Since the playoff race came down to the last day of the regular season, it’s a good time to look back at 2011.
In the pantheon of season finales, several stand out, but none are quite like 2011. Years like 1946, 1948, 1951, and 1962 predate divisional play and expanded playoffs. In those days, tiebreaker games and three-game series determined who went to the World Series, and who stayed home. Today, six teams per league make the postseason. But as recently as 2011, that was not the case. At the time, four teams per league made the playoffs, and there was no Wild Card Round. There were also no byes for the top two seeds. The drama and excitement this provided fans was truly special, and people then though it couldn’t be replicated. With that said, let’s compare this year’s ending to the final day of the 2011 season.
Let’s set the stage to that magical end. Wild Card Wednesday was building up for three and a half weeks as the dramatic conclusion to a razor-tight playoff race. Despite holding large leads in their respective leads, the Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox started to lose control of their destinies. At the same time, the St. Louis Cardinals and Tampa Bay Rays went on September heaters. The Cardinals closed a deficit of eight and a half games, while the Rays closed one of nine and a half. This set up a showdown between four teams for two slots. More to the point, none of them faced each other, so there were four crucial games on the same night, September 28, 2011.
What Happened
The Rays proceeded to defeat the New York Yankees in a very dramatic way. Down seven runs, Tampa came back to tie it. They scored six in the 8th inning and then pinch hitter Dan Johnson tied it in the 9th on a home run. 3B Evan Longoria hit a walk-off homer in the 12th that cleared the left field wall by all of two feet.
At the same time, an eliminated Baltimore Orioles team upset the Red Sox via a walk-off single by INF Robert Andino. The Red Sox were minutes away from clinching, and then second from preparing for Game 163, and then in a flash were eliminated themselves.
In the National League, the Cardinals clinched a berth by defeating the Houston Astros, while Atlanta lost to the Philadelphia Phillies in 13 innings.
The simple proposition of “win and you’re in, lose and you’re out” is easy for anyone to understand. But even people who don’t watch baseball regularly were in awe of the theatrical comebacks of the 2011 Rays and Cards. This drama is not possible today with 12 teams, which prevent the fringe ones from missing out on potential glory. Even so, this year’s drama was fun to watch, with five of six AL teams not knowing their seed until the end of Game 162.
The Toronto Blue Jays, Cleveland Guardians, Detroit Tigers, Yankees, and Red Sox knew they were in, but not where they landed on the bracket. The Yanks would have clinched the top seed if the Blue Jays lost. Had the Guardians lost, then the Tigers would have won the AL Central. Detroit also could have faced a different opponent with a weekend sweep.
The End of 2025
The one team from the AL playoff race missing out was the Houston Astros. Because they lost a tiebreaker to the Tigers, they couldn’t advance with the same record. That would have been dramatic for fans, but the Astros were knocked out on the penultimate day of the season. This year didn’t compare to 2011, but there was still plenty to play for on the final day. It doesn’t matter if the stakes were lower than 14 years ago. When a team still has something to fight for, hopefully they won’t give up until they succeed or fail.
This ultimately is the main contrast between the drama of 2011 and 2025. Having three Wild Card teams instead of one means the Sox and Braves would have still advanced to October. The games on 9/28/11 would have still been amazing, but they wouldn’t have been as impactful. Plus, the teams back then might have behaved differently if they had berths locked up. Indeed, the very next year, MLB added another Wild Card slot. We will never know how Boston and Atlanta would have done in the brand-new Wild Card Game. Certainly, the Sox and Rays would have played an intense game as division rivals, and the Braves would have been motivated under new manager Fredi Gonzalez.
On the flip side, Cleveland’s comeback this year would have been even more remarkable with only 8 teams advancing. Detroit would have plummeted one year after coming back themselves. With the playoff structure changing so much in recent decades, looking back at the 1993 San Francisco Giants, who had 103 wins but missed the postseason, is like looking at the Dark Ages.
Appreciation
So, 2025 may not compare to 2011 in most ways. That’s totally fine. The thrill of not knowing where your team will play in two days still makes for must-watch TV and builds buzz. Perhaps the biggest downside to the playoff race is that it happens in September, when football is already starting. This relegates baseball to second fiddle at the height of its importance, when every game truly matters. Of course, baseball was popular long before football existed.
But this should not take away the fact that, despite playing ten times more games, baseball can nonetheless create thrilling memories. The game will always have winners and losers, and it is in those moments when the sport is at its finest. Here’s to hoping another finale like this one, or even 2011, happens again. It may be wishful thinking, but as the Rays and Cardinals know, sometimes wishes can come true.
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