REGIONAL #166:  There was one pennant winner in this group, a rare accomplishment for the 1998 version of the Padres in the midst of the steroid-fueled home run craze.  However, there looked to be quite a few potential competitors for the Padres; for example, the 1991 A’s were coming off three straight AL titles and although I remembered them being disassembled quickly, they probably still were a team to contend with.  I also remembered the ‘93 White Sox as a strong squad who were potentially denied a pennant by the strike the next year, but the Sox had to contend with the bad karma that infects my favorite teams, plus a first round matchup with the ‘41 Cardinals who were probably still part of the Branch Rickey dynasty.  Another version of the Cards from 1977, and entries from the Twins and Astros could also make some noise, so this bracket seemed wide open to me.  I figured if the Padres could win the NL in 1998 over the likes of McGwire and Sosa, they could handle this bunch, so I picked them over the ‘41 Cards in the finals.  The ELO rankings echoed my sentiment that this was a competitive group, with only one weak team (sorry, Seattle); those ranks picked the same two squads in the finals as I, but had the ‘41 Cards favored over the Padres, who were ranked as only the 3rd best team in the NL that year. 

First round action

Two teams from two different strike years kicked off the first round of this bracket.  The 1994 Astros went 66-49, the 2nd best record in the NL Central in a season with no postseason games, but there still were postseason awards for the Astros as the NL MVP went to Jeff Bagwell and staff ace Doug Drabek (12-6, 2.84) was 4th in the Cy Young ballots.  Although there was a postseason in their strike year, the 1981 Mariners didn’t have to worry about appearing in it, with a 44-65 record with Glenn Abbott (4-9, 3.95) at the top of a shallow rotation.  In the bottom of the 2nd, Lenny Randle singles, steals second, and races home on a Jerry Narron single, and that breaks Drabek’s concentration; he loads up the bases (helped by Astros SS-3 Andujar Cedeno’s failure to get to a single), and then Cedeno commits his second error of the game, a 2-base muff of a Julio Cruz grounder.  Tom Paciorek adds a 2-run single and it’s 5-0 Mariners after two, with Cedeno 0 for 3 on groundball X chances.  The hole for Houston gets deeper in the 3rd with an RBI triple by Cruz, and he scores on a single by Jim Anderson, but in the bottom of the inning a long homer by Bagwell to lead off the inning gets the Astros on the board, still trailing 7-1.  Bagwell leads off the 6th by missing his HR 1-13 split and gets stranded at second, but in the 7th PH Milt Thompson singles and Craig Biggio follows with a 2-run homer and it may be getting interesting.  A one out single in the 7th and Houston finally pulls Drabek for Todd Jones to try to keep things in reach, and he keeps the Mariners off the board.  That looks important as the Astros open the top of the 9th with three straight singles, the third one from PH Tony Eusebio driving in a run, and Seattle makes a move to the pen with Jim Beattie in the save situation with the tying run at the plate.  Beattie delivers to Thompson, who grounds into a DP that scores a run but the Astros are still down by two with Biggio their last chance at bat.  He flies out harmlessly, and the Mariners pull off the upset as the #8 seed to advance with the 7-5 win.

