Middles (14)—Three All

Click here for an introduction to Round and Square's theme of "Middles."

[a] Series RF

The World Series is tied at three games apiece as I write this. Before it posts a few minutes after midnight, the "middle"-like 50/50 tie will be broken, and either the Texas Rangers or St. Louis Cardinals will have won the World Series, four games to three. It might seem a stretch to put "game seven" under the Round and Square category of middles, and that is surely so. But this isn't about the deciding game at all (of course, there will be an "endings" post about "Game Seven" when it is in the NBA, NHL, or baseball news in the future). 

[b] In media res RF

Today's post examines something slightly different—getting to a tie. My point is that, once "Game Six" is over in any seven-game competitive series, we almost immediately turn our focus to the deciding game that will break the tie. I say "not so fast." Let's rather take a deep look at how we got to the crucial deciding game in the first place. It has a storied history for sports fans that usually gets buried in the sheer drama of a  series that was tied—stuck in an unsatisfying kind of conceptual middle—and is about to be altered in one team's favor (and to another team's everlasting regret). 

Again, not so fast. Much of the drama in the history of (American) major league baseball's World Series has taken place in Game Six when a game that seems to represent a step on the path to history actually becomes the most memorable moment of all. You see, we tend to look at it as a tie as soon as the game is over, but the most fascinating dynamic is often how it got to be a tie in the first place.

[c] Game 1905 RF

Consider the situation carefully. Before Game Six begins, a series is (by definition) three games to two. One team is ahead, and can taste victory. The other team has to win in order to have a chance to play a subsequent, deciding game. The drama of Game Six, then, is that one team can almost taste it, but can "afford" to lose, at least in the sense that another game will follow. Not so for the team on the brink of elimination. For those players and fans, Game Six is everything.

Something like that dynamic—powered by jet fuel—took place last night in St. Louis. The Cardinals were down to their last strike in the ninth and tenth innings, only to find a way to claw back and tie the game each time. The Texas Rangers staff had already prepared the locker room for the victory celebration by carefully taping plastic in front of all lockers and equipment. Teams learned to do this from experience—to risk the deflating images of cutting through dry, sad plastic after losing what had become the penultimate big game. Far better, the theory goes, to take down the plastic (storing it for "tomorrow's" game) than to have celebratory sparkling wine, beer, and cola running into the cracks of every locker in the room because they were unprepared.

[d] In the Cards RF

Well, the Cardinals came back in the most dramatic of fashions, winning in the bottom of the eleventh inning and forcing tonight's deciding game. The Rangers have to get their heads together after being as close to a World Series victory as it is possible to come (one more strike; that's all that was needed—twice).

My point is that the experience of such a game is fundamentally different for each team because of the overwhelming fact that one is almost there and the other is almost gone. If exactly the same set of events were to unfold tonight, it would still "feel" different. The stakes have now changed—both teams are "middled," tied, and only one will emerge as the winner. Yesterday, the Rangers could lose and still wake up today knowing that they had another chance. Today, it's different.

And, to conclude this little reflection on competitive symmetry and asymmetry, I look back to some of the most storied Game Six drama in the last few decades. If you are a baseball fan, it is easy enough to guess most of the examples I have chosen. If you are not, but take the time to think about the "managerial dynamics" of Game Six situations, you could learn a great deal about strategic thinking. You see, Game Seven is cultural mythology. Almost nothing "in life" is like an all-or-nothing deciding game (dramatic as you might think your company meeting presentation might be next week). Game Seven is magic, luck, art, and chance.

Life is lot more like Game Six. If you can come to understand what that means, you will be on the road to "getting" this strange world in which we live. Soul-crushing despair and hope are mingled in the confusion of fate, chance, and opportunity. Just ask the teams who struggled in five riveting "Games Six." Take a look.

[e] Mythical Seven RF

Game Six 1975

Game Six 1986

Game Six 1991

Game Six 1993

Same Six 2011

And one more thing about being behind entering Game Six (being "down" 3-2 is also a lot like life). If you find a way to win, you have another chance for glory, as everyone in St. Louis knows right now. 

[f] Over RF