[tayloraj]

Originally Posted by thehef

That's likely how it would've been handled IRL. Random drawings to determine which teams square off in one-game playoffs, followed by the two winners matching up in a one-gamer for the pennant... Not much known history to go on (for possible 4-way AL ties), but that's the way it was envisioned, for example, in 1955, when a four-way tie between the Indians, Red Sox, Yankees, and White Sox was a possibility. It woulda been:

Mon 9/26: Clev @ Bos, NYY @ Chic
Tue 927: Clev/Bos winner @ NYY/Chic winner

Not exactly sure which year they flipped (I probably have that somewhere) but by the 60's the AL joined the NL in going with best-of-three tiebreakers as the standard. In both 1964 & 1967, the AL drew up plans to bust a two-way tie with a best-of-three, and a three-way tie with a four-, possibly five-game, round-robin (followed by a best-of-three)... Also in '64, the NL had the possibility of two, three, and four way ties. They would've handled a two-way and three-way essentially the same as the AL. A four-way would've featured a pair of best-of-threes, followed by another best-of-three...

By '69, with the onset of the divisional series, one-game playoffs became the standard.

Thanks for all that information; I knew that the AL preferred one game and the NL three, but not with anything like that level of detail.