By the ELO seedings, the top matchup of the regional was occurring in the first round with the #1 seed 1941 Cardinals against the #2 seeded 1993 White Sox.  The Sox won 94 games and the AL West, but lost in 6 games in the ALCS; they had the AL MVP in Frank Thomas and the AL Cy Young winner in Jack McDowell, but theirs weren’t even the best cards on the team, with Alex Fernandez (18-9, 3.13) tapped for the start in an effort to thwart the jinx that seems to affect all my favorite Sox teams.  Of course, the jinx had already set in as they had drawn the best team of the regional in the first round, as the Cardinals went 97-56 to finish a close 2nd in the NL, with two Johnnys in Mize and Hopp that finished 8th and 9th in the MVP votes and Ernie White (17-7, 2.40) sporting a dominating card on the mound.  The jinx quickly appears in full force in the bottom of the 1st when leadoff hitter Terry Moore singles and then Hopp finds and convert’s Fernandez’s HR split, and they add another when Enos Slaughter doubles off Fernandez’s card and Jimmy Brown rips a single past Sox 2B-3 Joey Cora to make it 3-0 after one.  However, the Sox respond in the top of the 2nd when an error by usually sure-handed SS-2 Marty Marion sets up a 2-out, 2-run double from his SS counterpart Ozzie Guillen, and it's a one-run game.  From there, both pitchers assert control until the bottom of the 8th, when it’s Moore’s turn to convert Fernandez’s HR split for a solo shot that sends Fernandez to the showers and gives the Cards a two-run edge entering the top of the 9th.  After issuing a leadoff walk, White burns through the Sox hitting, whiffing the final pinch hitter to finish out a 4-hitter and sending the Cards to the semifinals with a 4-2 win, with yet another of the best Sox teams of all time heading back into storage after the first round.     

The 1998 Padres won 98 games, the NL West, and the NL pennant, with Greg Vaughn’s 50 homers getting somewhat overlooked in that steroid-fueled year but still good for 4th place in the MVP voting, and Kevin Brown (18-7, 2.38) came in 3rd in the Cy Young sweepstakes.  They were not facing a pushover, however, as the 1977 Cardinals were a decent team, going 83-79 with Keith Hernandez and Ted Simmons leading the offense and 20-game winner Bob Forsch (20-7, 3.48) on the hill.  Both pitchers assert control and the game remains scoreless after 6 innings.  In the top of the 7th, Brown gets touched for two singles and so with one out it seems that the game is on the line so the Padres summon closer Trevor Hoffman, who was 2nd in the Cy Young voting and 7th in the MVP votes, so you know his card is pretty good.   He gets Lou Brock to hit into a force play so it’s runners on 1st and 3rd with two out and future Padre Garry Templeton and his .322 average is at the plate.  The roll:  5-7, a whiff on Hoffman which would have been a solid single on Brown, which the Cards had hit two times previously in the game.  The Cards seem unnerved by those developments, as Forsch boots a grounder to lead off the bottom of the inning, and then LF-4 Brock commits a 2-base error.  Chris Gomez then drives in both runners with a double and the Padres take the lead into the 8th.  SS-3 Gomez then returns the favor to St. Louis with a 2-base error that puts runners on 2nd and 3rd with nobody out, but Hoffman bears down and strands both runners to preserve the lead.  The Padres seek to preserve Hoffman for later rounds and take a chance bringing in Donne Wall to pitch the 9th, and he does the job, fanning the final two Cards to seal the 2-0 shutout and earn a trip to the semifinals.

It turns out that the 1991 A’s were still pretty much intact from their Bash Brothers group that had won pennants in the previous three seasons, but many of their starts had performance drops and they limped to an 84-78 record that spelled the end of their dynasty.  One player who didn’t regress was starter Mike Moore (17-8, 2.96), who would pose a challenge for the 1976 Twins, who had a similar 85-77 campaign with two high average hitters at the top of the order in Rod Carew and the gone-too-soon Lyman Bostock and Dave Goltz (14-14, 3.36) heading up an undistinguished rotation.   But disaster strikes quickly for the Twins, as on the first pitch of the game Carew is hurt and knocked out of the regional, and there’s nobody on the bench to replace him.  The game stays a scoreless pitcher’s duel until the Twins manage to load the bases in the 7th; the A’s don’t like the looks of their pen and stick with Moore, who almost escapes unscathed except the injury replacement Steve Brye manages to convert a SI 1-13 and the Twins lead 1-0.  However, in the bottom of the inning Rickey Henderson leads off with a grounder to the out-of-position 1B-5 Brye and it’s a two base error, and Rickey scores when LF-2 Larry Hisle can’t get to a Jose Canseco double.   Jose races home on a Dave Henderson single and Goltz is pulled for Bill Campbell, who records the final out but the A’s take a one-run lead into the 8th.  In the top of the 8th with two on and two out, Butch Wynegar bounces one off RF-4 Canseco’s head for a 2-base error that ties the game heading into the 9th.  Bostock walks in the top of the 9th, and with two out Disco Dan Ford converts his HR 1-4 split for a two run lead that is up to Campbell to preserve in the bottom of the 9th.  Campbell strikes out Hendu, McGwire and Steinbach in order, and the Twins hold on for the 4-2 win, and it’s now on the table for a possible and unprecedented third regional win in a row for the Twins franchise.

