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Message: [QUOTE="connie, post: 3119287, member: 7882"] I "liked" this post because it is provocative. (And as a high-water example, I give you 1 out in the top of the 9th inning of Game 4 of the 1988 NLCS. The Mets up (I think) 4-2 against the Dodgers, ready to take a commanding 3-1 lead in the series. Mike Soscia goes deep on Gooden for a 2-run HR, and the Dodgers win the game in extra-innings to ties the series. Within a year, the mighty Mets of the mid-80s were no more, with but a single WS to show for it.) But I caution against what I call "reading history backwards". It may certainly appear in retrospect that Game 3 of the '96 series was a high-water mark for the Braves. But reading history forward, no one at the time could ever have perceived that or thought that. And it is hard to believe that any player's performance in subsequent seasons was somehow affected by what happened in the previous year. Interestingly, but understandably, we tend not to ask these high-water questions when history produces events that negate the need to ask in the first place. But that does not mean that fortuity was not also at work. Consider the Patriots incredible run. But for the ruling in the "Tuck" rule game, the 2001 Pats probably would not have gone on to win the SB 36. The SB 38 run had the Pats winning the Div. game by 3 points, the SB by another 3 points. In fact, the Patriots' margin of victory in SBs 36, 38 and 39 is a total of 9 points (3 points in each game). The Pats could have and probably should have lost '14 SB. Thus, but for a play here and there in each of these years, it is possible that the Pats could have not won a SB until 2017. In that event, history would be telling a very different story than the one that [I]will [/I]be told (justifiably so) years hence. This is not to say that the Patriots are not a great team during these years. It is to say that sometimes fortune smiles on some more so than on others, perhaps disproportionately. [/QUOTE]

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