Boston Sports List #3: Most Crushing Defeats

Welcome back to another installment of the Boston Sports List. In the first two editions, we took a look at the most hated opposing teams from the perspective of a Boston sports fan. That list featured ten entries, broken into two columns. Moving forward, I’ll be narrowing down these lists to five entries, starting with today’s column on the most crushing defeats I’ve seen my Boston teams suffer.

A few things to get out of the way before we begin. First, though I was alive in 1986, I don’t remember actually seeing game six of the 1986 World Series. I’m limiting the list to games that I was actively watching and paying a life-or-death level of attention to. As a child, I watched Boston sports, but I wasn’t truly concerned about the outcome and mostly watched because my father did. I began coming into my own as a fan in 1998-1999, so all of the entries on this list date back only that far.

Secondly, there are no Bruins or Celtics games on this list. It’s not because I’m not a big enough fan of those teams to have been affected by one of their big losses. Basically, for a great majority of the last ten to eleven years, those two teams really weren’t that good and didn’t play in many gigantic games. Even when they both started becoming good over the past few years, I can’t really pinpoint any specific losses where I was completely devastated, like the five games below. I just wanted to get that out of the way.

#5) New York Yankees at Boston Red Sox - 1999 American League Championship Series (Game Four) – October 17, 1999

Like I mentioned earlier, I was always technically a fan of the local teams, but I didn’t watch every game or get broken up by losses or elated by big wins. The 1999 Red Sox season was the tipping point for me, where I started watching every game religiously, read the papers and Internet to get the scoop on trades and signings ahead of time, and when sports generally started being too important to me. I was fifteen, beginning my journey into manhood, and following baseball seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

Anyway, the Red Sox had made the playoffs as the wild card entry on the backs of pitcher Pedro Martinez and shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, and drew the then-juggernaut Cleveland Indians in the first round of the playoffs. The Sox quickly fell behind Cleveland, two games to none, and all hope seemed lost. I knew it had been a long time since the Red Sox won the World Series, but when they fell behind to the Indians, I could finally feel it. Even though I was a “new” fan, I felt the indignation just like everyone else. When the fuck are we going to win this thing?

The Red Sox righted the ship and won the next two games, resulting in a decisive game five in Cleveland. To that time, the best moment I had ever seen as a fan occurred, when Pedro Martinez came out of the bullpen in the midst of a tie game and shut Cleveland down the rest of the way to ensure a berth in the ALCS. Due to the miraculous comeback against the Indians, morale was high and people in Boston actually thought that we might beat our hated rivals, the Yankees, to get to the World Series.

Of course, it didn’t play out that way. The Yankees took the first two games at home, and then dropped game three to the Sox and the unstoppable Martinez. Game four was a must-win for the Red Sox, and New York led 3-2 heading into the bottom of the eighth. Jose Offerman struck a one-out single to center for the Sox, and John Valentin followed by grounding into a double play, 2nd base to 1st. Except that Yankees second baseman Chuck Knoblauch never actually tagged Jose Offerman on his way to 2nd base, the umpire just thought he did, and this play resulted in the end of the inning. Predictably, the Yankees scored six times in the top of the ninth to take the game and essentially the series.

This game marked the first time I was legitimately pissed off at a sporting event and the first time I felt hatred towards the Yankees. That the Sox would go through three years of an underachieving malaise after this only made the memories of this game that much more frustrating.

#4) New England Patriots at Indianapolis Colts – 2006 AFC Championship Game – January 21, 2007

Since the emergence of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady as a superstar in 2001, he and the Patriots always had found a way to beat Indianapolis and their leader, Peyton Manning. The Patriots beat the Colts in Foxboro in the AFC Championship game in 2003 and again in the AFC Divisional playoffs in 2004. Even though this game was being played in Indianapolis, and even though it admittedly looked like a giant mismatch favoring the Colts headed in, spirits remained high. After all, this is Peyton Manning! He’s never going to beat us!

The Patriots gave us good reason to be optimistic, opening up a 21-6 halftime lead. Manning had always seemed shaky in big games and always blew it at the exact moment where his team needed him. There wasn’t much concern that he’d come back.

But we happened to forget that Peyton Manning is still really, really good, and maybe he was tired of hearing about how he couldn’t win the big one. The Colts started the second half with an immediate touchdown, then forced a punt and drove down the field again, tying the score on another touchdown and two-point conversion. The two teams basically traded blows from that point on, resulting in a 34-31 Patriot lead with about three minutes left on the clock for the Colts. Manning finally seized the moment, driving the Colts down the field and scoring the decisive touchdown on a three-yard run by running back Joseph Addai. The Colts hung on to win the game, 38-34.

The Patriots lost some of their championship luster the previous year in their playoff loss to Denver, but this was completely unexpected. The Patriots historically owned Manning and the Colts. They never blew halftime leads, especially one of more than two scores. They never lost playoff games like this, period. This game legitimized Peyton Manning and led to endless “Brady or Manning” debates. The Patriots also would have almost certainly defeated the Bears in the Super Bowl, which would have tied the Steelers for winning that title in four out of six seasons.

