(This article was written in the spring of 2004, at a time when there was much talk about the Curse of the Bambino.   I have never been happier to see my research rendered irrelevant by history, although I think the general issue is of as much interest now as it was then.)

  

"The majority of the “breaks” went to the Boston team, which thus again profited by the singular “luck” which has followed the Boston teams in World’s Series to such good effect."

--Page 158, 1919 Reach Guide

(Reviewing the 1918 World Series)

  

I.  Premise

 

            I was asked, on air, about the Curse of the Bambino, which is curiously absent from my list of favorite discussion topics.   There is no Curse of the Bambino, of course, and I gave what I hoped was a logical response:  The Red Sox have not been lucky in World Series play (since 1918), but then, the difference between the two teams—New York 26, Boston 0—is not all luck, nor is it mostly luck.  The Yankees have had about 50 seasons since 1920 when they could have won the World Series; the Red Sox have had about five or six.   The Red Sox have not been lucky in their five or six chances, yes, but one need not invoke heavy karma to explain the difference.

 

            But as I thought about it, it occurred to me that I had sold the Red Sox short by a substantial margin.   The Red Sox could have won in ’46—probably should have—and they could have won in ’67, in ’75, in ’86, in 2003. . .actually, there are a good number of years in there when, with a little better luck, the Red Sox could have emerged with a World’s Championship.  The ’48 team lost the pennant in a playoff; the ’49 team lost on the last day of the season.   The ’78 team, of course, but also, with a little bit of luck, the Red Sox could have won the brass ring in ’50, in ’77, or in 1995.   What is the balance of fortune here?   How far behind are the Red Sox from what one might call a base line expectation of good fortune? 

 

            There are ubiquitous claims and allegations that such and such a team or such and such a manager has/have fallen short of their fair share of post-season success.  The Atlanta Braves of the last fifteen years are perceived as having won far fewer championships than they should have won.  The Cubs, of course, have a curse of their own, and the Indians claim one as well.   Billy Beane’s A’s regard October as their personal crumple zone.

 

            Whitey Herzog, in You’re Missin’ a Great Game, wrote that “All my life, I’ve been good enough to get my teams close.   That was true when I was a kid, and it was truer still when I coached and managed.  But the strangest things would happen once I got there.  You’d have made money betting on Herzog teams over the long haul.  But if you’d put your money on some horrible break happening at the last minute, you could’ve retired early.” 

 

            The Dodgers of the 1940s and 50s, Da Bums, were in their day the poster boys of season-ending hard luck.  The Mariners of the 1990s, the Braves of the 1950s, and the Tigers of the 1960s are among the many teams cited—often by me—as under-achieving in close pennant races or in the post season.

 

            I remember an argument I had twenty years about, about  the value of what was then called a “Baltimore draft”—a soft-tossing control pitcher who got people out by changing speeds and moving balls in and out and up and down.   My friend dismissed the Baltimore pitchers of the 1970s as “just good enough to lose”.   My friend was (and is) a Pirates’ fan; he had seen in person the Orioles lose the World Series in 1971 and 1979.  Setting aside the logical problems with evaluating a strategy based on a few World Series games, his argument assumed that the Oriole pitchers had been “exposed” in World Series competition, although the Orioles won the World Series in 1966 and 1970 and 1983.  Is it even true that he Orioles under-achieved in post-season play?

 

            How can all these claims be true?   Have the Yankees gotten everybody’s luck?  Or is it merely that the Yankees have just been that much better than everybody else, that they have won 26 World Championships since our last one mostly by dumb skill?    How can one tell?  How can one sort out these competing claims to be Dame Fortune’s special whipping boy?

 

II. The Dimensions of Bad Luck

 

            We need a set of assumptions, and we need a method.    My starting assumption here is that each team’s won-lost record in each season fairly reflects their ability. 

 

            Let’s take the 1949 season.  The Red Sox finished 96-58; the Yankees finished one game ahead of them at 97-57.   Let’s assume that the won-lost records fairly reflect the ability of each team, thereby assuming that the Yankees actually were just a little bit better.

