Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Till I Collapse

'Cause sometimes you feel tired, feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up. But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength and just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse." - Eminem Till I Collapse 

Classic song from his heart, saying he will do what he loves till he collapses.

Collapse is an ugly word in baseball/softball. Currently two of NYC''s biggest baseball rivals are on the verge of historic regular season collapses. The Red Sox have lost 17 of 22 and blown a 9 game lead in the Wild Card in September. That has never been done.

Never. 
Not the 2007 Mets ( We all slowly & painfully lived through that )
Not the 1964 Phillies. 
 Nobody. 

The Sox have given away their lead and are now tied with the Rays. The Red Sox were 82-51 on Aug. 27. They were three games behind the Phillies for the best record in baseball. One month later, they're a pack of zombies.

The Braves aren't much better as they are still clinging to a once-comfortable lead in the wild-card race. They have lost their third straight and seventh in the last 10. Their September record dropped to 9-16, nearly wiping out a margin that had been 8 1/2 games just three weeks ago. There are two games left in the regular season and they lead by one game.


I would be remiss to not mention famous post season collapses like the 1986 Red Sox (no details needed) ,  1996 Braves (blew 2-0 WS lead at home) ,  2001 Oakland A's (blew 2-0 lead in the best of five) , 2003 Chicago Cubs (Blew 3-1 lead at home how can we forget Steve Bartman???), and the most famous post season collapse the 2004 Yankees (3-0 lead ... ughhhhh).

The other day I hit 3 straight huge pot holes while driving and lost control of my car - very scary and that's what a baseball/softball collapse is - an accident you are powerless to stop. The worst part of a collapse is that you aren't trying to win anymore, instead you are trying to Avoid Embarrassment. That's a sure fire recipe for failure.


Right now I am caught in a mini softball collapse as once cruising Lawyertime "LT" http://softballinsider.blogspot.com/2011/09/2-out-madness-for-lt-stem-cell.html has been distracted with apathy, injuries, scheduling http://softballinsider.blogspot.com/2011/09/softballs-version-of-lucy-and-charlie.html, poor play and excuses and dropped game 2 of the championship to the Master Batters 11-1. The game was played over 2 days (a 4-1 continuation), but 11-1 is 11-1. A 1-0 series lead isn't  quite as epic of a collapse as those mentioned above, but clearly a clear shift of momentum in the wrong direction.

To myself and all my teammates, all I have to say is We just have to do this ourselves, no excuses, no apathy, as the late great Freddy Mercury so eloquently sang

"We've paid our dues
Time after time
We've done our sentence
But committed no crime
And bad mistakes
We've made a few
We've had our share of sand
Kicked in our face
But We've come through"

This team feeds on emotion and I know it's corny but I know we will RECOVER and do what we love next week until we collapse one way or another.

1 comment:

  1. Ricky Baseball, momentum is huge advantage. You had it & they took it. This 3 game series should have ended weeks ago, but some how it has found both teams in a tie w/ only 1 game remaining. Momentum Advantage = no one..........Ding Ding, who's coming out ??

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