On Thursday September 29, 2011, two teams awoke to a morning of mourning. But from the looks captured by the hundreds of cameras sounding off at Camden and Turner, the mourning had long before begun. Even with playoff hopes, player personas, and personal pride hanging in the balance, the tide would not turn for either the Boston Red Sox or the Atlanta Braves on the final, stormy night of the MLB regular season. Rather, this tide took them in to choke on its waters and sink to its sea floor.
Two simultaneous September stumbles set the stage, unpredictable and predictably unforgiving. The Red Sox had led the Tampa Bay Rays by nine games at September’s start; the Braves, meanwhile, nearly paralleled the Sox with an eight game advantage over the St. Louis Cardinals at the beginning of the month. These star-studded teams, with veteran cores, couldn’t compose themselves nor could they evade disastrous demise.
Both teams eradicated their playoff dreams, failing to close out their games in the final innings. But the thrills soared skyward not with their losses, but with the victories of their rivals. The Rays, just three minutes following the penultimate blown save of Jonathan Papelbon, flew fair from the bat of Evan Longoria, whose line drive, walk-off home run extended their season at least a few more days.
“The pitching and the hitting [of the Red Sox] just fell apart in the month of September,” senior William Schilling said. “To see Evan Longoria hit the walk-off home run to end the Red Sox’s playoff chances just crushed me.”
A half-hour prior, the Braves had a man on first (Dan Uggla, who Freddie Gonzalez chose not to send stealing) with Freddie Freeman at the plate. He proceeded to ground into a double play, eliminating the Braves from playoff contention. Over an hour earlier, Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter pitched a shutout game against the Houston Astros, which secured the Cardinals at least a tiebreaker game against the Braves. Fortunately for the Cards, no tiebreaker game would be necessary.
The final games of this year’s regular season marked the two greatest September downfalls in the sport’s history. In the words of Tom Verducci, “they will go down as the most thrilling 129 minutes in baseball history.”
