Chance for a four-way tie?

As I near the end of the 1965 APBA baseball replay, rolling games for the last five days of the season, there’s a chance there could be a four-way tie for the National League.

Break out the rule books for settling this kind of situation; in the words of my wife when she comes across anything out of the ordinary, “I’ve never seen such a thing.”

It could happen. Right now, with three games remaining to play for the slate of contests for Sept. 29, 1965, here are the standings:

                        W        L    GB

Cincinnati     94       64    --

San Fran        94        64    --

Pittsburgh     93        65    1

St. Louis        92        66    2

Los Angeles, the actual National League winner in the real season, never scored enough runs during the season to dominate and are 86-72, eight games out and guaranteed a fifth-place finish.

The American League was settled on Sept. 26 when Minnesota beat Washington and Detroit lost the second game of a doubleheader to Cleveland, 1-0.

Pittsburgh plays the New York Mets at Shea Stadium for the last game I’ve got scheduled for Sept. 29, and then they host the Cubs for three games to wrap up the Pirates’ season.

St. Louis travels to Houston for four games.

And the big series: Cincinnati is at San Francisco for their last four games.

Here’s how it could end up with a four-way tie.  If Cincinnati and San Francisco split their series, each winning two games, they’ll have identical 96-66 records. If Pittsburgh takes two out of three against Chicago, they’ll end up with a 96-66 record and if the Cardinals sweep the four-game set in Houston, they’ll also have a 96-66 record.

The best chance to avoid the logjam is if the Reds or the Giants take three out of four. But then, if the Pirates sweep the Cubs, there’ll still be a two-way tie for first.

Of course, if San Francisco or Cincinnati sweeps the four games, any talk of any ties is over.

So, it’s been that kind of season all year long. St. Louis led the National League for much of the season. On June 30, they were one game ahead of San Francisco, 5.5 games ahead of the Reds and 8.5 in front of Pittsburgh. But the Cards fell out of first in August, going 14-16, while Cincinnati went 19-9.

San Francisco took the lead in September with an 18-11 mark for the month, fueled by ace pitcher Juan Marichal, who has gone 10-1 in his last 12 starts, and outfielder Willie Mays, who leads the majors with 49 home runs. Willie McCovey also has 43 homers for the Giants.

I still have 34 games to play in the regular season. One of the deals my wife and I have is that she gets to roll the last inning of a season. She did it when I finished 1991 and, because she’s a sports fan and gets the lure of APBA, she’ll roll again to finish 1965. The problem, though, is she’s visiting her aunt in northern Illinois and won’t be back until the end of the week. Obviously, rolling 34 games in five days would be a chore with my job and the freelance writing I do. But there’s a part of me that wants to stay up late tossin’ the games to see how they come out.

And, we really haven’t determined if Holly’s end-of-season roll is for the end of the regular season or the World Series. Because she’s supportive of my obsessive APBA hobby, I’ll do my due diligence and wait for her return to roll that last Giants-Reds game.

I’ll have to figure out how we’ll roll the games if there’s a four-way tie.