Giants on the Verge of History

Two days ago in this space, I commented upon the fact that the San Francisco Giants have an opportunity to do something that I thought was quite special: win their third World Series Championship in the space of five baseball seasons.  For those with short memories, the Giants won the Series in 2010 and 2012, and begin play in the National League Championship Series this evening.  As of now, they have a one in four chance of winning that third Series title in this half-decade.

That got me to wondering just how "special" would this feat actually be?  So, with help of Google and a spreadsheet, I can come to the conclusion, in the words of Yogi Berra, that such a feat is "rare, but not unusual".  It has been accomplished a total of thirteen times in the 108 previous years in which the World Series has been contested.  It needs to be noted, however, that that figure is skewed somewhat due to the domination, beginning in the early 1920's of the New York Yankees.  The Yanks have pulled off this feat a total of eight times:

NY Yankees Seasons	# of World Series Wins	# of Seasons
1936-39	4	4
1937-41	4	5
1939-43	3	5
1947-51	4	5
1949-53	5	5
1952-56	3	5
1958-62	3	5
1996-2000	4	5

You will note that I am looking at five year segments of time in this analysis, and this causes  some overlap in seasons.  Curiously, there was no five year window in which the Yanks nailed down three or more titles when one George Herman Ruth patrolled the outfield and dominated the Murderer's Row lineup.  That anomaly aside, the periods of Yankees' "Three or More in Five or Less" covers the eras of Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio to Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford to Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.  Joe McCarthy to Casey Stengel to Joe Torre.  That is quite a timeline.

And how about that 5-for-5 stretch from 1949-53?  I think it is safe to bet that that is something that will NEVER be accomplished again.

So, if you take the Yankees out of the equation, how often has the Three in Five-or-Less been done?  Well, then the numbers become a bit more rare and less than usual.

Team	Years	# of World Series Wins	# of Seasons
Philadelphia A’s	1910-13	3	4
Boston Red Sox	1912-16	3	5
Boston Red Sox	1915-18	3	4
St. Louis Cardinals	1942-46	3	5
Oakland A’s	1972-74	3	3

Only five teams have pulled off this particular hat trick.  It happened three times in the second decade of World Series play, and it included a bit of overlap with the Red Sox winning four titles in the space of seven seasons form 1912-18.  That particular  accomplishment took so much out of the Sox that it took them, as we all know, another 86 years before they would win another.

When the Athletics became the first team to pull this off after 1913, Connie Mack couldn't bear to pay the freight to keep his club together, so he sold off all of his star players and the team stunk for another twenty years.  They then won three straight pennants and two World Series from 1929-31, whereupon he cheaped out and broke up the team again.  It would take another forty-some years and two franchise shifts before the Athletics became relevant again, but when they did - three straight Series wins from 1972-74.

The outlier here are the Cardinals teams from 1942-46.  I believe that they are probably discredited because their victories occurred when many star players were in the military during WW II.  I am not sure that that is fair, since every other team was playing under the same conditions, and those Cardinals teams, managed by Hall of Fame manager Billy Southworth could only play the schedules that they were given, and they were the only team to win it three times during that particular five year span.

So there you are. Winning three-or-more in a five year (or less) span, has been done before, but take out the Yankees, and you do have something that is pretty special.  So, I am rooting for the Giants to pull this one off.  I don't know about you, but I like seeing history happen before my eyes.