The survivors

When setting up the semifinal between the #1 seeded 1941 Cardinals and the #8 seed 1981 Mariners, I was pondering how these two teams were from very different eras of baseball–and then I was unnerved by the realization that the Mariners were closer timewise to the Cardinals than they are to a contemporary team.  Regardless, the Mariners clearly had their work cut out for them, with Floyd Bannister (9-9, 4.46) sporting a card that was worse than any of the remaining Cards starters, including swingman Max Lanier (10-8, 2.82).   Things don’t go well for Bannister in the bottom of the 1st, as after two quick outs Johnny Mize and Estel Crabtree hit back to back doubles off Bannister’s card to drive one in, and then next batter Enos Slaughter hits Bannister’s solid HR roll–three extra base hits off the pitcher’s card on three different roll numbers–and the Cards lead 3-0 after one.  In the 5th, Johnny Hopp leads off with a single and Mize follows with another tag of Bannister’s solid HR, and Floyd is gone for Larry Andersen but the onslaught continues as the Cards add three more runs in the 6th, with a Mize RBI double being the big blow.  The M’s finally get on the board in the 7th when Lenny Randle doubles and scores on a 2-base error by 1B-4 Mize, but it’s far too late as the Cards cruise to the finals with the 8-1 win, with Lanier going the distance scattering 7 hits.

The pennant winning 1998 Padres had difficulty scoring runs in round one, and because they had to use their bullpen strength to win that game they were hoping to get a strong performance from Andy Ashby (17-9, 3.34) to give the pen some rest.  They faced a 1976 Twins team that had pulled off a first-round upset but in the process burnt their best reliever and lost HOFer Rod Carew to injury for the regional; they gave Pete Redfern (8-8, 3.51) the start here.  In the top of the 3rd, a 2-out error by Twins injury replacement 1B-4 Craig Kusick loads the bases for Ken Caminiti, who deposits the ball into the Metropolitan Stadium bleachers and the Minneapolis crowd, raucous after two straight prior regional wins, suddenly goes very quiet.  They come alive in the 5th when Steve Braun singles in Steve Brye, or maybe the other way around, and it’s now 4-1 after 5 and Redfern seems to be settling down, but in the 6th he walks Quilvio Veras with two outs and Tony Gwynn follows with a 2-run blast that evicts Redfern with Tom Johnson coming in to whiff Greg Vaughn for the final out.  But the Twins aren’t done yet, and in the bottom of the inning they tag Ashby for four hits, including an RBI double for Bob Randle and a 2-run single from Roy Smalley, the Padres lead is cut to 6-4 after six innings, and they reluctantly begin warming up their relief aces.  SD tries to provide additional insurance in the 7th, but John Vanderwal is nailed at the plate; regardless, Ashby recovers his form and controls the Twins the rest of the way to lead the Padres to the finals with a 6-4 win with a fully rested bullpen, meanwhile dashing Minnesota’s hopes for a regional three-peat.    