 

            However, if we assume that those numbers accurately reflect the ability of the teams, then it was by no means certain that the Yankees would win the race.   If you take a team whose true performance level is 97-57  and a team whose true performance level is 96-58 team and run them through a 154-game pennant race a hundred times, the 97-57 team will win 52 times, the 96-58 team will win 43 times, and they’ll wind up in a tie 5 times.  If you give three of the ties to the better team, the 96-58 team—the Red Sox—should still win 45% of the time—actually, 45.2831688%, if you really want to know.  If you assume that they win that race 45% of the time and the World Series is a toss-up, then a team of that quality should win the World Championship about 22-23% of the time.  

 

            I constructed a simple system which closely imitates this math, and which satisfactorily predicts real-life results.   The system is this:

 

            1)  You start with the won-lost records of all teams in the season.   This is 1949: 

 

AMERICAN	LEAGUE
TEAM	W	L
Yankees	97	57
Red Sox	96	58
Indians	89	65
Tigers	87	67
A's	81	73
White Sox	63	91
Browns	53	101
Senators	50	104
NATIONAL	LEAGUE
TEAM	W	L
Dodgers	97	57
Cardinals	96	58
Phillies	81	73
Braves	75	79
Giants	73	81
Pirates	71	83
Reds	62	92
Cubs	61	93

 

            2)  You eliminate the teams which failed to win more games than they lost, since those teams have or may be assumed to have no chance to win the World Championship.  (None ever has won, and, before the split into divisions, it was theoretically impossible.) 

 

This leaves:

  

AMERICAN	LEAGUE
TEAM	W	L
Yankees	97	57
Red Sox	96	58
Indians	89	65
Tigers	87	67
A's	81	73
NATIONAL	LEAGUE
TEAM	W	L
Dodgers	97	57
Cardinals	96	58
Phillies	81	73

 

            3)  Each team’s chance of winning the World Championship in that season is assumed to be proportional to the cube of their wins minus losses.    In other words, since the Yankees won 40 games more than they lost, their “strength”—their chance of winning, relative to the other teams—is represented by 40 cubed, which is 64,000.   Since the Red Sox won 38 games more than they lost, their chance of winning the World Championship is represented by 38 cubed, which is 54,872.  Since the Philadelphia teams won eight games more than they lost, their chance of winning the World Championship is represented by eight cubed, which is 512.  

 

            We then add up the chances that each team will win the World Championship, and put them all in a common pool:

 

TEAM	W	L	Margin	Claim
Yankees	97	57	40	64000
Red Sox	96	58	38	54872
Indians	89	65	24	13824
Tigers	87	67	20	8000
A's	81	73	8	512
Dodgers	97	57	40	64000
Cardinals	96	58	38	54872
Phillies	81	73	8	512
Total Claim Points:				260592

 

            The eight teams that finished over .500 have a total of 260,592 “claim points” on the World Championship. 

 

            4)  We then divide each team’s claim points by 260,592, which produces an estimate of each team’s chance of winning the World Series:

           

TEAM	W	L	Claim	Chance
Yankees	97	57	64000	.246
Redsox	96	58	54872	.211
Indians	89	65	13824	.053
Tigers	87	67	8000	.031
A's	81	73	512	.002
Dodgers	97	57	64000	.246
Cardinals	96	58	54872	.211
Phillies	81	73	512	.002

 

            We thus estimate that the 1949 Red Sox, based on their won-lost record and the won-lost records of the other teams, had about a 21% chance of winning the World Championship, which of course they failed to do.    This is about the same estimate that we would get if we calculated exactly what each team’s chances of winning each number of games was, etc.; the difference between the 21% here and the 22-23% figure earlier is that, in the earlier calculation, we ignored the possibility that some clearly inferior team (the Indians or Tigers) would win the World Championship by exceptional good luck.   These are the figures for the 2003 season:

 

Standings:

 

