A walk and a single to start the 7th finishes Bridges’ day, with Al Benton coming in to retire the side without incident.  However, Detroit never can solve Schmitz, who finishes up the game with a 2-0 shutout–with Jim Busby’s 4 hits equaling the entire output of the Tigers. 

The survivors

Pfizer player of the game

The regional favorite 2003 Yankees selected Roger Clemens (17-9, 3.91), now that he was back from picking up his wife’s prescriptions, to start their semifinal matchup against the 1996 Giants and William Vanlandingham (6-3, 3.67), whose name was longer than his career.  The juices were running high in the top of the 1st inning when Barry Bonds crushed a Clemens offering for a two-run blast, but the Giants get a dose of their own medicine in the bottom of the 1st when Jason Giambi nails a 3-run homer to put the Yankees up 3-2, and it’s looking like I’m going to run out of steroids puns before this game is over.  In the 5th, Royce Clayton misses Clemens’ HR 1-15/DO split, but next batter Kirt Manwaring raps a hard single also off Clemens card, and Matt Williams drives Manwaring in to put the Giants back on top 4-3.  Once again, Giambi makes short work of that lead with a 2-run homer in the bottom of the inning and the Yanks move back in front.  However, when Glenallen Hill leads off the 6th with a double, NY decides to pull Clemens and turn the game over to their bullpen, and Contreras retires the Giants without damage.  The Yanks bring in Jeff Nelson in the 8th to set up, but once again that doesn’t go well as Matt Williams slams his first pitch into the leftfield stands–although the Giants botch a chance to take the lead back when Hill (1-14) is nailed trying to score on a Deion Sanders single.  Hill then doubles down on his goat-hood by misplaying an Alfonso Soriano single that puts Soriano in position to score on Nick Johnson single, and the Yanks reclaim the lead going into the 9th and out comes Mariano Rivera for the save opportunity.  He puts the Giants down in order, and the Yankees head to the finals with a 6-5 win that involved five lead changes.

The second semifinal featured a pair of upset winners from the first round, with the 1954 Senators finding themselves in the unlikely position of being favored over the 2003 Brewers.  Certainly, the pitching matchup favored Washington, with the Nats’ Dean Stone (12-10, 3.22) a far better option than Milwaukee’s Matt Kinney (10-13, 5.19), but it’s the Brewers who score first in the top of the 1st with a Geoff Jenkins double driving in Podsednik.  However, in the 5th Kinney allows three straight squib singles to start the inning, and then Brewer 2B-3 Keith Ginter boots a grounder from the late Wayne Terwilliger to tie the game; with the bases still loaded, Tom Umphlett hits into a DP but a run scores and the Senators move to a 2-1 lead.  That lead is short lived, as Richie Sexson belts a solo shot in the top of the 6th to tie things up.  The Brewers get men on 2nd and 3rd with one out in the 7th, but Stone pitches out of the jam, and in the bottom of the inning Terwilliger converts Stone’s HR 1-2 split and puts the Senators up 3-2, with Milwaukee having few options in the pen with their best reliever burnt.  Again, that lead doesn’t last long when Jenkins hits a solo shot in the 8th and later Brady Clark follows with a 2-run double that makes it 5-3, and things just get worse for the Senators in the bottom of the inning when their best run producer, Mickey Vernon, leaves the game with a serious injury.  From there, it’s just Kinney hanging on and the Brewers head to the finals with the 5-3 win despite managing only 5 hits off Stone.   

The regional final featured two teams from the same season for the first time since Regional #60, and the first that I could remember since I began tracking ELO ratings to match the #1 regional seed with the #8 seed in the finals.  That #1 seed was the 2003 Yankees, the first pennant winner to appear in a regional final since the 1951 version of the Yankees lost to a #6 seed in Regional #117.  They faced the 94-loss 2003 Brewers, who sent Doug Davis (7-8, 4.03) to face Andy Pettitte (21-8, 4.02); Pettitte finished sixth in the Cy Young balloting but it is some indication of the strength of the Yankees rotation that he was their #3 starter in this tournament.  The underdog Brewers eke out a lead in the bottom of the 3rd when Eddie Perez misses Pettite’s HR 1-10/DO split, but scores on a Scott Podsednik single that makes it 1-0 Milwaukee.  The Yanks tie it in the 5th when Geoff Jenkins misplays a Raul Mondesi single, setting up an RBI single from Bernie Williams, but the Brewers push back out in front in the bottom of the inning when Perez scores again, this time on a Royce Clayton single.  In the 6th, it’s Jason Giambi’s turn to miss a HR 1-10/DO split, but he scores by converting a running 1-10 split on an Alfonso Soriano single that ties the game again, but in the bottom of the inning Brewer PH Brooks Kieschnick slams a 2-run homer and the Brewers now lead 4-2.  In the 8th, Davis walks the bases loaded with one out, but Nick Johnson hits into an inning-ending DP and the Brewers still cling to their lead, although with their closer Kolb unavailable after his lengthy first-round stint.  However, Kolb isn’t needed as Davis closes out the Yanks, assisted by Aaron Boone hitting into NY’s third DP of the game in the 9th, and the Brewers clinch the first regional win for that franchise with a 4-2 upset victory.  

Interesting card of Regional #126:  This regional had some great candidates for this feature. There was Hank Greenberg’s monster 1938 card, with more HR chances than the Babe, but the Tigers were shut out in the first round and I had already featured a Greenberg card in Regional #94.  Matt Williams had a monster card for the 1995 Giants, with 23 homers in only 283 ABs courtesy of a strike-shortened season.  However, I decided to go with the card(s) of someone considerably lower profile than those two:  Brooks Kieschnick.  There are a few things that make him interesting.  First, with all the (well-deserved) attention paid to Shohei Ohtani this year for his exploits as both a position player and a pitcher, Brooks would like us to remember that this wasn’t the first time since the Babe that occurred.  Second, Kieschnick’s cards.  His pitching card is hardly great–that 6-7 solid double is kind of eye-catching–but in that terrible Brewer bullpen, he was probably in the top half of their options.  However, that hitting card is pretty unique.  How many Basic Strat cards can you think of that had five COMPLETE home run results in one column–no splits here, just solid dingers.  I’m betting Ohtani’s 2021 MVP card won’t.  In the season represented by this card, Kieschnick became the first player in major league history to hit home runs as a pitcher, designated hitter, and pinch hitter in the same season.  Ultimately he didn’t have much of a career, totalling only 306 ABs and 96 IP over six seasons in the majors, but he still managed to deliver the pinch-hit blast that gave the Brewers their first regional win in the tournament.