The Tampa Bay Rays and St. Louis Cardinals have become the two most unlikely wild card winners of all time. The Rays finished making up a nine-game deficit over the Boston Red Sox by making up a seven-run deficit against the New York Yankees Wednesday — minutes after the Red Sox blew a final game to the Baltimore Orioles. The Associated Press reports this came just after the Braves finished blowing an 8 1/2 game lead to the St. Louis Cardinals after blowing a ninth-inning lead to the Philadelphia Phillies.
The 2011 Red Sox and Braves will now go down as the worst chokers in baseball history. However, these blown chances are par for the course for these two franchises, even though they haven’t had letdowns like this in a while.
Boston and Atlanta’s history has been littered with lost opportunities for championships and playoff success. After all, the Red Sox had an 84-year curse hang over them before finally winning the World Series in 2004 and 2007. As for the Braves, they won division titles for 15 years and only had one World Series win in 1995 to show for it.
However, it has been a while since the Red Sox and Braves have collapsed quite like this. It has been a while for Boston because it finally learned to win championships years ago, and it was a while for Atlanta since it yielded control of the NL East to Philadelphia years ago. But these shocking losses and upsets brought both the Red Sox and Braves back to the old days of coming up short.
The Red Sox history of collapses is fairly vast, from the losses in the 1967, 1975 and 1986 World Series to the blown lead in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. Meanwhile, the Braves lost in four World Series appearances from 1991 to 1999 and have been upset countless times during the National League playoffs. By those standards, blowing massive wild card leads is just par for the course for these franchises.
Yet these are different Braves and Red Sox squads who collapsed this time around. And at the least, the Boston and Atlanta teams of the past waited until the postseason to fall apart and blow championships. In this case, they didn’t even earn the right to make the playoffs although it looked inevitable just three weeks ago.
While the Rays and Cardinals look to ride their miracle comebacks to the World Series, the Red Sox and Braves have an entire offseason to wonder what might have been. That usually happens in Boston and Atlanta regardless, but it hasn’t happened quite like this before.
Sources
Yahoo Sports- “Rays clinch AL wild card with stunning rally”
Sports Illustrated- “Braves complete colossal collapse, lose to Phils”