Boston Red Sox: Where Do the 2011 Sox Rank in All-Time Disappointments?

The New Year is approaching, and we are in the heart of the hot stove league with spring training still slowly creeping up—the season of licking wounds and appreciating whatever exciting moments and fond memories can be found. It's the time of looking ahead toward the future, speculating on what missing puzzle pieces might be available to be had. 

Younger Boston Red Sox fans spoiled by two championships in four years and annual playoff runs might not remember that for generations this cold porridge was the only nourishment we Red Sox fans got. 

But then there are the years like this past one, when the memories of the way greatness got kicked away makes us just a little too bitter to look past it and say, "Well, they did have a great July run, after all."

No, after seasons like this, the only thing to do with your disappointment is try to put it into a historical context and measure it against the long history of Red Sox disappointments' past. 

For the seasons that took place before I was born or those where I was fully aware enough to appreciate them, I have partly factored in how disappointed these particular years always made me feel when I would read about them growing up. I would also think about how the current abysmal state of the team might be more tolerable if there had been at least great moments within the living memory of my parents or grandparents. 

1967: Losing to the Cardinals in the World Series in Seven Games

I rank this one No. 11 on the list because, as a fan who has only studied it in retrospect, it just doesn't seem like it could have gone any other way. 

The Cardinals of the 1960s were a juggernaut, winning two championships in four years and dropping a close series to Detroit in 1968. They had Bob Gibson, Orlando Cepeda, Roger Maris and Steve Carlton in his first full year. The Sox had Jim Longburg, Yaz and some other good players, but the scrappy "Impossible Dream" team was probably legitimately over-matched. 

Still, it was a Game 7 loss, and the Sox had come back from down 3-1 to get to it. It was a pretty big disappointment, all the way around. 

1990: Getting Swept by the Oakland Athletics

I guess this one is probably among my most subjective picks. The A's of this era were loaded with talent and legitimately better than the American League East champions. 

But to get swept by those clowns for the second time in three years? Really?

On a personal note, this one came while I was stationed in the Army in Europe and surrounded by all kinds of people hostile to the Red Sox who couldn't wait to give me, the loudest Sox fan around, crap over them. 

And it's not even like the A's were really all that great—they did go on to get swept by the Reds. 

1972: Cheated by Bowie Kuhn, Taking Second Place to the Tigers by Half a Game

This is another one of those seasons that was before my time. But when I read about it as a kid, it always seemed to me as just another bit of evidence that I cheered for a cursed franchise.

The 1972 season started two weeks late due to the first player strike. Once the season got back under way, commissioner Bowie Kuhn's brilliant solution was to cancel all the missed games, regardless of whether or not contending teams ended up playing uneven numbers of games.

In the American League East race, this ended up meaning that the Detroit Tigers finished a half game ahead of the Red Sox, 86-50 to 85-50.

The Red Sox missed the playoffs without ever being mathematically eliminated in the loss column.  

For years during my childhood this injustice gnawed at me. Maybe 1972 had been the year they were destined to win it all, except fate once more cruelly intervened. 

It's true that the Sox would have had a tough matchup with the Oakland A's, the premiere team of that era. But they had a strong outfield of Tommy Harper, Reggie Williams and Captain Carl Yastrzemski. Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio played shortstop, and Rico Petrocelli was on the downside of career, but still managed 15 home runs and, as he showed three years later in 1975, still had postseason grit. 

Unfortunately, in 1972, Aparicio and the rest of the team were denied a fair shot for the postseason. 

1946: Losing the World Series to the Cardinals in Seven Games

1946 had to have been a fun time to be a Red Sox fan.

The big war was over and won, and all the great Sox stars—Teddy Ballgame and Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr and the Little Professor, Dom DiMaggio—were all home safe. The Red Sox cruised through the season and won the flag by 12 games for the first time in nearly three decades. 

But in the end, it was typical Red Sox disappointment, as they went down to St. Louis in seven games. 

"If only they could have won," I used to think as a kid. I could at least have heard about it from my grandfather and the men his age I delivered newspapers to and talked sports with. It would have shown that maybe my team wasn't cursed after all. 

Instead I heard stories about Enos Slaughter's "Mad Dash" and about how Johnny Pesky had inexplicably held the ball in his glove too long while the winning run scored.

Ted Williams, the greatest player in the history of the team, was abysmal in the only postseason series of his career. 

1975: Losing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds in Seven Games

I was still only four years old during the 1975 season, so I have no real memories of it.

However, I do remember my parents and other adults being very excited about the Red Sox, and based on where we were living, I know these are memories of the 1975 season (but I have no firm details). 

Still, when I was an already long-suffering Red Sox fan in the early 1980s and contemplating our yearly mediocrity and long history of woe, I always felt like the quality of my fandom would have been improved tremendously—if only we could have won that championship back at the furthest edges of my living memory. 

As it was, Fisk's heroic 12th-inning, Game 6 walk-off sustained Red Sox fans for close to a generation. 

1948: Losing a One Game Play-off to the Cleveland Indians

I first learned about the 1948 season when I was in second grade, and a biography of Warren Spahn I was reading made a single-sentence mention of the Indians' one-game playoff victory over the Red Sox in 1948.