The matchup for this regional final had the rare distinction of being accurately predicted by both myself and the ELO rankings, and it was a good one with the top seeded 1941 Cardinals and their crafty veteran Lon Warneke (17-9, 3.15) facing off against the pennant-winning #3 seed 1998 Padres who were looking for Sterling Hitchcock (9-7, 3.93) to deliver the game to their fully rested formidable bullpen.  The Padres jump on Warneke in the bottom of the 1st, with leadoff hitter Quilvio Veras finding and converting Lon’s HR split, and it doesn’t stop there as after a few more hits Wally Joyner delivers a 2-out, 2-run double and SD leads 3-0 after the 1st.  But the Cards didn’t get this far by accident, and Marty Marion quickly responds in the top of the 2nd with a 2-out 2-run double of his own and it’s now a one-run game.  However, a walk and an error by SS-2 Marion in the bottom of the inning brings up Greg Vaughn with two out, and he finally delivers his first blast of the regional and the Padres move their lead to 6-2, but there’s still a lot of baseball left to be played.  As a reminder of that, the Cards big bat, Johnny Mize, knocks a solo shot in the 3rd, but the Padres are relentless, with Ken Caminiti leading off the bottom of the inning with a homer.  A walk and a single and Warneke is pulled for Howie Krist, who promptly delivers a gopher ball to Chris Gomez off his own card and the Padres have hit double digits while making only six outs to this point.  And the inning isn’t over yet, as Vaughn also finds Krist’s HR result for a 2-run shot and after three innings, it’s Padres 12, Cardinals 3.  In the 5th Estel Crabtree locates Hitchcock’s solid 6-9 HR for a 2-run blast that narrows things somewhat, and Terry Moore singles in Marion in the 6th to draw closer and the Padres are beginning to wonder if it’s safe to leave Hitchcock in the game.  They feel somewhat more confident when he sets the Cards down in order in the top of the 7th and then Steve Finley greets new Cardinal pitcher Harry Gumbert with a solo shot in the bottom of the inning to extend the lead.  However, Gus Mancuso leads off the 8th with that 6-9 HR on Hitchcock and after a few more baserunners and a Crabtree RBI single, the Padres move to Dan Miceli from the pen but Enos Slaughter tags him for an RBI single before he can get the final out and the score is now 13-9.  The Padres go quietly in the 8th, and it’s now up to Miceli in the top of the 9th and the bottom of the Cards order.  He gets two quick outs and then faces PH Coaker Triplett, who rips a grounder back to P-4 Miceli, but he makes a brilliant stab and tosses out the runner to seal the regional for the Padres with a wild 13-9 win, a game that saw nine homers hit between the two teams.  This is only the third regional win for the Padres franchise, with both previous winners coming from the 1970s.

Interesting card of Regional #166:  This bracket had a bunch of great cards; there were two MVPs in the group in Jeff Bagwell and Frank Thomas, the regional-winning Padres had Greg Vaughn with 50 homers and Trevor Hoffman with 53 saves, and entries from Johnny Mize, Jose Canseco, and Rod Carew all merited consideration.  However, this selection was less about this card (although it’s from the lovely die-cut era of aesthetically pleasing hit distributions) and more about the cards that might have been.  This is the card of 25-year old Lyman Bostock, who was emerging as one of the best all-around players of the era before tragedy struck.  On Sept. 24, 1978, after a visiting game against the White Sox, Bostock went to see his uncle, who lived in Gary, Indiana, and was riding in his uncle’s car along with two women who were old friends of the Bostock family.  However, the estranged husband of one of the women drove up to their car and after an argument the husband, apparently in an unwarranted jealous rage, fired a shotgun into the car, striking Bostock in the head; he was rushed to the hospital but died early the following morning.  Long time Strat players may remember the “Lyman Bostock Memorial Tournament” that was held for several years, founded as I remember by a Strat-playing police officer from Gary.  As far as I know, Bostock was the first player to die midseason since I began playing Strat and even now, digging out the ‘76 Twins for this regional almost 45 years later, I still feel the sense of loss.