I just realized something. If Cleveland had beaten Tampa, all eight playoff teams would have been original franchises. ("Original" meaning since the start of the World Series era.) This hasn't happened since 1990--but back then there were only four teams in the playoffs. Before that it had only happened once since 1975, and only a handful of times in the divisional play era (1969-).

Another random history thing: Isn't it odd that the first six times the Red Sox played in the World Series, they faced six different teams? And it only took till their eighth try to play the seventh out of the eight originals.

1903: Pittsburgh
1912: NY (now SF)
1915: Philadelphia
1916: Brooklyn (now LA)
1918: Chicago
1946: St. Louis
1967: St. Louis (first repeated team)
1975: Cincinnati

Still waiting to face the eighth and final original NL franchise, the Braves. This could be the year.

Bonus: If we had beaten Cleveland in that one-game playoff in '48, we would have played the Braves and all eight would have been completed in 1975. (Have I done an identical post to this before? Oh well, it's new to some people.)