I was a precocious reader who mostly only read about baseball (and wars), so I was already familiar with the great Subway Series that had occurred between the Yankees and Dodgers/Giants in the 1950s and before. In fact, to me (at eight years old), that's what Big Apple Glamour was all about: the 1950s "Mantles, Mays and the Duke" era of baseball (and as a well-educated 41-year-old writer, it remains a big part).  

For years of my childhood the thought that such an event had almost occurred in Boston sat in the back of my mind like a tiny but annoying splinter.

After coming so close in 1946 and then sinking back to third place in 1947, the team pulled out all the stops during the offseason, making a blockbuster deal that packaged 11 prospects and $375,000 cash to the St. Louis Browns in exchange for shortstop Vern Stephens, backup player Billy Hitchcock and pitchers Jack Kramer and Ellis Kinder. 

Additionally, they moved Joe Cronin up to the front office and brought in New York Yankees legend Joe McCarthy to manage.

So, let's see—big, exciting moves in the off season followed by disappointment on the final day of the season.

Sound familiar? 

1949: Losing the Final Two Games of the Season to the Yankees

When I was a teenager, one of my favorite books was Red Sox Triumphs and Tragedies by Edward H. Waton. One of the chapters posed the question, "Were the '49ers the Best?"

The 1949 team probably set the template for the basic Red Sox misery myth. After years of watching the hated Yankees win with regularity, it looked like it was finally going to be Boston's year.

The first half of the year had gone poorly for the team, and they trailed the Yankees by 12.5 on July 4. But then the Red Sox came out for the second half of the season, playing brilliantly. Mel Parnell won 25 games for the season, and Ted Williams was, as usual, Ted Williams.

The Red Sox had rallied to take a one-game lead with two games remaining to be played in New York. The great Mel Parnell took a 4-0 lead over the Yankees in the first game—only to end up losing, 5-4.

The Sox then lost the second game, and the season along with it.

Make sure to click the linked video that features Ted Williams in the 1980s selling bread with his buddy, legendary Maine sports editor and outdoors writer Bud Leavitt.

1978: "Bucky F-ing Dent"

Just like in 1949, 1978 was one of those years when the Red Sox were finally going to stick it to the Yankees.

The Sox started the year on fire and at one point in July were up 14 games on the Yankees. I can remember my older cousin assuring me at a family cookout that it would basically be impossible for the Red Sox to blow their lead. 

Read about the season here; the less I write about it this morning, the less likely I am to start drinking beer before noon. 

2003: "I Can't Believe They Fooled Us Again"

I think the disappointment of this season has largely gone forgotten, due to the curse finally being overcome in 2004.

But at the time, it was crushing. 

I remember going to eat breakfast in a diner in Auburn, Maine, the next morning. It was like walking into a wake. I am pretty sure I swore I was done cheering for them that morning.

1986: Losing the World Series to the New York Mets in Seven Games

In a lot of ways, I regard this as the greatest baseball season of my life. I was still playing Babe Ruth ball myself and had a job washing dishes in a kitchen for a chef who was a degenerate gambler, but major all-around sports fan. 

Roger Clemens emerged that year as a superstar. The great Jim Rice had his last big year. Wade Boggs was at the height of his offensive powers. 

The Red Sox were in the old catbird seat all season long, and it was a lot of fun to follow them that year.

It was not so much fun to watch them fritter the championship away in the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6. My younger brother and I had the cowbells, pots and pans out, and were halfway out the front door to wake up whoever wasn't sleeping when the Mets suddenly started putting hitters on base.

And don't forget, when the ball trickled between Buckner's legs and Wilson came home to score, the misery wasn't even over yet.

The Red Sox came out and took a lead in Game 7 the next day, only to blow that one, too.   

2011: Getting Eliminated the Last 10 Minutes of the Season

Maybe it's just too fresh, and maybe I just don't have perspective yet. 

But as far as I am concerned right now, 2011 has to be regarded as the most disappointing team in the history of the franchise. It's months later and snowing outside, and still I find myself from time to time thinking, "Wait, they really aren't going to the playoffs this year?"

Whatever evil supernatural forces hate the Red Sox and the Sox fanbase really put their time and effort into this one. The offseason acquisitions of Adrian Gonzales and Carl Crawford had even hardened, and cynical middle-aged fans like myself got all slap-happy, counting our championship chicken long before it was close to ready to hatch. 

When the season started miserably in April, I didn't even get alarmed. "Look at this lineup," I kept saying. "The Sox will be back in it."

And when the weather warmed up, so did the Sox. For months of the season they played as well as any team I've even seen. Another great playoff run seemed to be assured. 

Instead, they turned in one of the worst September collapses in major league history. The long autumn nightmare only officially ended when they blew a ninth-inning lead against the Baltimore Orioles, eliminating them from the playoffs as the Rays concurrently came back to win their own game.

THE BALTIMORE STINKIN' ORIOLES!

The only good thing I can say about the 2011 season is that at least now younger fans who were spoiled by 2004 and 2007 know what it is really like to cheer for the Red Sox.  

Warning: The linked video is extremely mean-spirited—not that we don't all deserve it.