Champs seek increasingly rare feat in Series encore
Over parts of three decades, it has quietly become the toughest team feat in the major North American pro sports leagues.
Win the World Series? OK, but try doing it again.
The Astros will begin the playoffs later this week trying to become Major League Baseball's first repeat champion since 2000. The drought is the longest in MLB history and the longest in MLB, the NFL, the NBA and the NHL without a repeat champ.
In the 22 seasons since the Yankees won their third straight World Series in 2000, half of the defending champions have failed to make the playoffs, despite MLB'S expanding the postseason field. Only two teams, the 2001 Yankees and 2009 Phillies, returned to the Fall Classic with a chance to defend their championships.
So what's made it so hard?
“I think it's just the talent across the league and baseball is just a more difficult sport,” said Mike Stanton, a studio analyst on Astros telecasts and a reliever with the Yankees during their 1998-2000 threepeat. “You have such a long regular season. Even the number of games you play, football is one game a week. It's one game per round. In baseball, you have all these series to go through and a whole bunch of games you've got to win in order to do it. It's just not that easy. I think a lot of it has to do with just the parity of the sport.”
Hall of Fame executive Pat Gillick, who built Toronto's back-to-back champs in 1992-93 and Philadelphia's 2008 title team that fell two wins shy of repeating, cited roster turnover that makes it hard for teams to keep a nucleus in place.
Since December 1975, when an arbitrator struck down MLB'S reserve clause that bound players to teams for perpetuity and ushered in free agency, only four teams have won repeat championships: the Reds (1975-76), Yankees (1977-78 and 1998-2000) and Blue Jays (1992-93).
“The one thing about it is your rosters are changing more frequently now, from a financial standpoint and a player movement standpoint,” Gillick said. “A number of clubs that are very competitive and a number of clubs that are winners, they have a roster, and all of a sudden because of free agency, some of the players you had the previous season move on. You're not able to have the same roster you had the previous season.”
Gillick's 1993 Toronto team repeated despite a staggering degree of turnover.
The Blue Jays saw key veterans such as designated hitter Dave Winfield, outfielder Candy Maldonado, third baseman Kelly Gruber, starting pitchers David Cone and Jimmy Key and closer Tom Henke depart after the 1992 championship.
“We changed 14 guys and came back with 11,” said Cito Gaston, the San Antonio native who managed those Blue Jays winners. “To win it again was pretty amazing. It was two different teams. Maybe the best thing we did not knowing it (at the time) was we switched up 14 guys. Not to say the guys who we could've brought back wouldn't have felt the same way, but we had some (new blood).
“I think guys played really hard that year for Paul Molitor, who had been in a World Series but did not win it when he was with Milwaukee. Paul carried the weight himself. He had a great year that season and probably drove in more runs than he did in his life.”
When asked how much pressure he felt to repeat, Gaston provided a biggerpicture perspective.
“To me, pressure is having eight kids and no job,” he said. “That's pressure. To me, we just went about business as usual. I think that's the biggest part of the
game sometimes — guys put too much pressure on themselves, and they don't just be themselves and play.”this year's Astros, hampered by injuries much of the way, saw a dip in the regular season, winning 90 games — 16 fewer than last year — before rallying to win the AL West on the final weekend.
“It's just dealing with the trials and tribulations,” Stanton said. “Any good team that goes through situations like this … I think the Astros really showed their colors in this last series against the Diamondbacks. They knew the job at hand. They weren't completely controlling their own destiny as far as the division was concerned, but they knew they had to go out and dominate a good team. I wouldn't say they dominated, but they won three games. The cream rises to the top when the game's on the line and (in critical situations).”
And now, Houston has an opportunity to defend its championship, something that has been far from a certainty the past 22 years.
“The hard thing is to get guys to give up their families and their lives for six months,” Gaston said. “It's hard for them, and I'm not saying they're not willing to do that. To win one time takes a lot out of the whole team — managers, coaches and players.
“I think winning it the first time (comes) with all the pressure. The second time around is a little different.”