BALTIMORE
Red Sox, report to the River Styx at dawn.
- Thomas Boswell
- Columnist
Boston Red Sox collapse and suffer a damning finish
These days, there’s no boatman in a dark cowl to take you over to the other side where the souls who wail for eternity are found. They’ve got an elevator now. Just push the “down” button. Don’t worry; you can’t go too low. Pick any rung. Mr. Dante has fine punishments arranged at every level. New rules: No more eternal damnation. They let you out next opening day to try again. Excuses, fine, they’re permitted, too. But for now: Go to hell.
You’ve done it now. You’ve topped all your forebears. That’s a 7-20 final-month implosion, a blown nine-game lead and the worst September collapse to squander a postseason spot in baseball history.
Do the ’04 and ’07 Red Sox teams have to give back their World Series rings now, too? No, no, it wasn’t quite that bad. But it was close.
On this night of a 4-3 after-midnight walk-off loss to the Orioles, the dishonors belong to exhausted Jonathan Papelbon (blown save, defeat), Carl Crawford, whose trapped liner on Robert Andino’s game-winning two-out single is his trademark defensive mistake, and all the brain-dead base runners from David Ortiz to Marco Scutaro who killed innings with their crazy feet.
Now, lets turn to the Tampa Bay Rays who, minutes after the Red Sox had blown a 3-2 lead and lost, won this AL wild-card race for the ages with a walk-off homer by Evan Longoria in the 12th inning against the Yankees. We have a few words for you guys, too. First, gentlemen, please return the thousand-mile magic carpet, the perpetual pixie-dust machine and the vat of voodoo juice. The rest of mankind needs all of ’em back. Now.
Don’t get greedy. You just burned several lifetimes of joy. Those computers claimed your chances of catching the Red Sox were down to nine-tenths of one percent when the month started. Now, go get ready for October.
Longoria, with your two homers, including the winner, please, don’t ever tell anybody how you did it. There’s mystique. Then there’s something even beyond it. Silence is part of the deal. Say nothing and, the rest of your life, people will pass you and say, “There he is.” And they won’t have to say whom.
Dan Johnson, we hardly know what to say. When you hit your two-out-in-the-ninth home run to tie the Yankees, 7-7, it was incredibly improbable. But when that blow proved to be the cornerstone of victory, your swing joined the game’s elite history. The further the Rays go, the bigger it gets.
Okay, that takes care of the Red Sox and Rays. Everybody else, the millions of you, just sit down and stop screaming. The real baseball season is only beginning. If you pass the Boston tombstone, nod out of respect. To fail so greatly, you must first have stature. (Okay, and a zillion-dollar payroll.) But, still, there but for grace go we all.
This Camden Yards scene needs to be set. As the sun sank Wednesday, baseball turned into a world gone wonderfully mad. But as midnight approached, then passed, the glorious insanity fed on itself and went viral.
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