AMERICAN	LEAGUE	EAST
TEAM	W	L
Yankees	101	61
Red Sox	95	67
Blue Jays	86	76
Orioles	71	91
Devil Rays	63	99
AMERICAN	LEAGUE	CENT
TEAM	W	L
Twins	90	72
White Sox	86	76
Royals	83	79
Indians	68	94
Tigers	43	119
AMERICAN	LEAGUE	WEST
TEAM	W	L
A's	96	66
Mariners	93	69
Angels	77	85
Rangers	71	91
NATIONAL	LEAGUE	EAST
TEAM	W	L
Braves	101	61
Marlins	91	71
Phillies	86	76
Expos	83	79
Mets	66	95
NATIONAL	LEAGUE	CENT
TEAM	W	L
Cubs	88	74
Astros	87	75
Cardinals	85	77
Pirates	75	87
Reds	69	93
Brewers	68	94
NATIONAL	LEAGUE	WEST
TEAM	W	L
Giants	100	61
Dodgers	85	77
D'backs	84	78
Rockies	74	88
Padres	64	98

 

            Eliminate the losers:

 

TEAM	W	L
Yankees	101	61
Red Sox	95	67
Blue Jays	86	76
Twins	90	72
White Sox	86	76
Royals	83	79
A's	96	66
Mariners	93	69
Braves	101	61
Marlins	91	71
Phillies	86	76
Expos	83	79
Cubs	88	74
Astros	87	75
Cardinals	85	77
Giants	100	61
Dodgers	85	77
D'backs	84	78

 

Claim Points:

 

TEAM	W	L	C Pts
Yankees	101	61	64000
Red Sox	95	67	21952
Blue Jays	86	76	1000
Twins	90	72	5832
White Sox	86	76	1000
Royals	83	79	64
A's	96	66	27000
Mariners	93	69	13824
Braves	101	61	64000
Marlins	91	71	8000
Phillies	86	76	1000
Expos	83	79	64
Cubs	88	74	2744
Astros	87	75	1728
Cardinals	85	77	512
Giants	100	61	59319
Dodgers	85	77	512
D'backs	84	78	216
Total:			272767

 

Chances of winning the World Series:

 

TEAM	W	L	Chances
Yankees	101	61	.235
Braves	101	61	.235
Giants	100	61	.217
A's	96	66	.099
Red Sox	95	67	.080
Mariners	93	69	.051
Marlins	91	71	.029
Twins	90	72	.021
Cubs	88	74	.010
Astros	87	75	.006
Blue Jays	86	76	.004
White Sox	86	76	.004
Phillies	86	76	.004
Cardinals	85	77	.002
Dodgers	85	77	.002
D'backs	84	78	.001
Royals	83	79	.000
Expos	83	79	.000

 

            Florida, the actual winner, had only a 3% chance to win the World Championship, based on our assumptions.   Everything had to go right for them—and it did.

 

            In these two seasons, there is no one team which is clearly superior, thus no team which has a better than one-in-four chance to win the World Series.     In other seasons, that’s not true.    There have been 37 teams in history which had better than a 50% chance to win the World Series, 21 of whom actually did.  In most seasons, some team has been over 40%.

 

            There would be, of course, other ways to approach this problem, and you can raise objections here if you want.   Here’s one for you:  this system says that the 2003 Mariners, 93-69,  had a 5% chance of winning the World Championship, while the Twins, 90-72, had a 2% chance of winning the World Championship.   But this ignores the fact that the Twins were in a soft division, which offered them an easy pathway to the post season, while the Mariners had to beat the A’s or else beat the Red Sox out of the Wild Card.    Thus, the Twins chances were actually better than the Mariners.

 

            Parallel problem in 1949:  doesn’t the chance that the Indians or Tigers will win the World Series actually come just out of the Yankees’ and Red Sox’ share, rather than out of the common pool?

