- 2 days ago
Kenny Lofton flourished throughout a 17-year MLB career. He was one of the all-time great leadoff hitters and base-stealers the game has ever seen. But in his odyssey to punctuate his career with a World Series championship, his path was unlike anything ever seen before.
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00:00For my money, there's a clear top triumvirate when it comes to Major League Baseball's
00:04most iconic and indelible postseason meltdowns.
00:07And incredibly, they happened in three consecutive years.
00:12After taking three of the first five games in the 2002 World Series,
00:16the San Francisco Giants held a five-run lead in Game 6,
00:19just eight outs from bringing the city its first-ever title,
00:22before squandering that lead en route to losing both that game
00:25and the following day's Game 7 as the championship slipped through their fingers.
00:30The very next year, the Chicago Cubs took three of the first five games in the NLCS
00:35and held a three-run lead in Game 6,
00:37just five outs from capturing their first pennant since Babe Ruth had a pulse.
00:42Then Steve Bartman interfered with a foul ball,
00:45and the rest, as they say, was history.
00:50The year after that, the New York Yankees took three of the first three games
00:55in the ALCS over a Red Sox team seeking their first World Series title since trading away Babe Ruth.
01:01In Game 4, with the Yanks holding a one-run lead in the bottom of the ninth
01:05and MLB's lone all-time unanimous Hall of Famer on the mound,
01:08Boston's dreams of not tacking another year onto their championship drought
01:12are on the faintest of life support.
01:15Until New York's inability to put the final nail in their coffin made history.
01:21Unbelievably enough, when I was looking into these catastrophes,
01:24my brain lit up when I saw a through-line across these teams,
01:27there was a player who actually threaded the needle of hopscotching in consecutive seasons
01:32from the Bay to Wrigleyville to the Bronx to experience all three of those calamities.
01:38And somehow that still doesn't even come close to encapsulating the career-long story
01:42of the playoff agony of Kenny Lofton.
01:52That agony wasn't exactly the fault of Lofton, who was one of the most prolific athletes of his time,
01:57good enough at hoops to play collegiately at Arizona in the late 80s,
02:01operating as a key sixth man on their dominant 88 squad that made a Final Four run.
02:06And at least interesting enough as a baseball prospect that a few months later,
02:10despite being a relative neophyte to the sport who for all intents and purposes hadn't played it in
02:15years, the speedy Lofton's wheels mesmerized a Houston Astros scout enough for the club to take
02:20a 17th round flyer on him in the MLB draft. By 91, against all odds, his game developed enough to
02:27break
02:27into the big leagues. After the season, Houston traded him to Cleveland where he spent five years
02:33in what represented the first of three career stints in Northeast Ohio. Across those five years,
02:39Lofton was a hit machine, racking up more than any other big leaguer outside Paul Molitor. His output
02:46exceeded such Hall of Famers as Craig Biggio, Roberto Alomar, Frank Thomas, even Tony Gwynn.
02:53And once he got himself aboard, he was an absolute menace on the base path. Having led the American
02:58League in stolen bases in each of those five seasons, he cumulatively amassed 39% more steals
03:04than any other big leaguer. And thanks to his game taking off and becoming one of the all-time great
03:10leadoff hitters, he nearly always helped lead his team to the playoffs. From 1995 through 2007, he was
03:16a constant fixture in October baseball, with 11 playoff berths throughout those 13 seasons. Along with
03:23three Yankee luminaries from the same era, two Yankee luminaries from Days of Yore and Chipper Jones,
03:29Lofton's one of just seven position players in MLB history who's played in 11 postseasons within a
03:3513-year span. So his career oozed with opportunity to win a World Series. But while each of the other
03:42six parlayed their metronomic presence in October into having conquered the World Series mountain early
03:47in their careers, Lofton's story unfolded a hell of a lot differently. And the particularly torturous
03:54nature of the Commissioner's Trophy eluding Lofton's grasp didn't stay within the confines of 2002
03:59through 04 either. Not by a long shot, despite an odyssey that took him from sea to shining sea.
