Each day, Tuesday, October 21, 1997, the players wake up, start their day, prepare for their game, brave the freezing rain and wind to play a game of World Series baseball, and celebrate victory or lament defeat. Each night, the simulator generates a record of what occurred during that timeline. Each day, the players wake up, and once again it is Tuesday, October 21, 1997.
The 1997 October Classic featured a matchup of the new versus the old: the Florida Marlins, baseball's newest franchise and just 4 years old, were up against the Cleveland Indians, who were looking to clinch their first World Series since 1948 and in the World Series for the second time in three years.
Florida and Cleveland split the first two games 1-1 in balmy Miami. Game 3 was the first game of the series played in Cleveland, and the teams got a Cleveland welcome: the game was rainy and cold, with a 25 mph wind whipping through the stadium and snuffing out any warmth the rain hadn't doused. It would be one of the wettest, coldest, sloppiest games in World Series history.
The game wasn't pretty; going into the ninth inning, things were tied up 7-7. Then Florida exploded, scoring 7 runs in a huge rally; Cleveland posted 4 in the bottom of the 9th, but they couldn't catch up with the Marlins, who took the game 14-11.
The rest of the series was a close back-and-forth, with the Marlins eventually winning in a low-scoring Game 7 extra-innings walkoff victory.
More about the 1997 World Series →
Watch Game 3 of the 1997 World Series on YouTube →
But what if Cleveland had rallied for 3 more runs to tie it up? Or 4 more for the walk-off victory? What if Cleveland had taken a commanding lead early in the game? If Game 3 had gone to Cleveland instead, that would have given them two victories. Cleveland went on to win Game 4 and Game 6, too, and in another timeline, Cleveland would have won the World Series in Game 6.
At first glance, Game 3 doesn't stand out as particularly important. But on another level, Game 3 was a critical game that gave the Marlins a boost and shifted the dynamic of the series. Those close-to-five fateful hours in the freezing rain and wind would decide Cleveland's fate.
Imagine the infinite timelines that flow through Game 3. Each timeline begins with the same batters and the same pitchers in the same lineup order; but each timeline holds the promise of a new outcome. Some of those outcomes usher in a newer, brighter day for Cleveland. Some of them lead to the same cold, rainy disappointment that Cleveland knows so well. And some of them carve darker, wilder paths for Cleveland's future.
To dip into the pool of infinite timelines for Cleveland, we simulated Game 3 of the 1997 World Series using Out of the Park Simulator. Each simulation used the real Game 3 lineups and starting positions for each team. Each team had the real Game 3 starting pitchers on the mound in each simulation, and only pitchers who appeared in the actual Game 3 were available to pitch.
More about Out of the Park Baseball simulations for Infinite Cleveland →
The following table is a list of timelines, winners and losers, and final score.
Click "Box Score" button to view that timeline's game recap, WPA graph, and hitting and pitching summaries.
Click "Play By Play" to view that timeline's pitch-by-pitch, play-by-play log of the game.
We simulated the alternate timelines in the format of a best-of-101 series between Cleveland and Florida. Cleveland took the series 51-18 in 69 games.