The five years from 1986-90 were good for baseball fans in New England, at least by pre-2004 standards. The 1990 Boston Red Sox continued a pattern of even-year magic—the franchise won the AL pennant in 1986, took another AL East title in 1988 and grabbed another division crown in 1990. Roger Clemens was the biggest […]
The Baltimore Orioles were coming off a disastrous year in 1988. They opened that season by losing their first 21 games, firing manager Cal Ripken Sr. just six games in (and in the process antagonizing his son, Cal Jr., merely the face of the franchise) and finishing with a record 54-107. The 1989 Baltimore Orioles […]
It was the last gasp of the Davey Johnson era. A highly successful period of Mets history had been marked by a World Series title in 1986, but crushing pennant races in 1985 and 1987 and a grueling NLCS loss in 1988. The Mets took a step back in ‘89 and signaled the end of […]
The Toronto Blue Jays were finally in the World Series after knocking on the door since 1985. The Atlanta Braves were back after losing a gut-wrenching seven-game Fall Classic the prior year. This one wouldn’t go the distance, but the 1992 World Series broke a couple historical barriers and most of its six games went to the final inning.
The 1977 MLB season was the beginning of a pattern—for two straight years, the same four teams would win division titles, the same two teams would win pennants and the same team would win the World Series. Given that this script involved the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers meeting in the Fall Classic, I can’t imagine anyone at ABC or NBC, the networks that then carried postseason baseball, were complaining.
The pressure was on for the 1988 Boston Red Sox. After their pennant-winning campaign of 1986 ended with a crushing World Series collapse, the Red Sox kept the collapse going through a poor 1987 season. Manager John McNamara’s job was on the line and everyone in baseball knew it when the 1988 season began. The […]
An upstart champion, a dramatic pennant race and the derailment of a potential dynasty were all a part of an exciting 1987 baseball season that included the following highlights… *How the Minnesota Twins used a potent lineup and a top-heavy pitching staff, led by Frank Viola and Bert Blyleven, to navigate their way to a […]
The Minnesota Twins and St. Louis Cardinals were teams built for their homefield. The Twins had power, well-suited to the hitter-friendly atmosphere at the Metrodome. The Cardinals, playing in what was then an artificial turf-covered Busch Stadium with deep dimensions, were constructed on speed. It’s appropriate that when these contrasting teams met in the 1987 […]
In the 21st century, the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants are arguably baseball’s two pre-eminent franchises. They’ve combined for seven National League pennants and four World Series titles. On three occasions (2002, 2012 & 2014) they’ve gone head-to-head in the postseason. That wasn’t the case when they met in the 1987 NLCS and […]
The Minnesota Twins were an 85-win team, one of the worst to ever reach the League Championship Series round in 1987. The Detroit Tigers had the best record in baseball and were fresh off winning an epic divisional race against the second-best team, the Toronto Blue Jays. It’s natural that the Minnesota-Detroit matchup in the […]
It been nearly twenty years since the good people of the Twin Cities had experienced postseason baseball. It had been a little longer—22 years—since they had reached the World Series. And they had never seen their franchise win it all. The 1987 Minnesota Twins changed all of that with an improbable run to a World […]
The 1987 St. Louis Cardinals were a team with some amends to make. They were coming off a horrid run of a year plus ten innings. It went back to the 1985 World Series when, on the verge of a championship in Game 6, a bad umpire’s call triggered a ninth-inning collapse and they melted […]