A Tampa Bay Rays Revival in the 2011 Season Rests in History's Hands

Let me tell you something, Tampa Bay Rays.  Hope is a dangerous thing.  Hope can drive a man insane.

Morgan Freeman uttered these famous words as “Red,” the good friend of Andy Dufresne, the hopeful character played by Tim Robbins, in the 1994 movie Shawshank Redemption.

While Freeman wasn’t exactly pointing his poignant words towards the baseball team in St. Petersburg, his philosophical stance on hope rings true for the Rays with 40 games left to play.

You see, the Rays are in a quirky area.  Many people, from television critics, to newspaper reporters to fans in the area, have pretty much written off the Rays, considering they sit eight games behind the Red Sox in the American East Division standings and another half-game back behind the division-leading Yankees.

So, should the Rays ride out the rest of the season with the thought of "Wait till next year," or should they buckle down and go for the postseason?

In other words, how much hope should they have of actually passing either the Red Sox, who lead the Wild Card race, or the Yankees?

While it seems daunting, there are many examples of teams making miraculous comebacks in Major League Baseball history. 

The 2007 New York Mets blew a seven-game lead on September 12th and saw the Philadelphia Phillies win the NL East Division.

The 2009 Detroit Tigers failed to win over the final four games of the season, ultimately losing the AL Central Division in a one-game playoff to the Minnesota Twins.

The 1987 Toronto Blue Jays let a 3.5-game lead slip away to the Tigers over the last seven contests and lost the AL East Division by two games.

These are all magnificent stories of teams losing leads and other teams grabbing onto opportunities, but the Rays need to methodically make progress by using precedent similar to theirs.

Or in Andy Dufresne’s words, “Get busy living or get busy dying.”

The following five examples are proof-positive that the Rays possess a great chance to pass either the Red Sox or the Yankees and capture a spot in the playoffs.

1995 Seattle Mariners Miracle

The 1995 Seattle Mariners trailed the California Angels by 12.5 games on Aug. 15, clinging to a 51-50 record.  The Mariners team that was headlined by Ken Griffey, Jr., Edgar Martinez, Tino Martinez, Joey Cora and Jay Buhner began chipping away at the Angels' lead and amazingly surpassed them on September 6th.  

They stayed on top for the rest of the season until the Angels won their final five to force a one-game playoff with the Mariners.  Seattle ace Randy Johnson put the Angels out of their misery with a 9-1 win.  The Mariners then stunned the New York Yankees in the first year of the Division Series round, then lost to Cleveland in the American League Championship Series.

1993 Atlanta Braves in the Last Pure Pennant Race

In what has been often referred to as "the Last Pure Pennant Race"—because it occurred before the implementation of the wild-card playoff spot—the Atlanta Braves sat 10 games behind the San Francisco Giants in the American League West Division after losing to the Pittsburgh Pirates on July 22.  (Yes, the Braves competed in the West Division back in the day.)  

The Braves won eight of their next nine games to close out July, then won 19 of 26 in August, and after winning eight of their first 10 games in September, they found themselves tied with the Giants atop the standings.  The "Race" then became a battle after the Braves seized the lead and increased it after San Francisco's eight-game losing streak before the Giants rallied, winning 14 of 16.  With one game left in the season, the Braves and the Giants were tied.  The Braves beat the the Rockies and if the Giants could beat the Dodgers, there would be a one-game playoff the following day.  They didn't, getting hammered in a 12-1 loss to the Dodgers. 

1969 Amazin' Mets

Now, if the Rays are able to duplicate what the 1969 New York Mets (known as the Amazin's) did, then the Rays will have to be coined as the OMGs.  In the first season of divisional play, the Mets trailed by 9.5 games to the Cubs on August 14 in the new National League East. But 13 days later, the red-hot Mets had pulled within two, and they won the division by eight. The Cubs lost 14 of their final 20, and New York went on to win the World Series.

1951 Giants Win the Pennant, the Giants Win the Pennant

On Aug. 11, the Brooklyn Dodgers held a 13.5-game lead in the National League and seemed to be cruising toward the pennant. The next day, though, the Giants went on a 16-game winning streak that included a three-game sweep of the Dodgers, and suddenly they were just five games back.

The Giants won an incredible 37 out of their final 44 games, tying the Dodgers on the final day. The Dodgers' real mistake was at the coin flip to determine the home field in the three-game playoff series. The Dodgers won the toss and a ticket manager (the team was in Philadelphia) chose to play the first game at home and the second and third games at the Polo Grounds. Without that fateful decision, Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard Round The World" would never have happened.

1978 New York Yankees and Bucky Bleeping Dent

And finally, last but definitely not least, we'll consider this comeback and collapse because features the two teams the Rays are chasing.  Also, Don Zimmer, who is now a senior baseball adviser for the Rays, served as the manager for the Red Sox.  

On July 19, the Red Sox owned a 14-game lead and seemed like they were destined to snap the dreaded curse.  The Red Sox, though, lost 14 of 17 games, allowing the Yankees to claw their way back into the thick of things.  The Red Sox built their lead back up to nine games on August 13 and still led by seven games entering September, but with the Yankees in the middle of winning 16 of 18 games, the Red Sox lost eight of 10 games, including a three-game sweep by the Yankees that ended on September 10.  

After the Yankees sweep, the two teams were tied at the top of the AL East and the Yankees built a 3.5-game lead only to have the Red Sox battle back to pull into another tie with the Yankees on the season's final day.  Cue one-game playoff and the subsequent event that led to Bucky Dent becoming an expletive throughout Beantown and the rest of New England as the Yankees' light-hitting shortstop hit a home run in a 3-2 New York victory. The Yankees went on to win their second consecutive World Series in the decade.