spatial series #1

consider this the first of (hopefully not too many - go yanks!) a series of posts related to the world series.

first post - an analysis of regional matchups in the world series. of the 105 played so far, about half (51% to be exact) have seen two teams from the same region against each other. three regions have multiple teams that have made it to the world series against each other: northeast, north central and southern california. 36 world series matchups have taken place in the northeast - a third of all the fall classics played. 14 have taken place in the north central with 4 in SoCal. these numbers, though, are not too surprising. considering that there were no teams in the west coast until the late 1950's, the northeast has gotten a considerable head start. the graph above charts by year where the regional matchups took place. taking a look, it gives a nice representation of how baseball expanded across the country over the years. the 1940-1960 block is nearly a solid red line for the northeast. the longest consecutive stretch lasted 5 years from 1912 to 1916, which would be expected, seeing the climate and geography of baseball at the time. 4 year stretches were common, including 1922-25 and 1950-53...but i think we can thank the yankees for half of that battle. on the flip side, the longest stretch of teams flying to games and not taking amtrak occurred from 1968-75 and 1982-88.