Monday, October 1, 2007

OH, THE HUMANITY: For every thrilling, unimaginable victory, there is an equally wrenching, unimaginable defeat. Phillies fans, on September 12, 2000 2007, your team was worse than a 500-to-1 longshot to win the NL East. That means, of course, that on that same day, Mets fans, your team was a 99.8% certainty -- a 1-to-500 favorite -- to make the playoffs. How bad is that collapse? It would rank second of all time, ahead of the haunting collapses of the '51 Dodgers (12.5 games up on August 12) and the '93 Giants (9.5 games up on Jenn's Braves on August 7).

Mets partisans can take some solace in the fact that while their collapse ranks second, it is a distant, distant second. First place belongs to a certain team that, in the wild card era, failed to make the playoffs despite being, on August 20, 12 and 12.5 games against the two teams that passed it -- two teams that played one of the most memorable postseason series of all time, and gave me my favorite sports memory, as a result. The odds of this team making the playoffs at its peak were 99.988%, or, to put it the other way, 8332-to-1 against missing the playoffs. You know who I'm talking about, right?

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