A nine-game lead gone. A 7-19 finish. A final regular season day that saw them blow a late-game lead while watching their competition storm back from a 7-0 deficit. You know where I’m going with this. Disaster. Devastation. Blow-up. All falls down. For those of you who either live outside of Boston or are too young to identify with the history of the Boston Red Sox, last night’s climax might’ve seemed like karma for all the unbelievable success the team has enjoyed over the past 10 years or so. Perhaps this entire month has represented an aberration. Two World Series titles in the last seven years gave this season’s collapse a feeling of “Okay, we’ve had so much success that we can take a screw up once in a while”. But most won’t feel that. Older fans have déjà vu.
Not that deja vu makes it feel any better. Tears were shed last night, I can guarantee, and not just in the clubhouse. Atlanta fell apart as well. Their fans were crying out just as loudly. What some are calling the greatest night in baseball history wasn’t so much fun for people in Beantown and the ATL.
In the NFL’s past two weeks, we’ve seen the Bills – a team that matters very little, it seems, in my tiny world to anyone outside of myself – come back from death in two consecutive weeks. Are they for real at 3-0? I think most people still have their doubts (and Bills fans still have their insecurities). But did they just complete maybe the best back-to-back NFL comeback ever? I think so.
Nothing feels quite like a collapse whether you’re directly involved in it or watching from afar. It’s as if two sides are yanking at your arms, one wants to see it happen and wants to see disbelief on everyone’s faces while the other can’t bear it. It’s heightened drama, and drama this dark creates storylines, and storylines will live on past whatever happens this season. Both of those games from last night may ultimately have no impact on who eventually wins the World Series. That could easily happen. But they’ll be remembered.
In the NBA, I think the largest collapse I ever saw was during Game 4 of the 2008 NBA Finals. It’s as if it happened yesterday. I was at my mother’s house, watching by myself, with a laptop sitting in front of me and I was hyped to be setting up a Six Flags trip later that week. The Lakers were down 2-1 but during that game, they were up by as many as 24, and led 70-50 halfway through the third quarter.
Lamar Odom, who had been treated that season like Kevin Garnett‘s baby brother, went off in the first quarter. He was in the lane, flexing, sticking out his tongue, taunting the bully who had snuffed him four out of five times on the season. The Lakers barely even needed Kobe Bryant. It was 35-14 after 12 minutes, and the Celtics were fumbling the ball, throwing up wild shots. Rajon Rondo looked like a baby puppy lost out on a busy street.
But then the second quarter came along and I thought Okay, this doesn’t feel right. The Lakers are still up, but they should be up more. Then the third quarter: I think they’ll be okay. The lead is too big. And then the last five minutes of the third quarter: WTFFFFFFF. I can still remember my mother cuffing her hands and screaming at me to shut up and calm down from the kitchen (It’s actually amusing that all of this went down in Boston. My mother has lived there for a while but I always hated Boston teams. Ironic.)
That game ripped the heart right out of L.A. and stampeded over it. The Lakers were dead. Even during Game 5, a game L.A. miraculously won, you could tell. They were finished. Someone just needed to wield the blade and shove it in (It was no surprise that they went up to Boston and got smashed a few nights later.). Someone needed to give them mercy and put an end to this thing. Game 4 changed everything.
Some other wild collapses/comebacks I can remember that left me either a) throwing couch pillows and punching tables… b) sitting in disbelief for damn near an hour… or hopefully (if it was a comeback) c) feeling like I had just seen Halle Berry naked:
1) Arizona’s blown 15-point lead against Illinois in the final four minutes of an Elite Eight game in the 2005 NCAA Tournament
2) The “Music City Miracle”… Buffalo vs. Tennessee
3) Buffalo’s 35-3 comeback over Houston in the 1993 playoffs
4) my boy losing a 33-point third quarter lead in NBA 2K7 with the Celtics (fresh off the KG trade) against Denver
Luckily for me, I’m not a Red Sox fan like many people I know. Would today be a day of mourning? The entire week would be. That’s what happens as a fan. Ups and downs, good times and bad. It’s all totally out of your control. There’s nothing you can do and yet a fan lives it all like it’s life and death.
What was the worst collapse you remembering seeing? What was your response?
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