SteadyTumbling

Game 2 of the World Series tonight in SF. A bit of baseball history via NYT Sports’ “Tigers vs. Giants Was a Century in the Making”:

Plenty of original franchises have never faced each other in the World Series: the Pirates and the White Sox; the Phillies and the A’s; the Reds and the Indians, and so on. The difference with the Giants and the Tigers is how frequently they have won the pennant without ever meeting.

The Giants have reached the World Series 19 times, the Tigers 11 times. Yet this is their first date for the championship.

Eight teams have reached the World Series at least 10 times: the Yankees, the A’s, the Red Sox and the Tigers in the American League, and the Giants, the Cardinals, the Dodgers and the Cubs (really) in the National League. All the possible World Series matchups involving those teams have now taken place, except for one: the Tigers and the Dodgers have still never met in the World Series.

Before this season, the closest the Tigers and the Giants came to meeting was in 1987, when both teams lost the league championship series. They are the only runners-up in more than 30 years to meet in a subsequent World Series.

Photo caption: “The Tigers, in their 112 years, have featured, from left, Ty Cobb, Hank Greenberg, Al Kaline and Miguel Cabrera. The Giants have featured, from right, Fred Snodgrass, Willie Mays, Barry Bonds and Buster Posey.”