The Wild Card is in the books.
The A's are out, the Pirates are out. So we won't have a redux of the 1909 Pirates - Tigers matchup or the Orioles - Pirates from 1971 and 1979. The Pirates won all three of them.
The Giants and A's have met three times...1911 and 1913 as the New York Giants and Philadelphia A's and again in 1989 as the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's. The A's have won all three. The Philadelphia A's and the Cardinals went back-to-back in 1930 and 1931 and split the pair. The Oakland A's faced the Dodgers in 1974 and 1988, each team winning one.
What could still happen?
The St. Louis Browns, who became the Orioles in 1954, played the Cardinals in the first all-Missouri series in 1944. It was actually all-St. Louis. Not a subway series, as they don't have a subway there. All the home games were played at Sportsman's Park, the home field for both teams. Same place that Johnny Pesky held on to the cutoff throw while Enos Slaughter scored the winning run for the Cards in the 1946, beating the Red Sox in their first post-Babe Ruth series appearance. They'd wait another 58 years to sip the champagne. But we could have an Orioles-Cardinals series. The Cardinals and Royals could reprise 1985 with a third all-Missouri series.
What other repeats might happen?
Well, the Angels and Giants could do 2002 again...LA of Anaheim, known simply as Anaheim back then, won it. And then there's the potential Cardinals-Tigers matchup. They've faced each other three times in the World Series: St. Louis won in 1934, Detroit in 1968 and St. Louis in 2006.
16 possibilities, 4 potential repeats.
Not sure how that averages compared to other years...but at least the Yankees are not part of the fun.
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