The Red Sox victory Wednesday night, coming back from an impossible 0-3 deficit, will rate as one of the great moments in baseball. The Yankee's collapse is only rivaled by one other: the 1951 collapse of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who blew a 13 1/2 game lead in the final month of the season, ending with a loss in a one-game playoff with the hated NY Giants.
One moment we will be be reminded of (repeatedly) in the upcoming series is a painful one: how the Red Sox lost the 1986 series. Painful in particular for Billy Buckner, their team leader and MVP, who ended his fine career with the most remembered error in the history of baseball. And most people remember it wrong.
Other Red Sox history among Sporting News' Top 25 are:
Carlton Fisk's homer in Game 6 against Cincinnati in 1975. They lost Game 7, of course.
Enos Slaughter scoring from first base on a single in the 8th inning of Game 7, to win the 1946 series for St Louis over Boston.
Bucky Dent's homer in a one-game playoff in 1978, leading the Dark Forces to victory over the Sox.
And lastly, for xrlq, is the 9th inning of Game 5 of the 1986 ALCS, Boston vs the California Angels.
See also Clark Smith at CalBlog, who got me started on this post.
I don’t think the Dodgers losing the pennant in ’51 really counts as a viable candidate for greatest collapse, on account of the Giants cheating.
If you're cataloging greatest collapses, the meltdown of the Trailblazers against the Lakers in Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals deserves a mention.
PS—thanks for the link. :-)
Keith Burgess Jackson, aka Anal Philosopher, has a cruel post about how it's good the Sox are up 2-0, cuz it's so much fun to see Sox fans crushed: "The question is not whether Boston will lose in 7 games, but which player becomes the Bill Buckner for a new generation. I say Manny Ramirez."
Posted by: jeff at October 25, 2004 11:00 PM