Recalling the misery of Blue Jays 15, Phillies 14
The Detroit Tigers will attempt to overcome Sunday night's gut punch in their series against Boston. But that was nothing.
After what happened in Boston on Sunday night, after Big Papi's grand slam and the poetic aftermath, fans of the Detroit Tigers think they know misery. Ha.
We are coming up on the 20th anniversary of what is in the running for the most miserable loss in World Series history. No one who was there on that dank, misty, foggy night would dispute that statement. It was October 20, 1993, Game 4 of the series. It was Blue Jays 15, Phillies 14.
The Phillies had a 6-3 lead after two innings.
They had a 12-7 lead after five innings.
They had a 14-9 lead after seven innings.
And they lost.
Lenny Dysktra hit two home runs, Darren Daulton hit another, and Milt Thompson had five RBI. They made the Blue Jays' pitchers throw 181 pitches in nine innings in a game that took an excruciating 4 hours, 14 minutes to be played. You can go on BaseballReference.com and look at the stats and see that the Phillies' win probability at the end of the bottom of the seventh inning was 99 percent. Yet they lost because Toronto scored six runs in the eighth inning off of relievers Larry Andersen and Mitch Williams.
The weather -- it really was a "Wuthering Heights" kind of night, with this mist seemingly off of the moors that enveloped everything -- was the perfect framing device. The whole night was bizarre -- the first inning took 40 minutes; Jays starter Todd Stottlemyre tore up his chin sliding into third base in the second inning; the Toronto bullpen telephone, one of the most important pieces of technology in the Vet that night, given the carnage, was broken for a while, leaving manager Cito Gaston to communicate with a walkie-talkie, or by semaphore, or something.
And after seven innings, the Phillies had their second five-run lead of the game. Andersen, the Phillies' fourth pitcher of the night, came out for the eighth inning after pitching a 1-2-3 seventh. The Jays had essentially given up, by the way -- Gaston allowed relief pitcher Tony Castillo to lead off the seventh. But then came the eighth. Andersen got the first out, but then the Jays went single, walk, double. One run was in, and here came Mitchie Poo.
Three batters later, another run was in but there were two outs. There was a chance that it would be OK. But then Ricky Henderson hit a two-run single and Devon White followed with a two-run triple, and the crowd of 62,731 went silent. There wasn't booing, or outrage, or anything like that. It was just quiet. People just sat there with their heads down. A lot of them looked like a battered fighter on a stool.
The quotes after the game, at least from the Phillies, were delivered in a numb monotone. The series should have been tied at 2-2, but now the Phillies were trailing by 3-1. Curt Schilling won Game 5, as it turned out, which set up Game 6 and Joe Carter and, well, you know.
But back on that surreal night at the Vet, Ted Silary of the Daily News was the one who spotted the guy carrying a sign in the 700-level that told the entire story, of the game and the series.
The sign said, "Will pitch middle relief for food."