It gurgled with drama and popped with passion and when it ended, folks were wiping the steam from their eyes and wondering, really, truly, did that just happen?
The last night of the 2011 baseball regular season Wednesday may have been the greatest single night of any baseball regular season. It was two playoff wild-card spots won in final at-bats that cemented the two greatest collapses in baseball history. It was one of those spots won and lost by two separate teams in two separate games in a span of three minutes.
It was a night of gasping and groaning and frantic texting and nutty tweeting and shouting out loud in front of giant televisions all across America. It was a night filled with the sort of riveting emotion that only baseball at its best can still provide and when it ended, Evan Longoria, home-run hitting hero of the playoff-bound Tampa Bay Rays, stood dazed in front of a camera and spoke about the perfect storm that encapsulated an ancient culture.
"It was like we were out there for five hours ... then everything happened in a matter of seconds," he said.
How did it end? How do we start?
It was one of baseball’s most historically choking franchises gagging again, in the ninth inning, with two out and nobody on base and their veteran closer protecting a one-run lead against the Baltimore Orioles. The Boston Red Sox were 77-0 in those situations this season before Wednesday, then Jonathan Papelbon lost it and Carl Crawford blew it and the whole lot of them crumbled into history.
Three minutes later and about 1,000 miles away -- yeah, just three minutes -- it was one of baseball’s most delightful franchises stunning again, overcoming a 7-0 deficit to the best team in baseball. The Tampa Bay Rays tied the New York Yankees with a two-strike, two-out homer in the ninth by a guy who had not hit one in five months -- Dan Johnson, I believe -- then they won three innings later and danced into October.
Wait. It was more. It was much more. It was screaming-in-the-dugout, hands-buried-in-faces more.
In the other league, it was a young and exhausted Atlanta Braves team finishing baseball’s second-biggest collapse by also blowing not only an 8 ½-game wild-card lead in September, but completing the dive by blowing a one-run lead in the ninth inning to the Philadelphia Phillies with star rookie Craig Kimbrel on the mound. The game was so overwhelming for the young Braves, their veteran Chipper Jones actually gave them a football-style pep talk in the dugout before the game. He then grew even grayer watching them run themselves out of big innings and pitch their way into a long winter.
Finally, earlier in the night, about 800 miles away, it was the St. Louis Cardinals racking up their biggest first inning of the season with five runs that pushed them into the sneakiest October entry in recent memory. I thought Tony LaRussa had retired. I thought Albert Pujols had left town. How do they keep doing it?
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