A Brief History of One-Game Playoffs

Baseball-Reference has a list of all-time tiebreaker playoff games (* = Division Tiebreaker, ** = Wild Card Tiebreaker). The National League, for some reason, used best-of-3 tiebreakers through 1962. The only one-game playoff in that period was in the AL when the Indians beat the Red Sox in 1948. But below are the 7 one-game playoffs since 1962. Tomorrow the Twins and Tigers will make it 8.

Year	Lg	Date	Winning Team		Losing Team	Score	Winning Pitcher	Losing Pitcher
1978*	AL	10/2/1978	Yankees	@	Red Sox	5-4	Guidry	Torrez
1980*	NL	10/6/1980	Astros	@	Dodgers	7-1	Niekro	Goltz
1995*	AL	10/2/1995	Mariners		Angels	9-1	Johnson	Langston
1998**	NL	9/28/1998	Cubs		Giants	5-3	Trachsel	Gardner
1999**	NL	10/4/1999	Mets	@	Reds	5-0	Leiter	Parris
2007**	NL	10/1/2007	Rockies		Padres	9-8	Ortiz	Hoffman
2008*	AL	9/30/2008	White Sox		Twins	1-0	Danks	Blackburn

Analysis: No team in the past 30 years has won a tiebreaker playoff game and won the World Series. The only team to make it to the World Series after the one-game playoff in the past 30 years was the 2007 Colorado Rockies.

The 1978 Yankees-Red Sox game is the most famous as it featured Bucky Dent's home-run in Fenway (or the infamous Bucky f@$ing Dent, as he's known in New England). The 2007 playoff ended after Trevor Hoffman blew the save and Matt Holliday slid just past the catcher's tag (the Rockies would sweep their way through the next two rounds before getting swept by the Red Sox). Randy Johnson pitched a complete game, 3-hitter with 12 Ks in 1995 (and then went 2-0 against the Yankees in the ALDS). The Mets won the ALDS before losing the ALCS to the Braves on a Kenny Rogers walk-off walk. The 1980 Astros, the 1998 Cubs and the 2008 White Sox wouldn't make it out of the first round of the playoffs.

So since the Yankees won the 1978 World Series, the winning one-game playoff winners are a combined 4-6 in their following playoff series.