after the Clipper collapse: time for a ten worst sports defeats thread

[Хahar 🤔]

Allow me to indulge myself, if I may.

7. Aug. 24, 2009: Rockies 6, Giants 4 (14 inn.). I can't in good conscience put this any higher because it ultimately meant very little. The Dodgers ran away with the division this year, so the prize here was the wild card. This Giants team arrived ahead of schedule, using a spectacular pitching staff to vault itself into contention despite fielding a starting lineup with all of one above-average hitter (Pablo Sandoval). Meanwhile the Rockies got off to a miserable start, fired Clint Hurdle as manager, and promptly caught fire with Jim Tracy. Entering this four-game series in Denver, the Giants were two games back. They won the first, bringing them within one, but then dropped the next two. In this game, Barry Zito threw six innings and allowed only a run, but that was all the Giants could get off Jason Marquis, and so the game remained a 1-1 tie through thirteen innings. I was very sick at the time and the game was encroaching on midnight, and so I lay in bed listening on the radio. The Giants scored three in the top of the fourteenth, buoyed by a two-run triple from Eugenio Velez of all people, but then the very back of the Giants' bullpen, which was excellent all year, killed it. Justin Miller (who notably had a giant "LA" tattoo on his back) came in and failed to find the strike zone and allowed an inherited runner to score and left the bases loaded for ex-prospect Merkin Valdez, who obligingly yielded a grand slam to noted marginal major leaguer Ryan Spilborghs. Just a week later the Rockies came to San Francisco and the Giants swept them to pull even, buoyed by an Edgar Renteria grand slam in the final game, but they faded down the stretch as the Rockies took the wild card. This game was barely meaningful in the end, but when I see its win probability chart in a banner ad on Fangraphs (as I often do) it still hurts.

6. January 19, 2014, NFC Championship Game: Seahawks 23, 49ers 17. The period from 2011 to 2013 was the only time when I've been seriously emotionally invested in the NFL, mostly because it's the only time I've ever had anything to be emotionally invested in. During that time I expected the 49ers to win every game. The 49ers went 12-4 in 2013, but that regular season was infuriating because unlike in the two previous years they couldn't run away with the division. It seemed brutally unfair to me that the 49ers, the best team in the league, would have to go on the road to play a Seahawks team that wasn't even that good. The only reason Seattle finished in first place at all was because the 49ers lost at the Superdome when Donte Whitner was flagged for unnecessary roughness on a clean hit on Drew Brees. The NFC championship started out well, with Seattle turning it over early and San Francisco getting out to a quick lead. Colin Kaepernick was providing the entirety of the offense, but that was a problem that would sort itself out, and besides they were already winning even without anyone else contributing. Then the lead slipped away and NaVorro Bowman's knee was destroyed on a fumble recovery the referees failed to acknowledge and even though Colin Kaepernick made a valiant effort on the last drive he came up short. I reconciled myself to what happened with the notion that the 49ers wouldn't have won in the Super Bowl anyway without Bowman, but after the Broncos' miserable performance two weeks later it was clear that that wasn't true. I didn't realize it until the next September but that was the end.

5. May 25, 2011: Marlins 7, Giants 6 (12 inn.). The Giants were defending champions and in first place, but I was busy with homework on this Wednesday night so I was only half paying attention to this game. Madison Bumgarner wasn't great and the Giants were down 3-2 after eight, whereupon Bruce Bochy, who has constantly demonstrated an infuriating refusal to acknowledge that Javier Lopez is to be used against left-handers only, put in Lopez to pitch the ninth, which ended in Mike Stanton hitting a three-run double to break the game open. In the bottom of the ninth the Giants mounted a four-run rally. With the team down to its last strike, Aubrey Huff hit a two-run single to tie the game at six. In the top of the twelfth, with Guillermo Mota on the mound for the Giants, Scott Cousins came in as a pinch-hitter and failed to get a sacrifice bunt down successfully, resulting in a forceout and in his standing on first base. Omar Infante singled him to third and Emilio Bonifacio hit a fly ball, whereupon Scott Cousins shattered Buster Posey's leg. The Giants failed to score in the bottom of the inning and lost the game, but it hardly mattered. I was amazed at how strongly I felt. It was as if someone had died.

4. January 22, 2012, NFC Championship Game: Giants 20, 49ers 17 (OT). I knew Jim Harbaugh was a very good coach, having watched what he did at Stanford, but I expected it would take a few years. Instead the 49ers in 2011 went 13-3. In the divisional round at Candlestick they beat New Orleans 36-32 behind Alex Smith in what remains my favorite 49ers game of all time. The next day the unstoppable Packers lost to the Giants, and all of a sudden instead of having to go to Lambeau the 49ers were going to play the NFC championship right here at Candlestick. Moreover, they were going to play against a bad team that they had already beaten once that year. Then things failed to work out and somehow the game went to overtime and then Kyle Williams muffed a punt and we were treated to the excruciating spectacle of waiting for the inevitable game-ending field goal. This loss wouldn't have been quite as upsetting if it hadn't come to a team with a negative point differential for the season. The 49ers had every reason to win that game and it didn't happen.

