After it all, the best part was three teams were one out away from winning, and all three needed to be blown for the Cardinals and Rays to clinch the playoffs, and all three were blown.
After it all, the best part is that all those people who said the Red Sox were dead after their 2-10 start to the season were somehow right.
After it all, the best part is the fact that the Yankees were up 7-0 before they trotted out guys named Golson, Romine, Ayala, Dickerson, Nunez, Laffey, Valdez, Brackman, Wade and Proctor.
After it all, the best part is that two of the best closers in baseball blew leads in the 9th inning, and for once, the Red Sox probably wished that Mariano Rivera pitched in the ninth.
After it all, the best part was that literally three minutes after the Orioles walked off with the 2011 Red Sox's scalps, Longoria hit a walk off home run to clinch the Rays 3rd playoff berth in three seasons.
But really, after it all, the best part is that October, a month filled with sacred, chilling, pulsating moments between pitches deep into cold nights, has not even started yet.
People say baseball is dead. People say the "national pastime" is so out of touch with the modern generation that it will soon be the 3rd sport in the US. People can say whatever the fuck they want, but on nights like last night, baseball is the best sport on earth. Facebook and Twitter erupted with baseball related statuses. Most of them were some knock on the Red Sox (whose fans will milk the living shit out of this collapse despite winning a championship in every sport since 2004). However, beneath all the silly jests on the Sox expense, there were many Facebook statuses that rang the same tune; "What a night of baseball!"
It was a night to rejoice in the game famous for having no clock and little action. It was a night to sit and watch three great games simultaneously going on, and all ending in stunning fashion. One of the biggest take-aways from last night was that the 2011 Braves and Red Sox have the biggest September collapses in the history of the MLB. However, even if those two teams hadn't blown huge September leads, and they were just in a daily battle with the Cardinals and Rays, that would have been the greatest closing night in MLB history.
That was a night that only baseball could give you. It is the only sport with rain delays, which allowed a 9 inning 4-3 game to end simultaneously with a 12 inning 8-7 game that started at the same time. It is the only sport where walk-off hits are common occurrences (in hockey, it isn't that common in the regular season, and then playoff hockey is just a different animal), and we got two within three minutes of each other that combined to give the Red Sox fans just one more thing to cry about. It is the only sport with 20 seconds between plays where that time is filled with tension (unlike the 35 seconds between plays in the NFL that is filled with nothing), and the tension was greater than anything I've seen in the regular season. Finally, baseball is the only sport where momentum changes often and that it is ingrained in the body of the game. The Red Sox had 1st and 3rd with no outs in the 9th inning, and didn't get an insurance run. The Yankees had 1st and 3rd with one out in the 11th inning, and didn't get an insurance run. Both teams would pay, or more exactly, the Red Sox would pay in both instances.
The drama in the AL really overshadowed what went down in the NL, and probably allowed the Braves to kind of be off the hook outside Atlanta, but it was as crazy. The Braves all season long have forced their top three bullpen arms to pitch way more than necessary, often to great results. They finally got tired, with star closer Craig Kimbrel blowing a 9th inning lead, just like what happened in Tampa Bay and Baltimore. The Cardinals were the only team to not give their own fans heart attacks, blasting the Astros 8-0 (in this, the Astros now had the worst season in the MLB since the Royals in 2005 - the same year the Astros made it to the World Series). The Braves finished their misery 25 minutes before the Red Sox and Rays decided to play play on two stages, and it was a great, if miserable, opening act.
Dan Johnson, Nolan Reimold and Robert Andino combined to kill a team that this offseason spent nearly 300 million in getting Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez. Dan Johnson was hitting .108. Nolan Reimold is living off of one good year three years ago. Robert Andino is, well, Robert Andino. Those three wouldn't make the Red Sox roster, and they were the stars of the show. Jonathan Papelbon and the array of Yankee pitchers who decided to make cameos in the most important game for the Red Sox this season were the villains, and what better way to have it, with the Red Sox relying on their closer who had been brilliant in 2011, and the Yankees deciding to everything but openly throw a 7-0 game. It was dramatic, but it was comedic, with one team playing as hard as they could but still losing, and then needing their biggest rival to win, and that rival after taking a 7-0 lead playing as ambivalently as they could and inevitably losing.
The most dramatic part of all of the games was probably the 9th inning in the Red Sox-Orioles game, and that provided the most expansive ending. The best part was its finish, with speedy Carl Crawford messing up in the field and not getting to Andino's line drive. Carl Crawford never really wanted to go to Boston, but he was leaving Tampa, a place that couldn't afford him and had a replacement waiting in Triple A. Carl Crawford, like most mortal men, was won over by money to play for Boston, where he's done nothing but disappoint. In the end, Tampa used him well in 2011, capitalizing on his mis-field. The Rays, it seems, always know just when to get rid of players.
Going into last night, I was hoping for at least one 1-game playoff. All the one's in my time of watching baseball have been incredible. First was the Rockies/Padres 13-inning affair in 2007 where the Padres' Trevor Hoffman blew a 2-run lead in the 9th and it ended with Matt Holliday scoring a run in which he still hasn't tagged home. The next year, the White Sox beat the Twins 1-0 in a great pitcher's duel in game 163. The next year, the Twins closed out the Metrodome in 13 innings against the Tigers. I wanted a one game playoff. That said, I will take what I got last night every single time. I wrote last year that the chance to see Roy Oswalt pitch playoff games again will get me to love baseball again the way I used to when the Astros played back-to-back nail-biting NLCSs in 2004-05. That wasn't totally true, but it was last night. Night's like that, filled with drama and comedy and errors and struggle are what baseball is all about. Nights like that show why baseball is still around, still relevant, and can still captivate a nation of sports fans. Nights like that are why I, and so many others love baseball, because for just one night, anything, like winning when down to one strike, like Red Sox fans rooting hard for Yankee scrubs, like great closers blowing leads, like winning when down 7-0 in the 8th inning in a must win game, anything can happen.
