Umm, just one more thing . . . (popups recommended)

looky here in '05 . . . trivia
looky here in '04 . . . trivia
looky here in '03 . . . trivia
looky here in '02 . . . trivia
looky here in '01 . . . trivia

looky here in '00 . . . triv...oh, Miscellanea! Smart NYer!
looky here in '99 . . . trivia
looky here in '98 . . . trivia
looky here in '97 . . . trivia
looky here in '96 . . . trivia

looky here in '95 . . . trivia
looky here in '94 . . . triv...oops, no Series that year.
looky here in '93 . . . trivia
looky here in '92 . . . trivia
looky here in '91 . . . trivia
looky here in '90 . . . trivia

I'm tired of piping these links, so if you don't mind:

1989 World Series#Trivia
1988 World Series#Trivia
1987 World Series#Trivia
1986 World Series#Trivia
1985 World Series#Trivia

1984 World Series#Trivia
1983 World Series#Trivia
1982 World Series#Trivia
1981 World Series#Trivia
1980 World Series#Trivia

'Nuff said. Or perhaps not. Here's a tidbit from that last WS "Trivia" section linked above:

 According to Tug McGraw, one of the police horses, who lined up in the field during the 9th inning of Game 6, was not "stadium trained." (8th item down the list)

I don't think you can top (or is it bottom?) that for trivia. There's a simple reason that over a quarter of a century of trivia sections (and probably more) have piled up in these World Series articles: Writing well is hard work. It's just too easy to simply drop minutiae onto these pages and file them under "Trivia" and let somebody else do the hard work of integrating them . . . later. 

Part of my motivation for dredging up all those links above is that I've noticed an inconsistency of style and layout, and some confusing or redundant info in all the WS articles going back to 1903. It's like the same car built by different contractors at different times with different materials. I find it a bit troubling because it's a sign of limited effort, limited means for anybody to have developed a plan for what could be a real highlight of WP (can you say "Fall Classic Portal"?). I found it fairly easy to take the '06 trivia about La Russa and Leyland and create a separate section under the "Background" section, and it seems to have held up since Friday night. But it took some time to sift through it and move the info.

Cutting to the chase: All this WS "Trivia" is classifiable. The better it's organized, the less it will seem like trivia, so if a handful of "labels" could be cooked up for categories of info formerly known as trivia, the overall style of these articles will seem to read better. That ought to settle the trivia issue.

Postscript: For instance, a 4-1 WS where one contender splits "on the road" and then comes home and sweeps to win 3 more and clinch is fairly rare from what I've looked up so far. What the Cards have done against Detroit in 2006 matches what NY (NL) accomplished in 1969 (except the Mets dropped Game 1 instead of 2 to Baltimore). I'm still working my way thru past Fall Classics to see when else this happened, so I can add this info to the '06 article in an appropriate place, but not as an addition to the dreaded Trivia section. A heading that might be appropriate for this info each and every year: Long series, short series. 4 or 5 games would classified as a short series, 6 or 7 classified as long. Easy to spot trends in this area and develop copy to fill a section like this. Was a short or long series predicted each year; by who; was a trend broken, were the prognosticators wrong, did a noted BB writer point this out so it doesn't smack of the dreaded Original Research? Now really 'nuff said.   (talk)