As discussed in "Not in Our House! A Decade of Home Court Advantage in American Sports" there is much less home advantage in baseball than in basketball or football, during regular season play. Major League Baseball teams, on average, win about 54% of their home games and 46% of their away games during the regular season. When I do presentations on home court advantage I’m often asked, "What about the playoffs?" Well, let’s see what happens in the World Series.

The MLB World Series pits the National League champion against the American League champion in a 7-game series. One of the teams – let’s call it Team A – hosts the first two games of the series at its home ball park. The next three games are scheduled at Team B’s ball park, and the final two games are scheduled at Team A’s ball park. This is often referred to as a 2-3-2 schedule. I find it convenient to refer to it as an AA-BBB-AA schedule. The team at whose ball park the series begins (Team A) is said to have "home field advantage" because in a 7-game series four of the seven games are played at its home field.

In the NBA, the team with the best season record gets designated for home court advantage in the playoffs (Team A). However, in MLB Team A was alternated between the American League champion and National League champion until 2002. Beginning in 2003, the team from the league that won the All Star Game was designated as Team A for the World Series.

So, how much benefit does Team A derive from its "home field advantage?" In the fifty World Series played from 1958 through 2008 (there was no World Series in 2004 due to the players’ strike), Team A won the Series 26 times (52%) and Team B won the Series 24 times (48%). In other words, the team that supposedly had a home field advantage derived practically no benefit from it. This suggests that a lot of the hype about home field advantage, as it pertains to the World Series, is based more on illusion than fact.

However, something that seems to definitely benefit a team is winning the first game of the Series. In the past fifty World Series, the team that won the first game went on to win the Series 68% of the time. Think about it; this means that you won more than twice as often as you lost (68% vs. 32%). Even more dramatic, if the away team (Team B) won the first game, it went on to win the Series 72% of the time! It seems like the key to winning the World Series can be summarized as follows – win the first game.