For the past ten months, the BBL has been focused on its third season, and yesterday, both the dominant season of the Montreal Expos and the comeback season of the Cleveland Indians reached their conclusion in the end of the Backyard World Series.

The Expos spent the entire season on top, starting off by winning the first nine games of the season – the only team other than the Kansas City Royals to accomplish this feat. After losing to another powerhouse team, the Houston Astros, in the tenth week of the season, they no longer stood out as the top team in the National League, but they were still one of the best in the entire league, and that continued to hold true as they won the NL East with a 12-2 record and made their way through the playoffs, sweeping the San Francisco Giants and then defeating the Astros in three games in a hotly contested NLCS.

The Indians also started their season well, but from the start lived under the shadow of their division rivals, the Kansas City Royals, who became the behemoths of the season as they were undefeated in the first thirteen games. Still, for a while, the Indians remained a very strong team in their own right, going 6-1 in the first half of the season to secure a strong wildcard lead. However, it started falling apart after the All-Star Break. The Indians went 2-4 in their next six games, and eventually, with a pair of losses to division rivals that they had beat at the start of the season, they fell a game behind the Boston Red Sox in the wild card race with just a single game left in the season.

The Indians’ amazing comeback started there. Playing against none other than the Royals, they were unexpectedly able to keep the speedsters in check, giving up a mere 3 runs to the player-controlled Royals to pull off a massive upset and win the last game of the season. The Red Sox lost to the Green Monsters to tie with the Indians for the wildcard spot with a 9-5 record, and the Indians took the tiebreaker by virtue of having beat the Red Sox earlier in the season. That sent them to face the Monsters, who had beat them in the regular season and smacked them down in Game One of the division series, but the Indians pulled of a comeback, taking Game Two and then barely squeezing ahead in Game Three to advance. Then it was a League Championship Series against the juggernaut Royals, where despite not doing quite as well defensively as before, the Indians were able to pull off a series sweep to eliminate the favorites to win it all, and advance to the World Series in their place.

The Indians went through a much harder time to reach the World Series, but they could also have been considered underdogs based on the previous records of the two teams’ coaches. Indians coach Ellman struggled in Season 2, with a regular-season record of 4-10. While he undoubtedly proved himself with a much better performance in Season 3, including the series that led him to the championship, there had to be some lingering uncertainty given his opponent – Expos coach gmchappe was the reigning BBL champion from Season 2.

Yet despite all this, it started out looking like it would be the Indians to clean house during the series. During the first two games, the Expos struggled mightily against the Indians defense and put up uncharacteristically low scores. As a result, the Indians were able to dominate during these games, taking Game One by a score of 50-11 and Game Two by a score of 30-11. It was looking like a very possible clean sweep by the Indians to end the season.

But something triggered in the Expos after their second loss – perhaps sheer determination to not lose so easily – and in Game Three, their offense made an explosive comeback that they would ride throughout the rest of the series. They had scored a combined total of 24 runs in the first two games, but doubled that for their Game Three effort. On the other hand, the Indians had already weakened from Game One to Game Two, and this trajectory continued for the next two games of the series. The Expos took Game Three 50-21, and continued to take Game Four 49-28, and suddenly the series was tied, and going to the BBL’s first ever deciding Game Five.

While technically each team had only done it once before during the series, both coaches knew going into the deciding game that in order to win, they would have to hit the threshold of 50 runs. 50 is officially the maximum score that a team can achieve in the BBL, as excess runs are disregarded, but neither coach was comfortable with having any room below that threshold for the other to pass them up. And in this climactic game, the will to reach 50 runs proved to be enough for both coaches, sending the game decision to the Safety Net rule. Introduced this season, the rule stipulates that runs scored is no longer taken to account if both teams score 50 runs, and instead the number of runs allowed breaks the tie.

As it turned out, the Expos allowed a single run, as Indians speedster Star Moonbeam was able to quickly turn a base hit into a run, while the Indians gave up no runs at all. And thus, by a single AI run, the Indians took the fifth game of the Backyard World Series, 50-49, to become the new BBL champions.

It was another blockbuster series on the whole in terms of runs scored. Over the course of five games, the Indians outscored the Expos 195 to 164, but even the losing team averaged 32.8 runs per game. During the regular season, the leaguewide average score was a mere 16.5 runs. By contrast, the two teams combined for a mere five runs allowed across the series.

Interviews with both Ellman and gmchappe will be coming to the BBL News Center soon.