a September stop at the Heartbreak Hotel

American poet John Greenleaf Whittier once famously reflected, "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been.'" I'm sure baseball was on his mind.

The historic collapse of the 2011 Red Sox and Braves is well documented. Unfortunately, we’ve seen some big failures this season, too.

It looks like the Yankees managed to stop the bleeding in time and despite blowing a 10 game division lead, they’ve never fallen out of first place and will play in October. Unfortunately, three teams have not been as fortunate. And I’m not even talking about the dumpster fire in Boston or the flop in Philadelphia.

1. It looked like this was finally the first time in 20 years that the Pittsburgh Pirates would break the streak of futility and break even in the standings. On August 8, 110 games into the season, the Pirates were 16 games over .500, at 63-47 and in playoff position. In the 47 games since then the poor diehards in western Pennsylvania have seen their beloved team nose dive, going 13-34, and will clinch two decades of failure with their next loss. To add insult to injury, Homer Bailey no-hit the Pirates on Friday, and I can’t think of anything more embarrassing in baseball than not being able to get one hit in 9 innings. The fans are left waiting for next year, as they’ve done since 1992. (On a positive note, things do look bright for next year…)

2. On September 18 the surprise Chicago White Sox were 3 games ahead of the Detroit Tigers in the American League Central and looking at a favorable remaining schedule. Only 9 games later the Sox were 2 back of the Tigers and are wondering what happened to their season. This isn’t the A’s, who play 16 of their last 19 games against the Rangers, Yankees, Tigers and Orioles. Chicago has unraveled going 2-9 against a bunch of teams that will finish no better than 3rd place.

3. This summer the Los Angeles Dodgers picked up payroll like it was going out of style. Within four weeks they acquired All Stars Hanley Ramirez, Shane Victorino, Brandon League, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford (injured), and Adrian Gonzalez, and also added Joe Blanton; joining these guys to an already-strong nucleus of Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, and Clayton Kershaw. On August 16 the Dodgers were in first place and their division rivals had just lost their best hitter Melky Cabrera to suspension. Here we are a month and a half later and those star-studded Dodgers are 10 games out of first, proving that winning in the standings is a lot different than stacking your Fantasy Baseball roster.