Best game ever...

[Double Steal]

Discuss... Oct. 21, 1975? Game 6 Red Sox vs. Reds? Nov. 4, 2001? Game 7 DBacks vs. Yankees?

What was the greatest game ever. Regular Season... Playoffs... World Series....

Show me a guy who can't pitch inside and I'll show you a loser. - Sandy Koufax.
http://www.oregonbaseballcampaign.com

[Ytown_Tribe_fan]

RE: Best game ever...

One I'd include among the best ever is Game 1 of the '88 World Series.

The Dodgers touched Dave Stewart for 2 in the first, but Oakland came back with a 4-spot in the 2nd with Canseco's bomb.

Oakland went into the 9th leading 4-3 and Eckersley was automatic that season.

Up hobbles Kirk Gibson with one on in the bottom of the 9th -- the rest is history.

Every time I see "The Natural", I think of that shot.

[Double Steal]

RE: Best game ever...

[updated:LAST EDITED ON Apr-15-02 AT 03:47 PM (EDT)]Ya, I was just watching Sports Century with Gibson, and Costas and Hershiser were talking about Gibson hitting balls off a tee into a net in the hallway behind the dugout.

Costas says he'd hear... TWACK!... "GROOOAAANNN!"...TWACK!... "GROOOAAANNN!", and then someone comes out and says to Lasorda, "He's maybe got one good swing in him".

Is that straight out of The Natural or what? That and the fact that he'd fouled off, super weakly, 2 pitches on fast balls, and then Eck goes and lofts that hanging breaking ball. The rest is baseball history.

Unreal drama on that game.

Show me a guy who can't pitch inside and I'll show you a loser. - Sandy Koufax.
http://www.oregonbaseballcampaign.com

[The Real McCoy]

RE: Best game ever...

Not too many better games than Game 6, 1986 NL Championship Series.,,, Mets/Astros. Astros score three in the first and Knepper pitches eight great innings until the Mets tie it up with three in the top of the ninth. Both teams score in the 14th. Mets get three in the top of the 16th, Stros come roaring back with two, have two on, two out and Orasco strikes out Bass to clinch the pennant.

This classic is largely forgotten because in the Series Mookie hit a ground ball at Billy Bucks.

[LouGehrig]

RE: Best game ever...

The game in which the Phillies beat the Cubs, 23-22 early in the 1979 season.

[Double Steal]

RE: Best game ever...

Couldn't find info on this game (yet... still figuring out retrosheet), but I did find this:

Chicago 26 vs Philadelphia 23 most runs scored in a game at 49. Happened on 8/25/1922...

Must have been one heck of a pitchers duel that day, huh? ;-)

Show me a guy who can't pitch inside and I'll show you a loser. - Sandy Koufax.
http://www.oregonbaseballcampaign.com

[ciamele]

RE: Best game ever...

It's so difficult to choose one game... there are so many amazing moments in baseball. Being biased, I love the Mets/Astros game mentioned above, and of course games w/ Boston rank up there too. I have sentimental favorites of my frist game at Shea to my first game ever.

But games that really stand out to me:

The whole 1991 World Series. That was a tooth and nail fight to the finish. Almost every game went into extra innings, and there's no question we all got our worth out of every minute of those games.

The 1999 championship series of the Mets/Braves had some very exciting games like the 1991 world series.

You gotta love the Royals/Yankees game w/ the Pine Tar Incident. I could swear that George Brett flew out of the dugout -- no feet touching the ground. That's just classic.

How about the first All-star game w/ Ruth... being Ruth. He hit the first homer in All-star game history.

Then the following year in 1934 when Carl Hubbard strikes out the following Hall Of Famers in a row: Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Simmons, and Cronin. I have one word for that: Amazing.

Those are a few that come to mind for me, but there are so many more... Give me an extra inning game that goes 13+ innings, and it's a great game to me.

[bucsparrothead]

RE: Best game ever...

