Excerpted from Dan Shaughnessy's Boston Globe story.
"BALTIMORE - The greatest choke in baseball history ended the only way it could have ended, with the Red Sox gagging on the Camden Yards lawn one last time.
Truly unbelievable. This feels like revenge for 2004 and 2007. It is as if the baseball gods are punishing Red Sox Nation for hubris and arrogance and good times that seemed so good, so good, so good.
The Sox were set to pop champagne last night. They were leading the Orioles, 3-2, and the Rays were trailing, 7-0, in the eighth inning. Just a few simple outs and the Sox were going to Texas to start the Division Series tomorrow.
Then the earth opened up and swallowed the Sox and their fans. Stoic Jonathan Papelbon came on to close it out in the ninth, struck out two, then surrendered back-to-back doubles and a walkoff single that $142 million Carl Crawford (typically) failed to catch. Sox lose, 4-3.
Mere seconds later, the Sox were in their clubhouse when Evan Longoria hit the walkoff heard ’round the Gulf to give Tampa Bay an 8-7, 12th-inning victory over the laydown Yankees.
Say goodbye to Terry Francona. Tell Theo it’s OK to talk to the Cubs. This might have been the last roundup for Papelbon, Tim Wakefield, Jason Varitek, Big Papi, J.D. Drew, Miss Heidi, and several of the others you’ve loved all these years.
In the midnight confessions, Francona spoke of 'the mess we got ourselves in,' then said, 'We needed to take care of business and we didn’t.'In historic fashion.
This goes right up there with Denny Galehouse, Bucky Dent, Mookie Wilson, and Aaron Boone (who visited the Sox dugout before the game - how’s that for an omen?). The 2011 Red Sox had a nine-game lead in the wild-card chase on Sept. 3, and now they are out. They are the first team in baseball history to hold a nine-game lead in September, then fail to make the postseason. This makes them worse than the ’64 Phillies or the ’78 Red Sox. They are the poster boys of the Heimlich maneuver.
The humanity!"
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