If you watched Tim Kurkjian last night on ESPN, then you know just how close he came to an on-air myocardial infarction. In the history of the game, he said, what viewers just saw was history — the best night of baseball ever of any regular season. The best, as he repeated, in 200,000 games. In fact, he’s right — it might well have been.

Unless, of course, you’re a fan of either the Boston Red Sox or Atlanta Braves. For both of those clubs, and their fans, the “night to remember” was a belly-up sinking that compared with the loss of the “unsinkable” Titanic: it just wasn’t supposed to happen. Fans will focus on the Red Sox, of course, but down in Atlanta the despair was as keenly felt. You only have so many shots at this, and this may be one of the Braves’ last.

“When you’re in a slump as a team, you find a bunch of different ways to lose,” third baseman Chipper Jones said after the Bravos dropped a nail biter to the Phillies. “Bats go silent. You get wild on the mound. You walk in runs. You find different ways to lose and we sure did over the past couple weeks.”

Okay. But still — the most improbable of improbables was not the Braves loss to Philadelphia (let alone the Redbirds whitewashing of the Astros), or even the fact that somehow the Tampa Bay Rays came back to take a 12 inning victory from the Yankees, but Baltimore’s epic ninth inning walk off victory against the Nation. “Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” the unsinkable Molly Brown said as she saw the Titanic go down, stern first.

And that’s what we all said, last night, when Robert Andino put a Jonathan Papelbon offering just off the glove of Carl Crawford in left field to score Noland Reimold and give the Orioles (the Orioles!) a walk-off 4-3 win in Baltimore. There’s a reason why fans keep their mouths shut when they’re watching a no-hitter in the ninth, just as there’s a reason why you don’t pitch Tim Wakefield eight times in the middle of a divisional race just so he can get his 200th win. (What the hell were they thinking?)

Here’s some other things you don’t ever do, no matter what. You don’t calculate that you have an inside shot just because the Rays are playing the Yankees, you don’t headline that you have “the best team ever” at the beginning of a season, you don’t describe the Iraqi insurgents as “pushovers” — and you don’t call a ship unsinkable when it’s sitting in Belfast Harbor: you don’t flirt with icebergs.

So . . . so don’t rewrite the rules. They remain, the rules. You don’t tempt fate, which is what the Red Sox did all of September, and it’s what they did last night. It’s call hubris, and it’s been around since Homer. “I’m pretty shocked,” Red Sox arm John Lester said. “Not only with the Rays game, but in our game, we’ve got the best closer in baseball. That stuff doesn’t happen to him.” Oh, c’mon. Sure it does.  This is baseball.

Baseball’s commenters continue to insist it’s “early” — but if you’re a Boston Red Sox fan, the clock is ticking. With the Nationals rained out in St. Louis, it seemed as good a time as any to check out Boston’s best, switching the channel from the MASN St. Louis broadcast to CSN California, where the struggling Bosox were facing off against Oakland’s Brett Anderson, one of the best young pitchers in the game. The Red Sox have always had difficulties against Anderson and, as it turns out, last night was no different, as Anderson and the A’s shut down the Red Sox 5-0.

The difference in the game was Anderson — who threw eight complete innings of four hit ball, burying his curve and baffling Bosox hitters. Boston’s best flailed away, notching eight strike outs while Anderson walked one. The good news for Boston (if there is such a thing) is that its pitching was strong through seven, with John Lackey returning to form: he looked just fine in six complete, holding the White Elephants to a single run on four hits. But this might not have been the best night to give Hideki Okajima his first outing of the season; the just-returned Okajima threw batting practice to the A’s light hitting roster, and they lit him up (.2 innings, two hits, three runs — that’s a 40.50 ERA).

“It’s awful early,” Sox manager Terry Francona said after the game. “It’s a small sample, but their guy just pitched a great game tonight. They’re a hot staff right now.” Well, it’s not that early — and while the Sox are hardly out of it in the A.L. East (and yeah, there’s still a long way to go), their best hitters are struggling (the team is 10th of 14 in the A.L.), and their pitching is nowhere to be seen (they’re dead last in the A.L. in team ERA). You can see their struggles in their eyes: Carl Crawford looks like he’s been hit with a shovel, and Kevin Youkilis shakes his head after nearly every poor inning.

