By ArtMartone
CSNNE.com
Welcome toFirst Pitch, aquick spin around the world of Major League Baseball . . . or at leastthe corner of it that most concerns the Red Sox. For a complete wrapupof Wednesday's action, check out the heartbroken Craig Calcaterra's AndThatHappened(hardballtalk.nbcsports.com). (He's a Braves fan, folks.)
SEZ YOU: Speak for yourself, Dave. (baseballmusings.com) You too, David. (espn.com)
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Boston sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
In a turn of events as stunning as any in their history (Boston Herald), the Red Sox -- seemingly destined to make the playoffs after all, as they held a lead over the Orioles for most of the night while the Rays were getting smoked by the Yankees -- blew a 3-2 lead with nobody on and two out in the bottom of the ninth (csnne.com), then watched in horror as, three minutes after the ghastly ending of their game, Evan Longoria completed a mind-boggling Tampa Bay comeback from a 7-0, eighth-inning deficit with a 12th-inning homer that gave the Rays the win and the wild-card berth.
The list of last night's goats starts with Jonathan Papelbon (csnne.com) and includes
Marco Scutaro and Carl Crawford (csnne.com), but this, obviously, goes way beyond one game. The Red Sox, says Sean McAdam, "set themselves up for just this sort of torturous ending" (csnne.com) after a month in which every aspect of the team -- pitching especially, but also offense, defense, in-uniform leadership and out-of-uniform management -- failed down the stretch.
Old friend Chad Finn has a clear-eyed post-mortem (boston.com), but I suspect most of the "analysis", especially from the digitalworld, will be more along the lines of the Sox Therapy chap who urgesus to respond to this "with blind, wild rage". (baseballthinkfactory.org)
The most unnecessary advice ever, I suspect.
ONE THEORY: Dan Shaughnessy thinks "the baseball gods are punishing Red Sox Nation for hubris and arrogance and good times that seemed so good, so good, so good" (Boston Globe)
DON'T BLAME TITO: The players aren't; they back Terry Francona (Boston Herald)
OH, I THINK IT'LL BE LONGER THAN THAT: CBSSports.com's Danny Knobler says the Red Sox' performance in September -- when they went 7-20 and squandered a nine-game lead over Tampa Bay -- was "28 days that might take them 28 years to forget".
HOW BAD WAS IT? According to former Baseball Prospectus analyst Nate Silver, "Its hard to describe just how epic the Red Sox collapse was something on the order of Bill Buckner multiplied by itself twoor three times over." (fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com)
OH, JOY: And now crap that we'd stopped hearing seven years ago is starting to resurface. (AP via csnne.com) But, really: You think Nomar's secretly a little pleased (New York Daily News), since all the good stuff happened after he left?
THE BENEFICIARIES: It's been pointed out in many places that this turn of events is more on the Red Sox than the Rays -- Tampa Bay went 17-10 in September, which is good but normally not (nearly) enough to erase a nine-game deficit -- but you can't take anything away from what they did last night, even if, by the end, they were doing it against the Trenton Thunder. Down 7-0 in the eighth, they rallied back to tie in the ninth, and then won it on Longoria's homer in the 12th (St. Petersburg Times). "It was just meant to be," said Ben Zobrist (Tampa Tribune), which I guess wraps it up as well as anything. Because . . .
INDESCRIBABLE:If the Rays' reaction to their comeback -- in Wednesday's game, and inthe wild-card race -- seems inadequate to capture the majesty of itall, well, how can it possibly be explained? (cbssports.com)
TO US, EITHER: Longoria says that when his game-winning homer sailed over the fence "it didn't seem real." (Tampa Tribune)
WE WEREN'T THE ONLY ONES: Would you believe the words 'epic collapse' are appearing in baseball headlines on stories not involving the Red Sox? We can commiserate this morning with our old neighbors, the Braves (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), who are also on the outside looking in. Playing the role of the Rays in the National League version of "I Don't Believe What I Just Saw!" are the Cardinals. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
WE KNOW THE WHO AND WHAT; HERE'S THE WHEN: ESPN.com provides a timeline for an incredible night of baseball.
MEANWHILE . . . Jose Reyes sparked memories of Ted Williams in winning the N.L. batting title. But not in a good way. (New York Post)
AND FINALLY . . . You know what? No matter how it ended, I agree with Howard Bryant: "The sequence of events Wednesday evening may have created the greatest,most intense night of baseball in memory, proof that despite theratings and rankings and revenues the sport, when played at its highestlevel, is unmatched for tension." (espn.com)