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Author Topic: 2023 MLB Postseason / World Series  (Read 31607 times)

Offline Juan pizzarro

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Re: MLB Playoffs / World Series - 2012
« Reply #100 on: October 15, 2012, 10:00:55 pm »
I have been a WSox die hard for 48 years. I will still root hard for them till the end.

But I may be converting to another team, only to deal with the pain Friday night gave me. I think the amount of pain you face following a team increases the loyalty you have towards them. So Cubs loyalty is finally understood.

This from the Trbune


For those of you not following the baseball playoffs, the way the Washington Nationals lost the fifth and deciding game of their division playoff series against the St. Louis Cardinals certainly ranks right up there with the most fan-disappointing defeats in sporting history.
 
The Nats were leading 6-0  after three innings   But the Cards chipped away and, finally, with 4 runs in the top of the 9th, took a 9-7 lead and won the game.
 
Aggravating factors for shell-shocked fans:
 
1. Expectations.  The Nats held the best regular-season record in either league.
 
2. Precedent. TV announcers told us that no team in baseball history playing in a do-or-die game had ever come back from a deficit  greater than 4-0.
 
3. A local history of baseball futility:  Cub fans arguably have it worse -- no World Series victories in more than 100 years. But Washington's various MLB teams have won just one Series, in 1924, and the Senators/Nationals have an even greater tradition of wretchedness.
 
4. Whiplash. This was no slow-motion fade down the stretch, like the 1969 Cubs or the 2012 White Sox, but a roller-coaster plunge from high to low. When the Cardinals had 2 out and just 1 runner on base in the 9th and were still trailing 7-5, history said they had just a 4 percent chance of coming back to win the game.
 
It was so bad that I felt terrible for Nationals fans even though I paid almost no attention to the team all year.
 
Bill Barnwell at Grantland captured the feeling:
 
There were five different two-strike pitches in the ninth inning, in which the Nationals had a chance to finish the game with a victory.....I'll remember the game-winning hit, though, until the day I die. When Kozma singled through the hole into right, the entire crowd went silent. So silent, in fact, that the screams of celebration from the Cardinals bench were easy to hear in the upper deck. ....I've never heard anything like that in a lifetime of going to games....
 
At the end of the night, I found myself downtown in a bar with my friends. The one Nats fan in our group was more despondent than most, and we led him over to the jukebox to play some appropriate music. Most of his selections didn't last long. "Everybody Hurts" was cut off by the bartender after a minute. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" faded out somewhere around 90 seconds. What did make through, though, was the Johnny Cash cover of "Hurt." By the time the chorus rolled around, in fact, the half of the bar that was adorned in Nats attire had joined in and turned it into a sardonic, wistful sing-along. 
 
So what other memorable collapses in sports rival this one?

 

George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television": "shit", "piss", "fuck", "cunt", "cocksucker", "motherfucker", and "tits".