MLB Wild Card 2011: Poetic Justice Strikes Against Carl Crawford, Boston Red Sox

I'm not a big believer in fates or destinies, let alone curses, but perhaps it was fitting that the 2011 season came to an end for the February champion Boston Red Sox on a line drive to left field, home to the club's $140 million offseason catch, Carl Crawford.

I'm not simply referring to the sinking line drive off the bat of last night's improbable hero, Robert Andino, that Crawford misplayed in the 9th inning which allowed Nolan Reimold to score from second with the winning run for the Orioles. 

I'm talking about the short porch in left field. In left field at Tropicana Park, that is, some 851 miles away from where Crawford's iron glove was yet again proving its naysayers right.

That's the quirky little corner where Rays slugger Evan Longoria—as the clock neared midnight on baseball's final day of regular season play—managed to sneak his walk-off 12th inning home run into the stands and significantly alter the traveling schedules of both his boys and, arguably, their most hated division rival.

You're probably wondering how a bad pitch from a bad Yankees reliever named Proctor and the heroics of a Tampa Bay third baseman come back to haunt the snake-bitten Crawford.

Naturally, it doesn't make much sense. The only destiny Boston's fallen star had any control over was his own, if even that, considering the putrid offensive numbers he's put up since signing his seven year mega-deal with GM Theo Epstein this past offseason.

That's where you're mistaken. 

If that short little porch on the left field side of Tropicana Field is any farther back from where Longoria slithered his heat-seeking line drive around the foul pole, he would have had to settle for a double while hoping for some help from one of his teammates.

And let it be known that these Tampa Bay Rays are a team built around elite pitching and defense. Their offense, however, is questionable, if you want to be generous. 

That's where the maligned Boston outfielder comes into play.

A few seasons ago, in trying to satisfy the requests of one of their clubhouse leaders, Tropicana Field officials pushed that now-infamous porch closer to the field, effectively shortening the home-run distance on that side of the park by a few feet. 

It's hard to believe that an incremental change to an outfield wall could come back to play such an astronomically improbable role in the scope of one of the most exciting playoff races in recent memory, if not all time. Yet there it was last night, swallowing Longoria's drive, launching the dome into a state of pandemonium, and providing the hometown nine with a dose of full circle revenge that they'll carry into the footnotes of Rays legend.

Why do I say that? Just try to think of which Tampa Bay deserter was the man behind the request.

Well, if you guessed Massachusetts' own 0.4 wins above replacement, .290 on-base percentage, shoddy fielding, shell-of-his-former-self Carl Crawford, then go ahead and pat yourself on the back.

How's that for some poetic justice in a sport whose history is stuffed to the gills with it?

Crawford could not have done more for his old team had he turned his back on Boston, flown back to his old stomping grounds and driven in a few runs for the Rays himself, just in time for their late-inning rally.

Perhaps that's what is meant to happen when a player, as it has seemed all season in this particularly infuriating case, plays simply for the paycheck.

On ESPN, as the network chose to broadcast the fall of its 21st century darlings, the harsh reality of Carl Crawford's undeserved, obscenely bloated earnings were on full display for everyone to see.

With the season on the line, a ball hit towards the slumping centerpiece—one which just about any outfielder with his head in the game could have caught—was allowed to fall to the Camden Yards grass, finishing off closer Jonathan Papelbon's third blown save of the season and sealing the Red Sox fate.

Meanwhile, down by the sunny beaches of St. Petersburg, the upstart, underdog home team took full advantage of an unlikely fossil left behind by one of Major League Baseball's most undeserving multi-millionaires in order to complete one of the most unprecedented resurrections in their sport's illustrious history and catapult themselves to a Division Series meeting with the defending AL pennant winners, the Texas Rangers.

As Tampa Bay's second baseman Ben Zobrist said after the game, "God bless that little short wall in left field."

And God bless a little schadenfreude.