The American League wild card race continues to pick up steam.
Sports reporters in Toronto, Boston, New York and Seattle figure to be busy right through to Sunday's final pitch -- and perhaps into Monday and Tuesday for tiebreakers -- as the four teams fight it out for two spots.
Here's a look at what writers in the three American cities had to say about the battle late Friday night:
Yankees haven't made playoff push easy -- even to very end -- New York Post
Yankees Twitter was lamenting the team's inability to take a big step forward in the wild card race during a tight loss against the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday night.
Firmly in control heading into the evening, the Yankees gave other contenders more hope after the 4-3 defeat.
It didn't come as a surprise to New York Post columnist Ken Davidoff.
The back page: STING RAYS https://t.co/g2C0HgO6yZ pic.twitter.com/NjKL7tZY50
— New York Post Sports (@nypostsports) October 2, 2021
Damn Yankees.
While I’m not quite old enough to have attended the 1955 Broadway opening of the musical with that title, I’m pretty sure it was the fans of other teams that used that adjective to describe the ball club from The Bronx, right?
All these years later, baseball’s most famous franchise now turns its own supporters profane in early October.
Yup, the 2021 Yankees honored the circuitous path that brought them here, falling short Friday night to a Rays group only half-trying, 4-3 at Yankee Stadium, following a furious ninth-inning rally, which allowed the Red Sox and Blue Jays to pick up ground on them in the frenetic American League wild-card race. They did catch a late break, though, when the Mariners lost late to the Angels in Seattle, 2-1, to ensure that, even in the worst-case scenario, they’d play a tiebreaker on Monday (which means that Gerrit Cole almost certainly won’t pitch Sunday on short rest).
Red Sox generate power with novel defensive alignment to beat Nationals -- Boston Globe
Boston Globe reporter Alex Speier focused on the Red Sox's quest for power in his game story.
Speier reports that the Red Sox got creative with their defensive alignment in a bid to boost their offence on Friday against the Washington Nationals.
Desperate for offense after a 1-5 stretch in which the Sox scored three runs or fewer in all of their losses, Cora attempted a novel defensive alignment in an effort to try to generate as much power as possible while playing in Nationals Park, without benefit of the DH. He moved Kiké Hernández from center to second, allowing Kyle Schwarber (left), Hunter Renfroe (center), J.D. Martinez (right), and Bobby Dalbec (first base) to lengthen the middle of the order.
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Renfroe and Dalbec came up with home runs in a key sixth inning to give the Red Sox a 4-0 lead, with Boston ultimately winning 4-2.
With the nail-biting win -- the host Nationals had the winning run at the plate in the ninth -- the Red Sox pulled within a game of the Yankees for the first wild-card spot.
Like the Yankees, Speier says the Red Sox seem to always make things interesting.
Nothing can come easy to a 2021 Red Sox team attempting its final push toward the postseason — nor should it.
The Sox, after all, proved incapable of separating from the Wild Card pack over the season’s final month, their strides followed by stumbles. And so it seems fitting that the Sox, in their 160th game, delivered a game that served as a microcosm of their recent play.
They struggled but did not despair. They claimed a lead but could not separate. They stood in a tinderbox but did not burn. And ultimately, they claimed a tension-filled 4-2 win against the Nationals, concluding their 90th win of the season on a pitch that easily could have yielded a walkoff loss.
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As dramatic as the wild-card race is, it might be playing second fiddle to the New England Patriots in Boston this week with Tom Brady returning to Foxboro with his Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the Sunday nighter.
Boston.com writer Chad Finn called it the most hyped regular-season game of all time.
After drawing under 20,000 fans for their past three games in their improbable late-season surge, the Seattle Mariners packed 44,169 into T-Mobile Park for Friday's series opener against the Los Angeles Angels.
With the Mariners entering the night tied with Boston for the second wild-card spot, there was a chance for an epic scene on the west coast.
But things didn't play out that way as the Mariners lost 2-1 to the playing-out-the-string Angels.
Seattle Times columnist Larry Stone noted the disappointment to lead his game-over piece.
The sweet memories came flooding back on what could have been, and really should have been, Seattle’s best baseball night in a long, long time.
Ah, yes, it’s coming back to me now. This is what it used to feel like when the stadium was jammed in late September and October, when the games bristled with intensity, when it seemed like the fate of the season hung in the balance with every pitch.
That is the delicious tension that the Mariners have coaxed out of what seemed like thin air over the final month of the season. They played the Angels in front of a sold-out throng of 44,169 Friday at T-Mobile Park, and the fans roared like they used to when Junior, Edgar and the Bone roamed the Kingdome.
The only thing missing, in fact, was a Mariners victory. And that’s a massive, gut-wrenching omission, turning what fans yearned to be a massive celebration into an anti-climactic 2-1 defeat that severely dampens Seattle’s playoff hopes. It was a game that was theirs for the taking, but handed two golden scoring opportunities, the Mariners could not muster the clutch hit they needed.
