Expert: Steve L - 7/5/2004

Question
I'm a big baseball fan, and I'm trying to explain the game to a friend who doesn't know much about baseball.  I've been trying to make him understand why games back in the loss column is more important than the "games back" number that appears in the standings.  Can you explain why games behind in the loss column is so significant?  

Answer
Let's use today's NL  West Standings as an example:
                  W    L    GB
  San Diego       45   37   --
  San Francisco   45   38   0.5

The Giants have WON the same number of games as San Diego, but they've played ONE MORE GAME and LOST IT.

You can make up a game if you have the same number of games left to play as the team you're chasing.

But you can NEVER make up a game that's already in the LOSS Column. Once it's lost, it's lost.