Baltimore was out of it when they knocked off the Red Sox at the end of 2011. Winning that last game was the high point of the season for the Orioles, and to that time, the high point in many of their careers.
I remember when the California Angels faded in 1967. There had been a five team race for most of the season, but the Angels were the first to fall out of the running. When it got down to three teams with two weeks left, California manager Bill Rigney said he was going to make the last seven games of the season into the Angel's own seven game World Series, which he did. The Angels took two out of three from the Twins but then lost two out of three to the Tigers, so after the Red Sox had won their final game, they still had to wait for the outcome of the Angels/Tigers game to see if they would win the pennant outright or have a playoff with Detroit. The Angels kept about ten guys warmed up in the bullpen and won their own game seven, which gave the American League pennant to Boston.
I just checked the 1967 game logs and see that Jim McGlothlin, who had started 29 games for the Angels that year and led the league with 6 shutouts, pitched in relief in the second game of both double headers that weekend, including 4.2 innings of long relief in the Sunday nightcap. Rigney pulled starter Ricky Clark in the second inning of that final game after he had faced just ten batters and given up just three runs on four hits and a walk.
I see that Denny McLain was the Detroit starter. He had not pitched in the two previous weeks because the mob broke his foot.
Here's Jim Lonborg being torn apart by the fans that day, even though his complete game victory did not actually clinch the pennant. The Boston fans pulled a "Nick Punto" on him, and Nick Punto hadn't even been born yet.
And on a sad note, I am learning for the first time that McGlothlin died of cancer at the young age of 32.
