For the 40th time in MLB history, there will be a winner-take-all game in the World Series.
Wednesday night at Minute Maid Park, the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals will meet in Game 7 of the 2019 Fall Classic. The winner earns the Commissioner’s Trophy and a parade. The loser hits the links.
Here are a few Game 7 facts for your next trivia night, courtesy of ESPN Stats & Information and the Elias Sports Bureau:
• This is the first postseason series in MLB, NBA or NHL history in which the road team has won the first six games. If the Nats win Game 7, they’ll make American sports history, with road teams going 7-0 in a World Series for the first time.
• This will be the first World Series Game 7 to feature former Cy Young winners as opposing starters. Max Scherzer will go for the Nats, and Zack Greinke for the Astros.
• Scherzer will join Joe Magrane (1987) as the only pitchers to start Game 1 and Game 7 of a World Series where those were his only appearances of the series.
• The last World Series winner-take-all game also featured the Astros — Game 7 of Astros-Dodgers in 2017. Houston won 5-1 in Los Angeles.
• This will be the fifth World Series Game 7 this decade, the most in a decade since the 1970s — which also had five.
• The home team is 19-20 in World Series winner-take-all games, including three straight losses. Before that, the home team had won nine in a row.
• Seven of the past eight teams to force a World Series Game 7 on the road — as the Nats did Tuesday night — went on to lose the series. The 2016 Cubs were the last to win it.
• The team that scores the first run in winner-take-all World Series games is 25-14.
• There has been only one walk-off home run in a winner-take-all World Series game. It was hit by Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski against the Yankees in 1960.
• Zack Greinke will be the fourth pitcher to start a winner-take-all World Series game after playing for a different team earlier in the season. Things didn’t go so well for the previous three as they lasted a combined two innings: Curly Ogden (1924 Nationals) got one out, Hank Borowy (1945 Cubs) didn’t get even one while allowing three runs and Yu Darvish (2017 Dodgers) gave up five runs in 1 ⅔ innings. Of note if you like coincidences, the last occurrence also came against the Astros and the first occurrence came for the 1924 Washington Senators, the last year a D.C. team won the World Series.