October 24, 2006
Rare Plate Appearance
The New Republic notes the that the end of the Cardinals/Mets series represented a rare event:
How often is it that you see your team come within one swing of winning a pennant, only to have it all end in that same instant? This question was all I could think about as my brother and I filed out of a drizzly Shea Stadium with 56,000 other traumatized Mets fans last Thursday night, and all I've been able to think about ever since.
Not often at all, it turns out. A search through the vast archives at Retrosheet.org, which aims to collect box scores and play-by-play accounts of every baseball game ever, reveals that Carlos Beltran's at-bat against Adam Wainwright with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the NLCS was an extraordinarily rare moment. It appears to have been only the tenth at-bat in baseball history in which each pitch could have resulted in a league pennant or championship for both the team at-bat and the team in the field.
Most of the time, the out was recorded and the series won by the team in the field. Thanks to Marc for the link.
Great link -- though I think he doesn't end up including every game which meets his initial description, because he excludes double play possibilities. I think, for example, that when Tony Womack faced Mariano Rivera with 1 out and men on second and first in Game 7 of the 2001 WS, every Diamondback fan felt the possibility that the next swing at one of Rivera's cutters would be the end of the Series.