So here’s the question: is it that Brett Anderson was that good — or that Boston just can’t get on track? For Francona, the glass is still half full: don’t worry, Boston is recovering from its early season woes (he says), they just ran into a tough young pitcher. But for Boston fans, that reassuring message is getting harder and harder to believe. Anderson is only the beginning. The A’s have the best young staff in the game (Brett Anderson, Trevor Cahill, Gio Gonzalez, reclamation project Brandon McCarthy — oh, and Dallas Braden and his temporary replacement, Tyson Ross) and Boston is 0-7 on the road. It might not seem likely, but it’s possible that Boston will emerge from the caverns of the Oakland Coliseum with a record of 5-13. In which case, it’ll be damned hard for the Back Bay faithful to do anything but panic.

Adam LaRoche broke out of his start-of-the-season hitting slump, putting an 0-1 offering from Marlin reliever Edward Mujica into the right field seats to power the Washington Nationals past the Florida Marlins, 5-3. The LaRoche bomb saved the Nationals from a sweep and preserved a brilliant outing from the Nats’ bullpen. “I was looking for a pitch to hit. I faced [Mujica] a few times,” LaRoche said following the Nats’ victory. “He pitches me pretty tough. He mixes it up — three pitches. He has a really good split and that’s what it was.”

The LaRoche dinger saved the Nats from a 1-5 record, but it was only a part of the story. The Nats’ bullpen kept the Anacostia Nine in the game, and then some — combining for six innings of two hit baseball, along with eight strikeouts. The relief corps’ outing confirmed Washington’s claim to having one of the major league’s best hold-em-and-save-em crews around. Tyler Clippard, Drew Storen and Sean Burnett were all sharp, joined in this outing by Todd Coffey, who has been struggling. “It’s great, but that’s baseball, man, especially being a bullpen guy,” Todd Coffey said following the victory. “You can have a horrible night the night before, but you have the next night to redeem yourself. We went out there, we attacked the zone, we threw strikes. We made them put the ball in play and we won.”

Bosox To Nosox: It wasn’t that long ago that Red Sox fans were talking about their team’s 2011 World Series appearance. The swagger seemed justified. Carl Crawford had arrived from Tampa, Adrian Gonzalez from San Diego, and Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz, and John Lackey (oh, and Tim Wakefield) were at the front of one of the best starting rotations in the game. That . . . that and the team was opening the season in Texas against the over-hyped Rangers before going on to Cleveland, where they would face the no-account Indians. Okay, so maybe the Rangers might take two in Arlington (at worst), but the Red Sox would conquer the Tribe, before heading home for the opening series against the hated Yankees. And then? And then the inevitable march to the post-season. “Best Team Ever,” the Boston Herald headline . . .  ah, heralded.

Well, maybe not. The Red Sox were swept in Texas, swept again in Cleveland and now stand at 0-6. Sure, it’s still early, but the Red Sox are reeling. The team is hitting a mind boggling .191, Carl Crawford seems lost at the plate, John Lackey’s first outing was a car wreck, and close plays have gone against them. Red Sox fans are decidedly unhappy, moving “closer to the ledge” and angrily spouting their anger on Boston’s ubiquitous sports talk shows. At least the Red Sox can be assured that their home fans will support them, right? “I hope we don’t get booed,” reliever Daniel Bard (16.87 ERA) said.

Can the Red Sox turn it around? Sure they can turn it around — and they will turn it around. Crawford will hit, the starting four will steady itself and, after a few minutes of expressing their disappointment, Red Sox Nation will rally behind their team and make them feel at home. Things will return to normal at Fenway and the Red Sox will begin the slow but certain crawl past the Yankees to first place. Maybe. “We’ve just got to put a halt to it, go home, and luckily we have our fans, great fans on our side that will bring us out of this,” Red Sox pillar Kevin Youkilis says. “We thrive on them, and they thrive on us. It’s time for us to go play for them and go play for each other in here. We’ve got a good team. We’ve just got to get out of this little funk we’re in and hit the high notes, play some music in here after the game.”

All is forgiven in Boston: late on Wednesday night, the Boston Globe reported that “the Nation” had inked a contract with Tampa Bay Rays’ uber-star Carl Crawford. The Globe says that Crawford will become a Red Sox for seven years and $142 million. Outside of Cliff Lee and Jayson Werth, Crawford was the class of the 2010 free agent class, hitting .307 with 19 home runs and 47 stolen bases. The Red Sox and Crawford haven’t exactly had the best relationship; back in May of 2009 (Red Sox fans will surely remember), Crawford stole six bases on the Red Sox — in what one baseball site headlined as “Grand Theft Boston.” The Red Sox were not pleased, whining (note: the Nationals complain, the Tiants whine) that Crawford stole his sixth base unnecessarily. The one palliative that Red Sox fans can point to (now that Crawford is in the fold) is that the loudest complaint came from former Red Sox hurler Brad “Bad” Penny, a veteran of the Massachusetts Penal League. Penny, who some people describe as “a southern gentleman,” wasn’t so much ripped at Crawford’s sixth steel, as he was at his fifth — when Crawford stole third, off of . . . Penny. After the game, however, Red Sox skipper Terry Francona dampened the complaints, explaining that Crawford is really fast.