 

            Well, yes, you can look at it that way if you want to.   But what we are measuring here is luck.   We are measuring “Could haves”.   That’s just another element of luck, isn’t it?   The Mariners didn’t have to wind up in the same division with a 96-win team; that was just tough luck.    The 1942 Dodgers went 104-50 and finished second.   That was tough luck.   They could have won the World Championship with that team, but that was just rude luck, that they wound up matched up against a Cardinal team that won 106.

 

            What I am saying is, there really isn’t any right way to do this.  There isn’t any “correct” answer here.   We don’t know what the “true performance level” of any team was.   It is very, very possible that the 1949 Red Sox were actually a better team than the 1949 Yankees, but just had some bad luck and finished second.   We don’t know. No one will ever know. We just have to make an assumption and work it through.   And, in that context, it is very, very hard to argue that one set of assumptions about what luck we include in the study and what luck we factor out is better than any other set of assumptions.    I just made a choice to consider that the Mariners being in a tough division was a part of their luck, rather than a condition of the competition which needed to be factored out.   One choice seems to me as good as another.

 

            But what I will say in defense of this system is that, by this system, the teams which are estimated to have a 40% chance of winning the World Series do in fact win the World Series 40% of the time, and teams which are estimated to have a 25% chance of winning the World Series do in fact win the World Series 25% of the time, etc.   This is the actual data. . .

 

            Estimated chance                               &​nbsp;                       Expected

            To Win the World Series                             Teams    Wins  Actual

            70% or higher                                              ​     3         2.3          2

            60% to 69.99%                                       &nb​sp;        15        9.8       11

            50% to 59.99%                                             &n​bsp;  19      10.3          8

            40% to 49.99%                                            &n​bsp;   27      12.1        13

            30% to 39.99%                         &nbs​p;                      39      13.2       13

            20% to 29.99%                                 &​nbsp;              74      18.0       16

            10% to 19.99%                                              119      16.9       20

              5% to 9.99%                              &nb​sp;                 133        9.4          9

              1% to 4.99%                                                231        6.2          6

            Less than 1%                                     ​;             339        0.9          1

 

            Of the teams which were estimated to have a 40 to 50% chance to win the World Championship, 48% actually did.  

            Of the teams which were estimated to have a 30 to 40% chance to win the World Championship, 33% actually did.

            Of the teams which were estimated to have a 20 to 30% chance to win the World Championship, 22% actually did.  

            Of the teams which were estimated to have a 10 to 20% chance to win the World Championship, 17% actually did.

            Of the teams which were estimated to have a 5 to 10% chance to win the World Championship, 7% actually did.  

            Of the teams which were estimated to have a 1 to 5% chance to win the World Championship, 3% actually did.

            Of the teams which were estimated to have less than a 1% chance to win the World Championship, one of 339 actually did.

 

            Our assumptions may be good; they may be faulty.   But the output data matches the theory, given these assumptions, about as well as it is possible to imagine that it could.

 

            This enables us to address a question I left unspoken before:  why do we use the cube of wins minus losses to represent a team’s claim on the World Championship?             

 

            Answer:  because that’s what works.   I started with the assumption that this relationship would be a relationship of squares, that a team’s chance of winning the World Championship would be proportional to the square of their wins minuses losses.   But that relationship didn’t work.   When I ran the data with that assumption, the teams which “should” have won the World Championship 40% of the time were actually winning it 55% of the time, while the teams which should have won 25% were actually winning 35%, and the teams which should have won 3% were actually winning 2%.   The relationship of squares under-stated the real advantage of the stronger teams.   

                                          &nb​sp;                        &nb​sp;   

III. Miscellaneous Petty Results

 

            1.  What teams had the best chances of winning the World Series?

 

            The top ten teams of all time were:

 

YEAR	Team	Lg	W	L	Chance
1944	StL	N	105	49	0.746
1906	Chi	N	116	36	0.735
1936	NY	A	102	51	0.725
1927	NY	A	110	44	0.691
1907	Chi	N	107	45	0.682
2001	Sea	A	116	46	0.680
1986	NY	N	108	54	0.678
1932	NY	A	107	47	0.669
1943	StL	N	105	49	0.664
1918	Chi	N	84	45	0.655

 

            The Cardinals went 105-49 in ’44; no one else in either league was better than 90-63—thus, the Cardinals were overwhelmingly better than the other teams, thus their chance of winning the World Series was extremely high.

