10 greatest pennant chases in Major League Baseball history
7. 1967 American League: Four-Team Race
There were no divisions in Major League Baseball until 1969. For the first 68 seasons of the American League, the team with the best overall record was awarded with a trip to the World Series. Similarly, the National League pennant winner outlasted the rest of the league over the course of a 154 or 162-game schedule before being crowned league champion.
Just two years before a second series of expansion caused the leagues to split into two six-team divisions rather than one ten-team slugfest, the AL experienced one of the most dramatic pennant races in Major League history.
Behind the strength of Triple Crown winner and AL MVP Carl Yastrzemski, the Boston Red Sox posted the franchise’s first winning season in nearly a decade. Boston then outlasted the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins by one game, as well as the Chicago White Sox by three in one of the most hotly contested pennant chases ever.
The “Impossible Dream” Red Sox spent a grand total of six days with sole possession of first place in the American League, but one of them happened to be most important: Sunday, October 1. With a 5-3 victory over the Twins, and an 8-5 Tigers loss to the California Angels in the second game of a season finale double-header, the Red Sox punched their ticket to the World Series by breaking a tie with Minnesota atop the standings.
Boston could not break its world title drought, however, and fell to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games.
Next: 1964 National League