What’s really juicy about the Crawford signing is that the reporter who broke it, Peter Abraham, wrote back at the beginning of the season that if he were the Red Sox — and was given a choice between Jayson Werth and Crawford — he’d take Werth. While this doesn’t exactly relegate “the Nation” to the status of province, it sheds light on all those nasty comments made about Mike Rizzo for signing the former Phillie. The signing of Crawford should not be unexpected: it reflects Boston’s yen for getting in on the action, particularly if they feel that the dreaded pinstripers are somehow gaining on them (or are extending their furlongs, as the case may be). After all, Soxologist Peter Gammons was saying on MLB Network, just hours before the deal was reported, that the Yankees (being the Yankees) were going hard after Cliff Lee. With C.C. already in the fold, the Yanks would have to be the odds-on favorites to take the A.L. East. The Red Sox deal also eliminates the Belinskis from the Crawford sweepstakes, despite the fact that Crawford was considered a natural fit for L.A., and despite the fact that the Angels’ front office was leveraging their front-runner status by telling everyone that a Crawford-to-the-Angels deal was nearly a lock.

But for all the talk about Werth and Crawford and the Red Sox and Lee, there’s a bit of suck-in-your-stomach bad news here. The loss of Crawford, and the probable trade of starter Matt Garza, probably puts Tampa out of the running for any late season berth. And the deal highlights the struggles of mid-size and small market teams (like the Rays), who (while they might catch lightning, maybe once or twice) are eventually relegated to being development squads for the likes of Hal and Theo. Just ask Kansas City, which monopolized the other headline today: for signing all-world-average, but really cheap, Jeff Francoeur. You have to wonder: will that be tomorrow’s headline in The Kansas City Star? Here’s the latest: according to MLB Trade Rumors, Boston’s deal for Crawford won’t become official until Friday, after Crawford passes his physical.

The arm of Roy Oswalt and the bat of Jimmy Rollins gave the Philadelphia Phillies a 6-1 win at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, knotting the NLCS at one game apiece. Oswalt’s performance was just what Philadelphia needed, after the Giants defeated the Phillies in the NLCS opener on Saturday. The former Houston righty dominated the Giants’ line-up, giving up only three hits in eight innings while striking out nine. The game also marked a sweet retribution, of sorts, for struggling Phillies’ shortstop Jimmy Rollins, whose 7th inning double off the right field wall plated three and gave Rollins four RBIs for the night. Rollins — who has been fighting injuries — had trouble throughout the 2010 campaign, hitting just .243 while missing over 70 regular season games. The series now heads to San Francisco, where Philadelphia and San Francisco’s third set of starters (Matt Cain and Cole Hamels) will face off on Tuesday.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: We belatedly note that the Internet Baseball Writers Association (Washington, D.C. Chapter) has published their 2010 Player Acheivement Awards. As voters in this polling, CFG notes with pride that Ryan Zimmerman was named the winner of the Goose Goselin Award for Most Valuable Player, Livan Hernandez won the Walter Johnson Starting Pitcher of the Year Award and Adam Dunn won the Frank Howard Slugger of the Year Award. Arguably, Adam Dunn could have easily outpolled Ryan Zimmerman for the Goselin Award. He was our choice . . . Our thanks for the Association for its continued good work and to Dave Nichols for organizing this . . .there’s a lot of chatter in the “Natsmosphere” about whether the Nats might be contenders in the Cliff Lee sweepstakes. Lee would give the Nationals something they’ve never had: a front line strikeout pitcher who could give the team a once-every-four-days outing that would make the team an automatic .500 contender in the soft N.L. East. But is it possible . . . ?