04:07Let's start with the 1995 season that led to his very first postseason foray. Cleveland was
04:13seemingly indestructible all year long, easily scoring the most runs in MLB while allowing the
04:19second fewest. They won 100 of their 144 games, 10 more than any other big league squad that season,
04:26and good for a win percentage just south of 70, which was comfortably the best mark MLB had seen
04:32in over 40 years. But the crapshoot that is playoff baseball reared its ugly head when, after cruising
04:38to the fall classic vs the Braves, Cleveland lost the series in the wake of dropping all three games
04:44in Atlanta by one run. The coup de grace came when the team whose 291 batting average was also MLB's
04:51best in over 40 years could muster but a single hit as their bats fell silent at the worst possible
04:57time. Next season in 96, Lofton was again the tip of the spear for MLB's best club, only for its
05:04season
05:05to end in a whimper with just one playoff win. Days ahead of the 97 campaign, Cleveland shocked
05:11the baseball world and traded Lofton to Atlanta, which devastated him. But management, fearing that
05:18he'd be a flight risk as a free agent after the season, didn't want to take the chance of losing
05:23him while getting nothing in return. Though even changing teams did not put an end to Lofton's streak
05:28of playing for baseball's best squad. The Braves breezed through the NLDS, but in their NLCS matchup
05:35with the Florida Marlins, they lost a hard-fought series in which Atlanta actually outscored the
05:40Fish. After a third straight year playing for the league's most sparkling team all season before the
05:46flame fizzled out in October, some frustration finally started to understandably percolate. And no
05:52one, in their wildest dreams, could ever imagine what was in store across the decade to come.
05:59That winter, Lofton did indeed turn out to be a free agency defection the first time he reached
06:04the open market, though he ironically used that freedom to sign back in Cleveland for the start
06:09of stint number two, ending his one-year purgatory. So perhaps he wouldn't have been a flight risk after
06:15all, and after his old squad won the 97 AL pennant, perhaps he would have made the difference in a
06:21World
06:21Series where it instead lost a hotly contested seven-game slugfest by the slimmest of margins
06:26to those Marlins which would have given both team and Lofton a long-coveted championship. But I digress.
06:35In that first season back together in 98, Lofton was unable to keep his streak alive of playing for
06:41MLB's best team. However, he still helped lead a run to the ALCS, and upon confronting the 114-win
06:48juggernaut Yankees, Cleveland did manage to win two of the first three games. Very promising. But
06:55that promise got a bucket of freezing water chucked on it as losses in each of the ensuing three games
07:01followed in a season-ending thud. 99 was even more cruel. Cleveland won each of its first two ALDS
07:09games over Boston, which put them on the precipice, needing to win only one of its next three games.
07:15Just so much promise lurking here. But then it dropped Game 3, and, powered by Game 4's worst
07:22pitching performance in MLB history, sorry Bartolo, but also this was nestled within a broader 21-inning
07:28stretch in which Cleveland's arms surrendered an unfathomable 44 runs, it ultimately couldn't
07:34get the one W it needed before three straight L's. And to add injury to insult, he dislocated his shoulder
07:42sliding into first, which knocked him out of the decisive fifth game. That's why you never slide
07:47into first, kids. That brings us to Y2K, the first of just two seasons within this 13-year window in
07:54which Lofton's team failed to make the playoffs, which it missed by a single game to Seattle.
08:00Cleveland got its chance at revenge the next year when they squared off in the ALDS against a
08:05Mariner squad coming in hot off a regular season where they won the most games in big league history.
08:11It was quite the daunting task, but Lofton and company still managed to take two of the first
08:16three, including an utter demolition in Game 3. There they go, flashing that promise once again.
08:24Oops, there they go squandering it again. This was a particularly special way to lose as they
08:31didn't just outscore Seattle across the series. They outscored them by 10. Can you believe the
08:37Mariners somehow won that series? I suppose some teams just always get all the luck.