 

            Six of these teams did in fact win the World Championship—all of the top eight except the 1906 Cubs, who were upset by their cross-town rivals, and the 2001 Mariners, who lost to the Yankees in the ALCS.    The eleventh team would be the ’68 Tigers.

 

            2.  Who were the unlikeliest winners?

 

            The unlikeliest World Champions of all time—you probably know this—were the 1987 Twins, who went 85-77, but managed to tiptoe through their division, then upset the Tigers (98-64) and then Whitey Herzog’s Cardinals (95-67).  There were four teams in the American League East which had better records, and the Twins’ chance of winning the World Championship was estimated at one in 245.

 

            3.  Who were the likeliest winners who didn’t win?

 

            1906 Cubs.   They went 116-36, lost the World Series to their crosstown rivals, who did not appear to be nearly as strong.

           

            4.  Suppose that you have a team with a record of 95-67. . .what is that team’s chance of winning the World Series?  Or 90-72, or 99-63. . .how does the record relate to the chance of winning?

 

            I took the records of all teams in history which have finished with exactly 162 decisions, and looked at the World Series winner frequency at each record.   In baseball history there have been eight teams that won 105 or more games (out of 162); five of those eight have wound up as the World Champions:

Record				Teams	Winners
105 or more wins				8	5
101 to 104 wins				24	3
100	-	62		4	2
99	-	63		6	3
98	-	64		16	3
97	-	65		12	2
96	-	66		10	2
95	-	57		16	2
94	-	68		11	1
93	-	69		13	1
92	-	70		21	4
91	-	71		23	4
90	-	72		26	1
89	-	73		24	0
88	-	74		30	0
87	-	75		24	0
86	-	76		32	0
85	-	77		27	1
84	-	78		26	0
83	-	79		33	0
82	-	80		19	0

 

            If you study that carefully you can see that the increase in World Series wins as season wins increase is more or less proportional to the increase in the cube of wins minus losses.   An interesting exception is that the teams which have won 101 to 104 games have done dramatically worse than expected—three World Series winners against an expectation of 7.7.   Teams winning 98 or 99 games are five for ten in World Championships; those winning 100 to 104 are 3 for 24.   It is my opinion that this is just a random data aberration. 

 

            Between teams of the same record there are wide differences in the chance of winning the World Championship, based on whether there are or are not very strong teams in that season.    The 1991 Pittsburgh Pirates and the 1998 San Diego Padres both finished 98-64—yet the Pirates had an estimated 38% chance of winning the World Championship; the Padres, only 7%.    In 1991 98-64 was the best record in baseball.   In 1998 there were three other teams that won 114, 106, and 102 games. 

 

            5.  What is the best decade any team has ever had, in terms of just having better teams on the field than anybody else?

           

            The Yankees of the 1930s.  The Yankees of the 1930s had an expectation of 3.71 World Championships, based on their regular season records.   These are the top ten decades by any franchise:

 

Team	L	Decade			Expected
NY	A	1930	-	1939	3.71
NY	A	1950	-	1959	3.06
NY	A	1920	-	1929	3.02
StL	N	1940	-	1949	2.97
Cin	N	1970	-	1979	2.25
Chi	N	1900	-	1909	2.13
Atl	N	1990	-	1999	2.05
NY	A	1940	-	1949	1.97
NY	A	1960	-	1969	1.92
NY	N	1910	-	1919	1.89

 

            Of these ten teams, five met and did not exceed expectation.   The Yankees of the 1920s did win three World Championships (expectation of 3.02), the Cardinals of the 1940s won three (expectation, 2.97), the Reds of the 1970s won two, the Cubs of Tinker, Evers and Chance won two, and the Yankees of the 1960s won two.  