Our bet here is that Mike Rizzo will use a gaggle of prospects to land a middle-of-the-pack starter, eschewing an expensive arm like Lee. Still, such a trade could yield a surprise — the landing of a former front line pitcher (Gil Meche, for instance — though he’s still owed $11 million) who needs a change of scene. There are no easy pickins: Zack Greinke is said to be available, but you can bet he’ll be expensive and, like Meche, he’s owed a sack of money ($27 million over the next two years). Or the Nats could fish for someone who’s worn out their home welcome, but could be straightened out. Someone like A.J. Burnett, who’s at the end of the line in New York, but still has the stuff necessary to be a front-of-the-rotation guy. Working through the possibilities shows you just how limited Rizzo’s options actually are. Take Burnett. He’s aging, very expensive and can block any proposed trade. And if the Nats came up in any discussions we assume he would . . .

We’re still partial to Jon Garland. Garland wouldn’t cost an all-in; the problem is that he wants to stay on the left coast and he’s been a good addition in San Diego. So if what’s available in terms of pitching is just too expensive and you have a bit of money, what would you do? Our guess is that if you were to play the odds, you might want to bet that Mike Rizzo would find the possibility of signing someone like Carl Crawford, a free agent sparkplug who would fit in nicely in D.C., very tempting. Signing Crawford would make a player like Josh Willingham available on the market, in exchange for a solid arm or top prospect. Then too, Crawford is a star: aggressive, fast and dedicated, a player who could be a centerpiece in the outfield. Given the dirth of attractive free agent starting pitchers, bidding for Crawford makes sense; there’s little doubt that Crawford would put people in the seats.  Then too — and given that the Nationals probably will not sign Adam Dunn — the front office would have the money to land the soon-to-be former Ray, whose arrival would compensate for the loss of one of the team’s most popular players . . .Zimmerman and Crawford and Strasburg, oh my . . .

Ryan Zimmerman and Adam Dunn homered, and Jason Marquis pitched 5.2 solid innings to lead the Nationals to a 9-3 victory over the Florida Marlins in Miami on Monday night. The win was the third in a row for the Nationals — a “laugher” — who have energized their sudden surge by scoring 40 runs in the last five games. On Monday, the Zimmerman-Dunn combination accounted for seven of the nine runs, as Zimmerman hit his 25th and Dunn hit his 33rd home runs. Roger Bernadina and Michael Morse also continued their offensive assault, with both accounting for two hits. The sudden plate production stands in stark contrast to the Nats of just a week ago — when the Anacostia Nine had difficulty scoring against the Braves, Phillies and Cubs, and dropped seven of nine games.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains: It was a bad night for Florida baseball. The official attendance for the Nats-Marlins tilt was given as 18,326, but after a nearly three hour rain delay the Marlins were playing in front of hundreds — not thousands. In the seventh inning, a ballgirl snagged a ground foul along the first base line and trotted towards the seats to hand it to a fan: there was no one there. Then too, it’s an open debate whether anyone scrambled for Adam Dunn’s home run into the right field seats — no fan was even close. If you head to see the Marlins tonight, you might want to look under your seat. When the game finished at 1 a.m this morning, there were more people in Dupont Circle than at the Marlins game. The Marlins are counting on a new stadium to solve their attendance woes, but you have to wonder whether that’s really going to work. There’s a beautiful stadium in Toronto and a good, young team — and they don’t draw a lick . . .

Over in Tampa, where the Rays were taking on the Jays, precisely 11,968 patrons showed up at “The Trop” — an embarrassing non-anomaly for a team that now ranks 23rd in MLB attendance (just behind the last place Nats). The Nationals ranked as high as 19th in attendance this year, but the Rays have never been a notch over where they are right now. Bleacher Report’s J.C. De La Torre says there’s a reason for this: 70 percent of the fans live nearly an hour from the stadium (which is true) and Tampa has the second highest jobless rate in the state. And De La Torre notes that Cincinnati, San Diego and Texas also have attendance problems. They are all first place teams with 62 percent or less in capacity this season.

No matter what the issue, the Rays’ problems are long term and not likely to be resolved anytime soon — and they will have an impact on the franchise, which will see star left fielder Carl Crawford headed out of town (wouldn’t it be nice if he came to Washington, instead of New York) come October. “It was a big letdown,” Crawford said of the sparse crowd. “We came out all fired up and you see that, it’s really depressing.” The Rays desperately need a new stadium, but are locked in a head-to-head battle over whether the team will play in St. Petersburg (where they are now, officially, located) or Tampa — which could be the site of a new stadium in the waterfront area. The battle won’t be joined until after the season, which means that a new stadium (if there is one) won’t be started for at least another year. And no one has yet figured out how a new ballpark will be funded.

(above: Jason Marquis AP Photo/Wildredo Lee; below: Carl Crawford against the Red Sox in Tampa)