maybe i don't watch enough baseball but is there any worse way to lose than by a walkoff balk???
Not even close to the worst loss ever. Those happen more than you think. Runners purposely do distracting shit to throw off the pitcher and distract them from throwing the ball to home in the hopes that they'll make a shit pitch or balk. It's embarrassing, but it's not a horrible way to lose.
I'll tell you about the worst loss ever.
Background for this worst loss ever is important. In the 2011 season on game 135 of 162, the Boston Red Sox had a 9 game lead on the Tampa Bay Rays for the Wild Card spot on the playoffs. With 27 games to go, the Red Sox were nearly guaranteed a playoff birth. Fast forward to the last game of the season. The Red Sox are in a brutal decline and have collapsed in the last month of the season. Their 9 game lead on the Rays is now 0. In the last game of the year, it's winner take all. If the Red Sox win and the Rays lose, the Red Sox go into the playoffs. If both teams win or lose, there is a special extra game to decide the winner.
The day goes off wonderfully for Red Sox fans. The Red Sox are up 3-2 before the game is put on hold for a rain delay. The Red Sox arch rivals, the New York Yankees who are already in the playoffs, are thrashing the Rays 7-0 when the rain delay happens. It's the 8th inning, and the Rays are still down 7-0. But then the Rays have a 6 run 8th inning, but they're still losing 7-6 when the tarp comes off the field.
Tampa Bay, down to their last strike in the ball game, tie it up with a home run. It's 7-7 somehow. Red Sox still winning, but hanging onto a thread 3-2. If the Red Sox win, then they at least get to play another day if the Rays win too. The Red Sox have a chance to add on to their lead, but one guy gets gunned down trying to score (the ball beat him by a literal eyelash) and another guy hits into a double play with 1 out and the bases loaded. But the Red Sox are still winning, and we're going into the 9th inning with one of the games best closers on the mound. The Yankees and Rays are tied in the 11th inning, but again, we win our game we can fight on. And even if we lose, if they Rays lose too, we still aren't dead.
It's the 12th inning for the Yankees. They have runners on first and third with no one out, and a great player in Jorge Posada coming to the plate. All he does is hit the ball right to the 3rd baseman, who then tags the runner out at 3rd base. ANY contact not hit at someone wins the game for the Yankees and the Red Sox live on.
Back to the Red Sox. One of the greatest closers in Red Sox history gives up the lead on a double, and it's 3-3 Orioles. There is now 2 outs in the 9th inning, and Robert Andinio lines a ball right towards superstar outfielder Carl
Crawful Crawford, who decides that instead of catching the ball standing up, he'll go into a sliding dive feet first and put his glove in a chicken wing type of position so he can fuck up the play, not catch the ball, and let the Orioles win on a walkoff 4-3.
Red Sox lose, but it's not over. The Rays are still playing and if they lose, well shit. The Red Sox could still make the playoffs. But exactly 3 minutes after the Red Sox lose, the Rays hit a walkoff homerun. And a 9 run lead in the beginning of the month ends in the Red Sox being kicked out of the playoffs and losing two fucking walkoffs in nearly impossible situations.
The kicker of this whole shit is that on that same day in the very same season, Atlanta Braves blew a 8.5 game lead on the Cardinals. And with the Braves and Cardinals tied with 1 game to play, the Braves blew a lead and the Cardinals won by some obscene score I don't remember because I was glued to both the Red Sox and the Rays games.
THAT'S one of the worst ways you can lose a game. One of the worse ways you can lose a season. One of the worse ways for the greatest manager and general manager that your organization has ever seen to be let go, and for some of your favorite players to get literally ran out of town by some clown of a manager. Shit, if the Red Sox didn't somehow magically win the world series just 2 years later with a rag tag group of average players, I'd be more fuming than I already am still today...