Rays And Cardinals Win Wild Cards In Wild Baseball Finish

Down 7-0 in the seventh inning, it looked like the best hope for the Tampa Bay Rays was for a Boston Red Sox loss that would force a one game playoff for the American League wild card spot.

It got even better than that.

Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon could not do his job and Boston lost 4-3 to Baltimore and the Rays rallied to beat the New York Yankees 8-7 to claim the AL wild card spot. Dan Johnson, hitting .108, hit a dramatic homer with two strikes in the bottom of the ninth to tie the game to set up Evan Longoria’s game winning homer in the 12th.

Tampa Bay will now face Texas in the playoffs while New York faces Detroit.

In the National League, St.Louis wins the wild card after beating Houston 8-0 while Atlanta blew a 3-1 lead and lost 4-3 to Philadelphia in 13 innings to become eliminated. St.Louis faces Philadelphia and Arizona plays Milwaukee in the NL playoffs.

The losses by Boston and Atlanta cap off for them two of the biggest late season collapses in baseball history as both blew huge wild card leads.