If you only watched baseball once all season, tonight needed to be the night, as two amazing wildcard races were decided in scenes that would have seemed outlandishly surreal in a Hollywood movie.
Early in September, the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves enjoyed commanding leads in the wildcard standings, but both endured terrible Septembers that only got worse tonight. Much worse.
Of the four games that mattered tonight, only one went quietly into the night. In the National League, the St Louis Cardinals, chasing the Braves all month, enjoyed an easy night out, as they scored five in the first on their way to an 8-0 drubbing of the Houston Astros. Locked 89-72 with the Cardinals coming in, the Braves needed to dig deep against the Phillies looking for their 102nd season win.
After six innings, they seemed likely to force a play-off for the wildcard when they led 3-1, but the Phillies toughed it out, drawing level in the 9th at 3-3.
Through extra innings the game continued with Atlanta unable to get a man on third home in the 12th, ultimately paying the price as the Phillies squeezed home the decisive run in the next innings to take the game 4-3. Atlanta had blown an 8.5 game lead in September.
For much of the night, the American League went down a similar route, although this time the chaser was on the end of a hiding as the Yankees stormed to a 7-0 lead over the Tampa Bay Rays in the fifth innings, and still led by that score heading into he bottom of the eighth.
Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox, seeking to avoid slumping out in a collapse similar to the Braves, held a slim 3-2 lead over the Baltimore Orioles as the game was delayed by rain in the bottom of the seventh. If the Sox were smart, they wouldn’t have had the TV on during that break, as they might have seen the Rays storm back in the eighth innings with six runs, with help from the Yankees pitching (three walks, including two hit batters) and a three-run homer from Evan Longoria.
Then, in the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees looked like they would close out the game 7-6 before Dan Johnson, pinch hitting, smacked a two-out homer to send the game to extra innings.
Boston returned to the park and tried to close out their game, while hoping the Yankees could pull out of their nose dive to take the game. The Sox left runners on base in the eighth and ninth, but still held a 3-2 lead heading to the bottom of the ninth.
The Yankees at that stage had runners on first and third with none out in the 12th, and it looked like the Sox would escape, as they struck out the first two batters. But not tonight. Not this September.
The Yankees didn’t manage to score, and the Orioles, doubled and doubled to tie the scores, before a nearly caught single gave them an astonishing 4-3 win in the bottom of the ninth.
Even then the Red Sox might have escaped with a play-off tomorrow for the wild card spot, but Longoria returned to the plate in Florida seconds later and again sent the ball over the fence to give the Rays an astonishing comeback win, and the Red Sox a humiliating September collapse.
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