 

            Three of these teams overachieved.  The Yankees of the 1950s were the greatest over-achievers of all time, winning six against an expectation of three.   The expectation (3.06) is tremendous in itself—the second-best decade that any team has ever had.   They just doubled their bet by winning all of the close pennant races, then winning most of the World Series, winding up with six titles instead of three.  The Yankees of the thirties over-achieved by one (5 vs. 3.7), and the Yankees of the 1940s over-achieved by two (4 vs. 2.0).    The Braves of the 1990s under-achieved by one (1 vs. 2.05), and the New York Giants of 1910-1919 under-achieved by two (none vs. 1.89).

 

            6.  Who were the greatest under-achievers of all time? 

 

            In terms of one team in one decade, it was the Giants of 1910-1919.     With Mathewson, Rube Marquard, Larry Doyle, Chief Meyers, Fred Snodgrass, Fred Merkle, Jess Tesreau and others, that team should have been able to get something done in the post season, and they certainly expected to.   But they lost three straight World Series, 1911-1913, lost again in 1917, and finished second in the pennant race three other years.   No other team has ever had such a bad decade in terms of falling just short at the end.  (Only one other team, the Tigers of 1907-1909, has lost three World Series in three years.   But the Tigers were just out-gunned; the Giants should have won some.)

 

IV. Crying Towel

 

          What we are measuring here is the difference between the strength of one’s teams and one’s share of ultimate success.   If you will forgive me, I am going to call this, in the charts that follow, “Luck”.   Don’t over-react to this; I know that it’s not all luck.   Well, actually, I don’t know that it isn’t all luck; maybe it is.   I just don’t know.   There could be other things that enter into this—fate, for example, or a pact with the devil, or the emotional benefit of being in the World Series every year, or the Curse of Dan Shaughnessy’s Dandruff, or the skill of the managers, or some special undocumented area of excellence of some teams, which is not reflected in their regular-season won-lost record, but which comes forward in the crucible of October.  I don’t know.  There’s a lot of luck involved, and I am going to call it, for want of a better term, “Luck”. 

 

            We get then to the big question:  How bad has the Red Sox luck really been?   How far below expectation are we?

 

            Well, let’s start this off by simply reporting on the total World Series wins and Expected Wins of all thirty franchises, without respect to franchise shifts, time lines across history, etc.:

 

		World		Expected
	Team	Championships		Championships		Luck
	Yankees	26		16.67		9.33
	Cardinals	9		6.54		2.46
	Marlins	2		0.10		1.90
	Athletics	9		7.68		1.32
	Blue Jays	2		0.90		1.10
	Diamondbacks	1		0.27		0.73
	Angels	1		0.45		0.55
	Red Sox	5		4.55		0.45
	Royals	1		0.71		0.29
	Mets	2		1.79		0.21
	Pirates	5		4.86		0.14
	Devil Rays	0		0.00		0.00
	Rockies	0		0.00		0.00
	Senators/Twins	3		3.07		-0.07
	Reds	5		5.22		-0.22
	Senators/Rangers	0		0.22		-0.22
	Padres	0		0.25		-0.25
	Tigers	4		4.32		-0.32
	Expos	0		0.37		-0.37
	Phillies	1		1.45		-0.45
	Astros	0		0.53		-0.53
	Brewers	0		0.68		-0.68
	Dodgers	6		6.74		-0.74
	Mariners	0		0.87		-0.87
	Braves	3		4.56		-1.56
	White Sox	2		3.73		-1.73
	Browns/Orioles	3		4.84		-1.84
	Indians	2		4.43		-2.43
	Giants	5		7.58		-2.58
	Cubs	2		5.64		-3.64

 

            The Red Sox, it turns out, are still ahead of schedule!   Amazing, isn’t it?   You remember that I started this off with a quote from the 1919 Reach Guide, talking about Boston’s amazing good luck in the World Series.   They were amazingly lucky—from 1903 through 1918.   They won five World Championships in those years—1903, 1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918—and frankly, they weren’t all that good.    Those were very good teams, but they weren’t anywhere near good enough that you would expect them to win five World Championships in sixteen years.