08:44Anyway, to this day, there's only been one other LDS in which a team outscored their opposition by more
08:50than five runs while figuring out a way to lose the series. In fact, only three other squads can say
08:57they've ever lost any series despite such a high run differential. The 11 Yanks in the ALDS,
09:03the 93 Braves in the NLCS, and the 60 Yanks in the World Series.
09:09So those are the seven seasons that led into Lofton's three-year stretch from hell.
09:15That's how much heartbreak he'd already endured. It's at this point that he became an MLB nomad,
09:22which was how he managed to wind up in the worst possible place at the worst possible time in 2002,
09:312003, and 2004. And oh, by the way, in all three of those series, Lofton's team scored more runs
09:38than it allowed. For those scoring at home, that's four consecutive seasons and five overall in which
09:44Lofton's team outscored their opponent across a playoff series only to get sent home anyway.
09:49In 2005, continuing his relentless pursuit to win a World Series, Lofton emerged with all those scars,
09:57spending the year in Philly where he batted .335. But alas, this was the second of the two seasons
10:03within the 13-year window in which Lofton's team failed to make the playoffs. Which it missed by a
10:09single game. When 06 rolled around, Lofton's team, this year that'd be the Dodgers, snagged the NL
10:16wildcard spot before getting quickly swept away. This represents the only year out of the 13 in
10:23which Lofton's team coming up short isn't particularly agonizing. He neither played for
10:28MLB's very best team all throughout the regular season, nor blew a commanding series lead, nor missed
10:34the playoffs by a single game. That leaves 2007, which will be the final season of Lofton's illustrious
10:41career and the final chance for him to slay, once and for all, the World Series dragon that he has
10:47so
10:47many times come tantalizingly close to slaying. He signs with the Rangers, but in his swan song,
10:53gets dealt midseason back to Cleveland for his third stint. After wrapping up the 9th division
10:59championship of his career, Lofton obviously had his sights set on a bigger championship.
11:05There was little difficulty in drubbing the Yankees in the ALDS, at which point Lofton ran
11:11into a Red Sox club that stunningly came back from the dead to beat his team in each of his
11:16last
11:16two playoff series against him. Cleveland then commenced to win three of the first four in a
11:22development that is, dare I say, quite, quite promising. It'll take the pennant simply by winning
11:29just one of the next three games. And then, to bring his career to a close, the baseball god stuck
11:37the dagger in and twisted not once, or twice, but unbelievably thrice. Each of Lofton's final three
11:47career postseason series against the Red Sox entailed his team holding a multi-game series lead. In all of
11:54them, his team was on the doorstep of advancing with their foot on Boston's throat, needing just one
11:59more win to capture the series, and having enough cushion that said win just needed to occur before
12:04losing three, or in one case, even four games in a row. And poof, all three strangleholds blown,
12:12his team unable to land the plane in even one of them. The tale of the tape of Lofton's career
12:18is
12:19excruciating. Three consecutive seasons experiencing what are likely the three most epic meltdowns MLB's
12:25ever seen, yet not only didn't mitigate that heartbreak by winning a World Series outside that
12:312002-04 window, but that was despite an extreme abundance of auspicious opportunities. Three
12:38consecutive seasons playing for MLB's best team, those two other blown multi-game leads versus Boston,
12:44two series in which his team won two of the first three games before failing to win another,
12:49even when outscoring its opponent by two runs per game in the 01 ALDS, and two seasons missing the
12:56playoffs by a single game. Kenny's immense talent ultimately mattered only so much. He consistently
13:04shined throughout his MLB journey, one that saw him show a penchant for signing with contenders,
13:09and contenders showing a penchant for trading for him. And in the ultimate reflection of the nature of
13:14baseball, he still wound up never getting to taste the ultimate prize. Frankly, it's kind of bewildering
13:21that he didn't wind up collecting at least three or four rings, let alone not even one. And while
13:26plenty of other great players have failed to win a World Series, I think it can safely be said that
13:31no
13:32other big leaguer, great, mediocre, or otherwise, has ever had a resume of October heartbreak that can
13:38even compete with that of Kenny Lofton.
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