Column: Lamentations of a Red Sox fan

The Red Sox collapse — where to begin? A week after what must rank as one of the worst regular season collapses in sports history, I am only beginning to comprehend what happened. For those who did follow the team’s final games, some statistics may be in order. According to coolstandings.com, cited approvingly by sports statistics guru Nate Silver, the Red Sox had a 99.6 percent chance of making the playoffs in early September. By the final day of the season, after an injury-prone, horrible month, the Red Sox needed to win against the Orioles and the Yankees needed to win against the Rays in order to advance cleanly. A Red Sox win and a Rays win would lead to a one-game playoff, as would a Red Sox loss and a Rays loss.

Then things got really ugly. The following win probability stats are from fangraphs.com — reader discretion among Red Sox fans is advised. At one point in the Yankees-Rays game, when the Yankees were up 7-0 in the eighth inning, the Rays had a 0.3 percent chance of winning. The Rays won in extra innings. The Red Sox, up 3-2 in the ninth inning with two outs, had a 95 percent chance of winning. The Red Sox lost.

This collapse felt at once shocking and pre-ordained, deserved and completely unfair. As Silver pointed out in his piece about Boston’s collapse, given the long history of sports disasters in Red Sox history, some painful questions naturally arise. I hope to explore some of the questions Silver did not address in this space. Hopefully it will be therapeutic for all of us involved.

Why us?

A defeat like this for Red Sox fans is liable to lead to moments of self-pity. This sentiment is understandable, if not entirely justified. From the trade of Babe Ruth to Bucky Dent’s homer to Bill Buckner’s error to Aaron Boone’s home run, the Red Sox endured a painful 86 years from 1918 to 2004. Some Sox fans have fathers and mothers who enjoyed longer than average lives, who saw numerous Sox playoff runs, but never witnessed an actual Red Sox World Series victory. We are not just talking about sports here; this is Moses wandering the desert meets Eugene O’Neill. This is about intergenerational pain.

The collapse raises the specter of the curse and irrational questions fans are afraid to voice — are we subject to the curse again? Will our kids be? Has the last decade just been an aberration? Do the forces of nature favor pinstripes?

If you are a Red Sox fan, you have probably dismissed these thoughts already — and for good reason. As Red Sox fans, we are actually incredibly blessed. Our team has the third-highest payroll in baseball and two World Series victories in the past decade. Cubs, Mets and Royals fans wish they could be in our position. If the Rays had a fan, he or she too would envy us.

The events of the last month were shocking, but we are not consigned to another hundred-year drought.

Verdict: Self-pity and fear generated by this defeat are understandable but not rational.

Where does it rank in the pantheon of defeat?

What made past collapses so painful — Dent in 1978, Buckner in 1986 and Boone in 2003 come to mind — was that we had not won since 1918. This collapse may have been the most improbable series of events, but the two World Series victories certainly soften the blow. Also, without delving too far into the history of the 1986 World Series, the Buckner play robbed us of a near-certain World Series victory. This year, even if the team had made the playoffs, victory in the World Series was unlikely.

Verdict: This collapse was highly improbable, but not nearly as painful as the pre-2004 collapses.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

How can we get back at the Yankees for throwing that game?

Vengeance is not our way.

Did Carl Crawford pledge a loyalty oath to the Rays?

He never really wanted to play for us and still does not, but intentional sabotage seems unlikely.

Should I burn videotapes of the Baltimore-Sox game in a field near where the minutemen first fought the British, erect a shrine to Tim Thomas and pretend to have cared about hockey all along?

Yes.