LUCK

 

               Of all the adages swimming around in our heads maybe the dumbest is the one about how it’s better to be lucky than good. It’s a common one in sports, trotted out every time an errant play turns a game. Gary Kasparov, the chess champion and no-nonsense guy, wrote it off rightly as ridiculous. Said he, “In any competitive endeavor you have to be damned good before luck can be of any use to you.”

               This is not to say that luck plays no role in sporting outcomes—far from it. Every day a bloop hit or phantom pass-interference call decides a contest, to the glee of some and despair of others, and having money on the game multiplies the hurt to losers. Every gambler can regale you for hours about the “bad beats” he’s suffered, more than anyone else has had, for sure. The good breaks he’s received usually are forgotten in the recitation.

               In team sports as elsewhere, the role of luck can be quantified, more or less. The more games that are played in any competition the less luck figures into the final standings, and the more points that are scored the less it can determine any individual result. By those guidelines Major League baseball with its 162-game annual regular-season schedule, and NBA basketball, with its single-game point tallies of 200 or so, are the least luck-bound and low-scoring ice hockey and soccer are the most, with football somewhere between.  Hockey has a term to describe the games decided by fluke goals: “Puck Luck.” But even there random occurrences tend to balance out over an 82-game National Hockey League schedule and the best teams usually come out on top.

               Come playoff time, however, the leavening effect of the long run disappears, and randomness is magnified. Baseball’s post-season begins with a couple of one-and-done “play in” games that round out the final playoff fields of eight teams, four in each league. Those are total crap shoots.  The best-of-five games divisional series’ follow, then the best-of-seven league-championship and World Series rounds.  Taken together that’s a good chunk of starts, but sweeping one round doesn’t affect later ones, so survivors start from “go” each time.

               The subject of luck occurred to me because the Chicago White Sox, my No. 1A favorite team (the Cubs are No. 1), are in the playoffs. If luck in the broad sense really matters in baseball, then the White Sox are among baseball’s biggest losers.  But they recouped much of that in 2005 with a mind-boggling hot streak that resulted in their World Series victory.

               What the Irish call “bad cess” began for the Sox when they committed baseball’s all-time worst blunder by getting caught throwing the 1919 World Series, resulting in the lifetime suspensions of the heart of the roster that also had won the ’17 title. That would be their last championship in 88 years, a span of futility topped only by my Cubbies’ 108 years ending in 2016.   In that period the Sox won but one American League pennant (in 1959) and rarely challenged for another. Their best team in that era was that of 1994, when they led their division into August only to have the remainder of the regular season, and the playoffs, cancelled by a players’ strike. That never happened before and hasn’t since.

               Relatedly, the Sox have spent the last 40 years as the No. 2 team in a two-team market, trailing the Cubs in every financial category.  Bad management decisions contributed to that status, but so did geography, their South Side of the city trailing the Cubs’ North Side as an entertainment lure. That’s denied them the wherewithal to be regular title contenders in a money-driven game.

               As 2005 dawned few saw the Sox as world beaters, and man-for-man they weren’t. They wound up winning 99 regular-season games without leading any important league individual statistical category, taking a Golden Glove or Silver Slugger award or having anyone elected to play in that year’s All-Star Game. What they had was a group of solid veteran position players led by first-baseman Paul Konerko, outfielder Jermaine Dye and catcher A. J. Pierzynski, and that year’s best and luckiest starting-pitching rotation. Mark Buerhle, Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland and Jose Contreras went through the season injury free, each making 30-plus starts and pitching 200-plus innings. If that wasn’t lucky nothing is.

               The Sox’s good fortune really kicked during the playoffs. They swept the Boston Red Sox in the Division Series, beat the L.A. Angels four games to one in the ALCS and eliminated the Houston Astros in straight sets in the World Series. Their 11-1 record has been matched only once, by the 1999 New York Yankees, in the extended-playoff era.

               This is not to say the wins were easy or without oddities. With his team leading 4-2 in game two of their series, Red Sox second-baseman Tony Graffanino muffed an inning-ending double-play grounder that set up the Chicagoans’ winning three-run home run. Scott Podsednik, a speedy but light-hitting White Sox outfielder who’d hit no home runs in 568 regular-season at-bats, hit one against the Red Sox and a walk-off shot that gave the team a 7-6 win in World Series game two.

 Buehrle, Garland, Garcia and Contreras pitched consecutive complete-game wins against the Angels, an eye-popping feat 16 years ago and just about impossible now. Game three of the Houston series was won in 14 innings on a home run by Geoff Blum, a backup who’d had just one previous post-season at-bat.

In a play that still amazes, game two against the Angels went into the bottom of the ninth inning in Chicago tied 1-1. With two outs, the canny Pierzynski swung and missed a low pitch for strike three but saw that the ball might have skimmed the dirt and took off for first base while the Angels were leaving the field. After extended and spirited discussion the umps let him stay there. His pinch runner stole second base and scored on a Joe Crede hit for a Sox 2-1 win. TV replays showed the ball was cleanly caught but they weren’t used to affect decisions until three years later. Bad luck, Angels.

The White Sox team that’s going into this season’s playoffs looks like better on paper than the ’05 edition.  It features a cast of flashy young hitters, a good starting staff and the baseball’s best 1-2 bullpen pair of Craig Kimbrel and Liam Hendriks. Alas, though, it so dominated its weak division that it played few regular-season games of consequence and often seemed uninterested as it plodded through a near-500 second half.  At their best the Sox can beat anyone, but they can lose to anyone, too. A little good luck wouldn’t hurt.