I was just about to address your point yesterday about the diffenent number of games played by the teams when the big crash occurred. I think it probably had to do with getting venues to play the games. The games were played in baseball stadiums and there was a hot pennant race going on, at least in Pittsburgh. The football Pirates played their opener on a Friday in Detroit and their home opener in Forbes Field the following Sunday. I'll bet they wouldn't try to make a Bill Parcells team do that.
I think once in a very great while, an eastern Pacific hurricane that originates off the coast of Mexico can drift more or less straight north into the Gulf of California and dump rain in Arizona. I recall something like that happening a few years ago.
However, due to the clockwise circulation of ocean currents in the northern hemisphere, the waters off California originate in the Gulf of Alaska and are perpetually cold. They will not support a tropical storm. The prevailing winds in the low latitudes also tend to push the hurricanes out to the west and into the Pacific, where they only threaten shipping lanes. For some reason, Hawaii rarely gets hurricanes.
But, California, Oregon & Washington will NEVER get a hurricane. And for the same reason of oceanic current circulation, the east coast of the US gets hurricanes, and so does Japan. The Pacific counterpart of the Gulf Stream is called the Kuroshio, and it brings Japan its share of hurricanes, even though Tokyo is about the same latitude as Washington DC.