I post it every day; the 1960 World Series, Game 7. What a great display that showed that the underdog does beat the top dog once in a while. Did that home run by Mazeroski really propel him into the Hall of Fame? Was Casey Stengel to really blame for the 'embarassment' his team suffered? How can a team who dominated their winning games lose in 7 so agonizingly? That game not only has huge drama, but it spawns SO many questions to this day. Joe Carter? Kirk Gibson? NO, Bill Mazeroski and the totally improbable Pirates in a Game 7 when NO ONE really thought the dominating Yankees would lose.

'...to the wall, GONE AND THE PIRATES WIN!' -Maz and the ORIGINAL home run WS blast!

[Reed Johnson]

The best game ever is the Jays latest win!

[RuthMayBond]

Not too many better games than Game 6, 1986 NL Championship Series.,,, Mets/Astros. Astros score three in the first and Knepper pitches eight great innings until the Mets tie it up with three in the top of the ninth. Both teams score in the 14th. Mets get three in the top of the 16th, Stros come roaring back with two, have two on, two out and Orasco strikes out Bass to clinch the pennant.

This classic is largely forgotten because in the Series Mookie hit a ground ball at Billy Bucks.

This is the only game in the first five posts I don't have, a few from post #7

[Brian McKenna]

Vaughn and Toney double no-hit game

[BoSox Rule]

Games 4 or 5 of the 2004 ALCS

[EdTarbusz]

October 3, 1951.

[SavoyBG]

Guy I used to know invented a system to rank the greatest post season games and series ever played. It was based on the score after every half inning of every game, and how long the games went. Here are the results of his work. He only went back to 1916, so we don;t get ratings on the fabulous 1912 world series, but he rates the 1980 NLCS (Phils-Astros) as the greatest series ever.


Using a system of ‘rating’ how good a playoff game was based on the score after each ½ inning, I’ve scored all the playoff games back to 1916. Games are rated based on closeness (how close the home team win probability is to 50%) and turnaround (the change in win probability from the last ½ inning).

Using the system, the best playoff games are all extra inning contests. This makes sense, since a 15-inning game probably has some kind of late comeback + 6 innings of sudden death. The top ten (average game rating is about 5):

Series Road Homes Innings Rating
1995 ALDS1..G2 Mariners 5 Yankees 7 15 19.85
1999 NLCS....G5 Braves 3 Mets 4 15 19.30
1986 NLCS....G6 Mets 7 Astros 6 16 16.95
1916 WS......G2 Robins 1 Red Sox 2 14 15.75
(complete game win for Babe Ruth)
1995 ALDS2..G1 Red Sox 4 Indians 5 13 15.66
2000 NLDS2..G3 Giants 2 Mets 3 13 13.82
1975 WS......G6 Reds 6 Red Sox 7 12 13.59
2000 WS......G1 Mets 3 Yankees 4 12 13.46
1945 WS......G6 Tigers 7 Cubs 8 12 13.13

Worst Game (4-way tie)
1996 NLCS...G7 Cardinals 0 Braves 15 9 1.56
1960 WS.....G3 Pirates 0 Yankees 10 9 1.56
1998 WS.....G2 Padres 3 Yankees 9 9 1.56
2001 WS.....G6 Yankees 2 Dbacks 15 9 1.56

Top 9 Inning Game
1993 WS......G4 Blue Jays 15 Phillies 14 9 10.05
1960 WS......G7 Yankees 9 Pirates 10 9 9.92
1977 NLCS...G3 Dodgers 6 Phillies 5 9 9.81
1984 NLCS...G4 Cubs 5 Padres 7 9 9.42
2000 NLCS...G2 Mets 6 Cardinals 5 9 9.14
1995 NLDS1..G1 Braves 5 Rockies 4 9 8.77
1972 WS......G4 Reds 2 Athletics 3 9 8.59
1995 NLDS1..G2 Braves 7 Rockies 4 9 8.55
1988 ALCS....G2 Red Sox 3 Athletics 4 9 8.55
2001 WS......G7 Yankees 2 Diamondbacks 3 9 8.48

Once the games themselves are rated, they can in turn be used to rate how good a playoff series is. The simplest rating is to sum the game ratings. The results are…