 

            You get a different look, of course, if you break it down into pre-1920 and post-1920:

 

				World		Expected
		Years		Championships		Championships		Luck
	Red Sox	1903	1919	5		1.85		3.15
	Red Sox	1920	2003	0		2.69		-2.69
	Red Sox	1903	2003	5		4.55		0.45

 

            The good news:  with just a couple of more heartaches, a couple of more ground balls through the legs of an infielder, a couple of more relay men who don’t pick up the runner rounding third, a couple of more perpetual ERA champions getting lit up at the 130-pitch mark, a couple more banjo-hitting shortstops lofting critical home runs over the Green Monster, the Red Sox will be even with history, and eligible to move on.

 

            In any case, we now have the first answer to one of the questions with which we began this exercise.   The Red Sox, since 1920, should have won three World Championships, essentially.  .the breaks being even, a few of the good teams winning, more of them losing, the Red Sox should have been the Chosen Team three times since 1920.

 

            If you focus on the years since 1920, there are six teams which are at least 1.00 World Championship below expectation:

 

		World
		Series		Expected
	Franchise	Won		Championships		Luck
	Red Sox	0		2.69		-2.69
	White Sox	0		2.65		-2.65
	Cubs	0		2.21		-2.21
	Braves	2		4.17		-2.17
	Indians	2		4.07		-2.07
	Browns/Orioles	3		4.84		-1.84

 

            The Red Sox have been the unluckiest team since 1920, but even this limited claim must come with further qualifiers.   Yes, the Red Sox are at the top of the list, but

 

            a)  The White Sox have been essentially just as unlucky as the Red Sox,

            b)  The Cubs aren’t far behind,

            c)  If you break the list at 1921, rather than 1920, the Indians are actually further behind on their luck than the Red Sox are (2.73, one World Championship against an expectation of 3.73), and

            d)  What about them Giants?

 

            The Giants won several World Championships, but those were in New York, and are not a source of much satisfaction to the fans of the team in San Francisco, who have nurtured and cared for this team these last 46 years.   Over those 46 years, the Giants have no World Championships against an expectation of 2.17, putting them very much in the hard luck circle.    The Giants have put fine, fine teams on the field, and a lot of them.

 

            We’ll put the San Francisco Giants on a revised chart in just a moment, but first let me note what is truly most remarkable about the chart above.   The “luck” of the Red Sox since 1920 has been bad, but it has been fairly unremarkable.   In a sense, it is a game like this:  there are 100 ping-pong balls in a sack, 80 of them white and 20 of them red.   Once every five years, you get a chance to stick your hand in the sack, and draw out a ping-pong ball.  If you draw out a red one, you win $10 million.   If you draw out a white one, you get slapped in the ass by a sumo wrestler and pursued to the bathroom by a hive of African killer bees.  

 

            If you go through your entire lifetime without ever drawing out the red ping pong ball, you’re going to feel like you have been cursed by fate and stung by one hell of a lot of killer bees—but the event is statistically unremarkable.  The prolonged bad luck of the Boston Red Sox, while it may hurt like hell, is statistically unremarkable, at least from this angle.  Analyzed from the standpoint of the moment just before Mookie Wilson’s ground ball, of course, it is statistically much more remarkable, but just in terms of the teams the Red Sox have had and the failure to win a World Championship in 85 years. . .it is not, really, all that amazing.

 

            The amazing part is not the Red Sox bad luck; it is the Yankees good luck.   The Yankees have had the strongest organization in baseball since 1920, and they should, by rights, have won more World Championships than any other team—indeed, more than any other two teams put together.

