As it turns out, there won’t be October baseball in Atlanta or Boston.
Wednesday night, both teams completed epic September collapses. The Braves, who almost certainly looked to be headed to the postseason last week fell to the Phillies 4-3 in 13 innings ending Atlanta’s season after St. Louis was able to knock off the Houston Astros 8-0.
The Braves were 10 1/2 games ahead of St. Louis before play on Aug. 26 and were still up by 8 1/2 games on the morning of Sept. 6. Instead of heading to the NLDS, they became the first team in major league history to squander a lead of at least eight games for a playoff spot in September.
In the American League the Boston Red Sox, a team that went out and acquired big time players in Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez fell to the Baltimore Orioles 4-3 in the bottom of the ninth after having a one run lead entering the inning. Then while Boston’s season was coming to an end, the Tampa Bay Rays were capping off a magical comeback as Evan Longoria was able to hit a walk off home run in the 12th inning erasing a 7-0 deficit.
To further rub salt in the wound of Red Sox Nation, Boston held a nine-game lead in the AL wild-card race after Sept. 3, but a 7-19 September swoon left them tied with Tampa Bay entering the final day of the regular season.
What’s truly ironic about the Red Sox and Braves is that both teams had leads and needed only one more out to win their games. Now both have written their way into the history books and not in a way they have wanted.
Re: Yahoo! Sports, MLB.com
