AS IT TURNS OUT, WINNING GAME ONE REALLY HELPS

The 2013 baseball season is over and the Boston Red Sox have won their third championship since 2004. The Red Sox won game one, which as it turns out, historically speaking, greatly helped them in winning their eighth overall championship.

I hinted that I'd explore the success rate of winning the first game in the World Series waaaaaay back in July. Well here it is.

There have been 109 World Series and, obviously, 109 teams won the first game of their respective series. 69 of those teams went on to win the championship, a success rate of 63.3%. So yeah, bullet points for future World Series teams- you should probably win game one. (I could write the "Keys to the Game" blurbs for Fox with that kind of analysis).

Now obviously, it's not paramount that you win game one. After all, one game in a (usually) seven game series is a drop in the hat. A team can dig itself out of a one game hole. Hell, the first World Series champions in 1903 (fittingly, the Red Sox, then the Boston Americans) lost game one and came back to win.

But what happens if a team puts up a two game lead to start off a World Series? 52 teams in World Series history have opened the series by winning the first two games. 41 of those 52 teams ended up winning the whole thing, giving 2-0 teams a staggering 78.8% success rate in the Fall Classic.

The more consecutive wins a team piles on, the greater the chance that team will be hoisting a Commissioner's trophy come series' end. A 1-0 lead works a bit better than 2/5 of the time. A 2-0 lead works a bit less than 4/5 of the time. No team has ever overcome a 3-0 deficit in the World Series. (It's happened once in a seven game series, by the Red Sox in the 2004 ALCS. The Red Sox are having all the fun in this article.)

So how about some firsts and other interesting things? I mentioned earlier that the 1903 Americans were the first team to overcome a one game deficit and win the World Series. The 1905 New York Giants were the first team to win the World Series after winning game one.

The 1907 Chicago Cubs were the first team to start a series 2-0 and win the whole thing. Well, technically. Game one of the 1907 World Series ended in a tie (and yes, way back in the day, World Series games could end in ties), but the Cubs went on to win games two and three (they technically swept the series 4-0 in five games). The 1908 Cubs were the real first team to put up a 2-0 lead and win (in the first two games, no ties).

The first team to overcome a 2-0 deficit and win the World Series were the 1921 New York Giants, storming back to beat those pesky Yankees (although at that point in history, I guess the Giants were the asshole team from New York that always won pennants (six in the World Series era to that point) while the Yankees had just won their first).

Oddly enough, the Yankees have a really annoying habit of coming back from 2-0 deficits to win championships. They've done it four times (!), in 1956, 1958, 1978 and 1996.

These 2013 Red Sox are the latest team to win game one and the championship. The 2012 San Francisco Giants were the last team to put up a 2-0 lead in their eventual sweep of the Tigers. The 2009 Yankees were the last team to overcome a 1-0 deficit and win. The aforementioned 1996 Yankees were the last one to overcome a 2-0 deficit.

So there you go. It feels weird writing an actual article for this blog and not football predictions. I hope it was interesting. Now I need to sleep so the monster in my chest can take a damn dirt nap.