Series Games Rating
1999 NLCS.....Total 6 54.35
1991 WS.......Total 7 52.65
1975 WS.......Total 7 51.92
1986 NLCS.....Total 6 49.36
1980 NLCS.....Total 5 46.60
1924 WS.......Total 7 46.59
1995 ALDS1...Total 5 46.01
1997 ALCS.....Total 6 45.88
1921 WS.......Total 8 42.82
2001 WS.......Total 7 42.10

Worst Series
2000 NLDS (Atlanta/St Louis)

The usual suspects appear: 1975 WS, 1991 WS, 2001 WS, 1980 NLCS. But in no way can the 1999 NLCS can be considered the best playoff series ever. The problem with including that series is that the Braves won the first 3-games draining the excitement from the rest of the games. It has the second highest rated playoff game ever (G5) and the 19th highest rated game as well (G6). The score for G5 is half of the score of the entire 2001 WS. Too much weight is given the outlier and the context the game is played is ignored. This system also gives an advantage to 7-game series over 5-game series.

So I looked at the average game scores…For context,

10% of all playoff games rate 9+
13% of all playoff games rate 8+
20% of all playoff games rate 7+

Series Games Average Score
1980 NLCS...Total 5 9.32
1995 ALDS1..Total 5 9.20
1999 NLCS...Total 6 9.06
1969 ALCS...Total 3 8.87
1986 NLCS...Total 6 8.23
1995 NLDS1..Total 4 7.72
1997 ALCS...Total 6 7.65
1995 ALDS2..Total 3 7.56
1991 WS......Total 7 7.52
1975 WS......Total 7 7.42

Worst Series
2000 NLDS (Atlanta/St Louis)

This has a different problem; short series have an edge. Two 3-0 series sweeps make the list. Again, a single outstanding game can put you on the top of the list. To avoid single games from skewing the results, I converted the ratings into percentiles.

Series Games Average Game Percentiles
1980 NLCS....Total 5 86.10%
1995 NLDS1..Total 4 77.86%
2000 ALDS2..Total 3 75.80%
1999 NLCS....Total 6 74.96%
1997 NLDS1..Total 3 74.38%
1975 WS......Total 7 73.89%
1996 ALDS2..Total 4 73.34%
1970 NLCS....Total 3 72.88%
1969 ALCS....Total 3 72.52%
1995 ALDS1...Total 5 71.16%

Worst Series
2000 NLDS (Atlanta/St Louis) [a triple crown]

Four 3-0 sweeps make the list again. The 1980 NLCS is amazing by this measure. It is farther from the #2 series than #2 is from #10. Not only that but only it, 75 WS and 95 ALDS1 went the distance.

My final attempt was to weight the game scores by the status of the series. A game played with the series tied 2-2 will count more than the same game with a team up 3-1 in the series. The weights were based on how much the chance of winning the series would shift depending on if the next game was won or lost. In a 7-game series, the G1 weight=31.25%, G7 weight=100%. If the series was 3-0 then the weight for game four would be 12.5%

This system favors longer series, series that go the distance and series with an outstanding last game.

Series Game Score Weighted Score
1980 NLCS....Total 5 46.60 27.67
1924 WS......Total 7 46.59 25.73
1975 WS......Total 7 51.92 25.41
1991 WS......Total 7 52.65 25.21
1995 ALDS1..Total 5 46.01 24.56
1986 NLCS....Total 6 49.36 21.70
2001 WS......Total 7 42.10 21.70
1997 WS......Total 7 36.55 20.52
1952 WS......Total 7 40.35 20.04
1925 WS......Total 7 38.54 18.79

The 1999 NLCS vanishes from the top ten. No series sweeps are on the list. Only one of these series did not go the distance. None of the recent series that are included surprise me. But even with the bias towards longer series, a 5-game series rates the highest.

I guess one could add a discount factor in for championship series and a larger one for division series since they are just stepping stones to the WS.

But as a Phillies fan, I just can’t do it.

[RockyC]

Game 6 of the '75 WS