3. February 3, 2013, Super Bowl XLVII: Ravens 34, 49ers 31. I moved to Maryland in August 2012, and lo and behold, the 49ers played the Ravens in the Super Bowl that very year. Obviously losing the Super Bowl is frustrating, and this was especially so because of proximity. Some of my best friends are Ravens fans, but now that it's been a couple years and I've had time to gain some perspective, I can say that my initial feelings were correct and that the Ravens organization is reprehensible and the Ravens fanbase as a collective is unusually unpleasant. As for the game itself, what rankled once again was the feeling of losing to an inferior team. The 2012 Ravens were better than the 2011 Giants, but they were worse than Ravens teams of previous years and certainly worse than the 49ers. Yet the game got out of hand early, and as I watched it it reminded me of nothing more than watching Oakland's rout at the hands of Tampa Bay a decade earlier. Eventually sometime in the third quarter the 49ers remembered that they were in fact the much better team and discovered that Baltimore could not stop Frank Gore. Gore got the 49ers to within the ten-yard line with under two minutes to go and a chance to take the lead with a touchdown, whereupon genius 49ers offensive coordinator Greg Roman in his infinite wisdom decided to call four straight pass plays. People complained afterward that Michael Crabtree was held on fourth down, which might have been the case, but it hardly mattered. Gore should have gotten the ball. If the 49ers had won, he would have been Super Bowl MVP, which would have been a fitting reward after toiling for years in San Francisco on so many terrible teams. Instead there was nothing, and on Monday morning I saw T-shirts all around campus commemorating that nothing, and they never left after that.

2. Oct. 2, 2004: Dodgers 7, Giants 3. This was the year Barry Bonds hit .362/.609/.812. I followed this team every day and I still have a hard time believing that happened. Entering the final series of the season in Los Angeles, the Giants were three games behind the Dodgers and one game behind Houston for the wild card and in need of a sweep to control their destiny. They won the first game 4-2 behind Kirk Rueter, who closed out his last decent season by throwing seven innings and allowing just two runs while only striking out one batter. I still can't understand how he had any success at all with a 3.8 career K/9. In any case, the next day Brett Tomko of all people found it within himself to throw a gem, going 7 2/3 scoreless, and the Giants entered the bottom of the ninth with a three-run lead and three outs to go. The Giants' miserable bullpen promptly laid a turd, with the help of a clutch error at shortstop by defensive replacement Cody Ransom, and with one out, the game already tied, and the bases loaded, Wayne Franklin came in to face Steve Finley, who was nearing the end of his only half-season with the Dodgers, and promptly allowed a walkoff grand slam that decided the division. The Giants won 10-0 the next day, but it didn't matter because the Rockies had already rolled over like dogs and been swept by the Astros, thereby eliminating the Giants from the wild card and from the postseason. I think about that grand slam constantly.

1. Oct. 26, 2002, World Series Game 6: Angels 6, Giants 5. Everyone I know knows what happened here. I was seven years old and infatuated with baseball and convinced that my team was going to win. The Giants were up 5-0 with eight outs to go and then Felix Rodriguez got the ball and everything fell apart. That was Robb Nen's last game of his career, because he gave his arm to the team down the stretch and the team came up empty and he was never healthy again. Of course the Giants lost again the next day, but nobody remembers that. Barry Bonds, the best hitter of all time, never got to win a World Series. I don't think a sporting event can ever again mean as much to me as that one did, now that I'm older and I've seen some sports success in my life.

There's no basketball on this list because the Warriors have never had a painful defeat in my lifetime. Even losing to the Clippers in Game 7 in 2014 didn't feel that way so much as it felt like an accomplishment just to be in that situation. I've never been sufficiently emotionally invested in the Sharks for any of their innumerable postseason losses to make an impact. When I think of bad losses I think of Michigan State's victory over Maryland in the second round of the tournament in 2010, but even though I saw that game I wasn't a Maryland fan at the time, so it doesn't qualify. There is a very good chance that Maryland will be ranked #1 for the first time in program history at the start of next season, so probably I'll have a chance to add a Terps game to this list.

[Хahar 🤔]

the advanced metrics very much disagree with "the 2013 Seahawks weren't even very good".

Obviously in retrospect this was not true, but I strongly felt it to be true at the time.

That's underrating how good the Giants were that season and how mediocre the 49ers were on offense.  Alex Smith couldn't throw the ball outside the numbers so Vernon Davis had to be their entire passing game. 

394 points scored, 400 points allowed. I'll make no claim that the 49ers' passing offense was anything more than adequate (in the game-winning drive against New Orleans, the 49ers were forced to use Brett Swain as a receiver), but that Giants team was nothing more than mediocre.