#3) New England Patriots at Denver Broncos – 2005 AFC Divisional playoffs – January 14, 2006

Yeah, I rate this higher than the game against the Colts. Though the Colts game was against a legitimate rival and on a grander stage, this game against Denver was the first time that Tom Brady and the Patriots looked human. Before this game, the Patriots had never lost under Brady’s command, and here they were, playing like shit and getting shellacked by Jake Plummer. Before this game, the Patriots were the invincible champions of the NFL, never to be dethroned and never to lose a big playoff game. This game showed that Brady and the Pats could be beaten in the playoffs, and in a way, set the tone for the loss to Indianapolis the following year.

The Patriots certainly deserved to lose this game from the get-go. They were sloppy, they couldn’t drive the ball, they were behind, and things were not going their way. But the Patriots always had some way of pulling out a miracle, and I had no doubt at the time that they would do it again. The Pats were down 10-6 with under a minute to go in the third, but they were driving into Denver territory. I remember actually thinking, “Here we go. Tom will make something happen. He always does.” The Patriots drove to Denver’s 5, and then…catastrophe. Champ Bailey jumped in front of a Tom Brady pass and returned it 101 yards to the Patriots one-yard line, setting up an immediate Denver touchdown and essentially losing the game. It was one of those moments, legitimately shocking to me. Did that really happen?

This game is already often forgotten about when discussing brutal sports losses, but to me, the way this game completely shattered the aura of invincibility that had surrounded the Patriots made it particularly painful.

#2) New England Patriots vs. New York Giants – Super Bowl XLII – February 3, 2008

The Patriots’ Super Bowl loss to the Giants caused a different kind of anguish for me. I didn’t go into a rage or anything like that; I had since realized that losing my mind about a bunch of millionaires mixing it up on the field really didn’t make a whole lot of sense. This game was about the loss of an opportunity; a chance for the team I loved to do something that had never been done before and most likely will never happen again. That Tom Brady and the Patriots, whom I still believed would win their big games despite the recent evidence I cited above, would cough up that opportunity made the loss even harder to swallow.

We all know the back story. 18-0, a shot at the first perfect season since those petulant shitheads, the 1972 Dolphins, completed the feat when teams were still wearing leather helmets. The Spygate scandal had broken loose during the season as well, calling into question all of the success the Patriots had under coach Bill Belichick and causing the Patriots to be the most hated team in professional sports. This was a chance to shove it up everyone’s ass; the Patriots are the best team in the history of football and it will always be that way.

Then, they lost. They lost in heartbreaking fashion, but it really wasn’t the way they lost that hurt. It’s that we still have to watch Don Shula drink champagne from his wheelchair every time the last undefeated team loses. It’s seeing the “16-0: Perfect Regular Season” banner at Gillette Stadium and realizing what came after it. It’s seeing Gatorade commercials featuring the fateful catch from late in the game. I didn’t throw anything or lose my cool when they lost, but I realized what the Patriots had squandered and how they’d probably never get that chance again.

#1) Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees – 2003 American League Championship Series (Game Seven) – October 16, 2003

Undoubtedly the worst moment I’ve experienced as a fan of Boston sports was Aaron Boone’s home run to seal the 2003 American League Championship Series for the Yankees. It’s impossible to convey all of the emotions that went into that one moment and describe the incredibly divided atmosphere at Providence College during this series. The whole event was almost surreal, and I suppose the only way the series could have ended was in a surreal way, as well.

Rather than go through back story or build up the story, I’ll share what I immediately did as soon as the Red Sox lost this game (please note that I’m not proud of this, and I fully admit that at this point sports meant a little too much to me):

- Ran out of my dorm room screaming obscenities, eventually going into the adjacent hallway (I had to avoid my screaming Yankee-fan roommate; a good guy, but why I decided to watch the game with him I’ll never know)

- Threw the half-full water bottle as hard as I could at the door that led to the common area, cracking it and causing water to fly everywhere.

- Entered the laundry room, where I found myself kicking the washers and dryers as hard as I possibly could.

- Went back into the common room, where I kicked the soda machine as hard as I could, legitimately trying to break it because I was in such a blind rage (amazingly, it didn’t break. Those things are pretty strong).

- Punched through a plate-glass covering of a bulletin board in the common area, causing glass to fly everywhere. Very, very stupid, and lucky I didn’t seriously hurt myself. Only a few minor cuts but visible bleeding.

- Stumbled outside, where Yankee fans were gathered on the quad celebrating and screaming and yelling. Quickly walked away from that scene and fumbled around in a daze, looking for anyone who could give me a cigarette.

- Stayed outside in a secluded area thinking about the game for a few hours.

- Found another dejected Sox fan who shared some smokes with me as we discussed our frustrations.

- Stayed up all night, unable to sleep.

So yeah. Again, I’m actually rather ashamed of this behavior, because, to tell the truth, my rage about the Patriots loss in the Super Bowl subsided after about a half an hour. This game was just different. We had never won. After this, I was certain we never would win. So much went into Red Sox/Yankees; I invested so much of myself into a damn baseball game that I had no rational way of expressing my disappointment once it ended. The subsequent success of the Red Sox and our other teams has cooled my emotions and, I feel, the emotions of most Boston fans, which is a good thing, because I never want to experience this again.

John Lacey