 

            What is remarkable is that their luck, or whatever it is, has pushed them far, far beyond even that level.   The Yankees should have won 17 World Championships, a huge number.   They’ve actually won 26.  While the Red Sox have been reaching into the sack every five years, the Yankees have been reaching in there (almost) every year.   But even so, it is just remarkable how often they keep coming out with that damned red ping pong ball.   These are the luckiest teams in history, by decade:

 

						World
						Series		Expected
	Team	Decade				Won		Championships		Luck
	Yankees	1950	-	1959		6		3.06		2.94
	Red Sox	1910	-	1919		4		1.42		2.58
	A's	1970	-	1979		3		0.87		2.13
	Yankees	1990	-	1999		3		0.91		2.09
	Yankees	1940	-	1949		4		1.97		2.03
	Blue Jays	1990	-	1999		2		0.35		1.65
	Dodgers	1980	-	1989		2		0.42		1.58
	Yankees	1930	-	1939		5		3.71		1.29
	Yankees	1970	-	1979		2		0.74		1.26
	A's	1910	-	1919		3		1.79		1.21

 

            With, of course, a nod to the Florida Marlins, who are +1.90 through the last ten years, which don’t happen to be a calendar decade. 

 

            The Yankees have gotten everybody’s luck.   The Yankees are at +9.33, which means, by definition, that everybody else is at -9.33.  But even if you focus on the other “lucky’ teams, they only total up to +9.16.   The Yankees have been better than anybody else—and they have also been luckier not only than anybody else, they have been luckier than everybody else put together.  

 

            Three other notes, and then I close the books here. 

 

            1)  Whitey Herzog’s teams were not, in fact, unlucky, at least as can be measured by this method.  Herzog won one World Championship; he had an expectation of winning one.  He broke even.

 

            2)  Almost all of the other teams cited as under-achieving do, in fact, show up near the bottom of the list below. 

 

            3)  The following chart reprises the chart before, but with franchises broken down into cities and sometimes time frames.  The teams are arranged in order of the discrepancy between their expected and actual championships:

 

				World
				Championships		Expected
	Team	Beginning	Ending	Won		Championships
	Yankees	1903	2003	26		16.67
	Red Sox	1903	1919	5		1.85
	Cardinals	1903	2003	9		6.54
	LA Dodgers	1958	2003	5		2.77
	Marlins	1994	2003	2		0.10
	Phi/KC/Oak	1903	2003	9		7.68
	Toronto	1977	2003	2		0.90
	Minnesota	1961	2003	2		1.19
	Oakland	1968	2003	4		3.23
	Arizona	1997	2003	1		0.27
	Angels	1961	2003	1		0.45
	Philadelphia	1903	1954	5		4.45
	Red Sox	1903	2003	5		4.55
	Bos Braves	1903	1952	1		0.59
	Royals	1969	2003	1		0.71
	Mets	1962	2003	2		1.79
	Pittsburgh	1903	2003	5		4.86
	KC A’s	1955	1967	0		0.00
	Pilots	1969		0		0.00
	Rockies	1994	2003	0		0.00
	Wash/Minn	1903	2003	3		3.07
	Texas	1973	2003	0		0.21
	Reds	1903	2003	5		5.22
	Was/Texas	1961	2003	0		0.22
	Mil Braves	1953	1965	1		1.23
	Padres	1969	2003	0		0.25
	Tigers	1903	2003	4		4.32
	Montreal	1969	2003	0		0.37
	StL Browns	1903	1952	0		0.37
	NY Giants	1903	1957	5		5.40
	Philadelphia	1903	2003	1		1.45
	Astros	1962	2003	0		0.53
	Brewers	1970	2003	0		0.68
	Dodgers	1903	2003	6		6.74
	Mariners	1977	2003	0		0.87
	Orioles	1953	2003	3		4.47
	Braves	1903	2003	3		4.56
	Washington	1903	1960	1		2.58
	White Sox	1903	2003	2		3.73
	Atl Braves	1966	2003	1		2.74
	SF Giants	1958	2003	0		2.17
	Indians	1903	2003	2		4.43
	Giants	1903	2003	5		7.58
	Red Sox	1920	2003	0		2.69
	Bkn Dodgers	1903	1957	1		3.93
	Cubs	1903	2003	2		5.64