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.

If the Washington Nationals were to play 162 games against the Atlanta Braves they might have a shot at a division title. The Nats dominance of the Tomahawks continued on Sunday, as Livan Hernandez (aided by a clutch single in the 7th from rookie shortstop Ian Desmond), won the second game of a three game tilt against the Braves — and notched their tenth win in 18 tries against the Atlanta Nine. The Braves must think they’re snake bit: the Nationals have dominated the Braves in 2010, the only team they seem to play well against. Hernandez was his normal masterful self in throwing six innings of two run baseball — though he left the game tied. His ERA now stands at a respectable 3.73 for the season, as he solidified his 2010 legacy as the best starter on a shaky Nats’ staff. Desmond’s hit in the seventh was the difference, scoring Willie Harris and Danny Espinosa.

Past A Diving Scutaro: The Red Sox-Yankees match-up in New York last night was a classic example of late season drama, as well as a kind of petri dish for what ails The Nation. The game seemed well in hand for Boston until the ninth, the result of an unusually strong start from the normally shaky Daisuke Matsuzaka, who gave the Bosox eight innings of four hit ball. This was not only Dice-K’s best season outing, it might well have been the best performance of his career. True: the former Saitama Seibu Lions star (btw: the Lions were saved from bankruptcy by Boston bucks shelled out for a look-see at Dice-K) had help from the otherwise brilliant Mariano Rivera in the top of the 9th. The normally shut-the-door closer collapsed against a patient Boston line-up, who victimized the Yanks with dink and dunk singles and four steals. The Red Sox plated two runs and went into the last half-frame with a 3-2 lead. When the wind whipped up and it began to rain, Yankees fans streamed from the park — the game was over, finished, lost.

Drum roll: In ambled Jonathan Papelbon to shut down the Yankees line-up in the ninth. It’s not like the Steinbrenners were shaking in their boots: you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows and you don’t need a scouting report to tell you to sit on Johnny’s splitter. Which is precisely what the batsmen for The Empire did, vengefully dinking and dunking the closer’s right-down-Broadway fastballs and happily banking his not-even-close free passes . . . and knotting the game at 3. Here was Papelbon’s no account (I-wish-my-splitter-actually-worked) line: single (Swisher), single (Teixeira), steal (Nunez), walk (Rodriguez) and single — Robinson Cano. With the game actually on the line, Papelbon threw like Dick Raditz, inducing a Posada strike out and Berkman fly. Too late.

When the Red Sox went quietly in the 10th, the game’s result seemed fated. “Francoma” had seen enough of Papelbon, and brought in Hideki Okajima (the pride of Kyoto) to face the Yanks in the 10th — inducing metaphorical teeth gnashing in the rain-soaked northeast. But the Red Sox made it interesting: after Curtis Granderson reached on a single, Brett Gardner bunted him over — and was safe at first. Granderson then took third on a throwing error steal (never mind, that’s five steals in just 1.5 innings!) and Okijima intentionally walked Jeter, loading the bases. It was a wise move. Marcus Thames grounded into a fielder’s choice, with Granderson thrown out at the plate. While the bases were still loaded, Okijima was sitting pretty. The Yanks were through the heart of their line-up, the game was still tied, and Hadeki was staring in at . . . ah . . . ah . . . Juan Miranda. You know — the .222 minor league prospect no-bat lots-of-speed Juan Miranda. So, with Gardner, Jeter and Thames dancing off the bases, what did Okajima do with Miranda?

He walked him.

(below: Juan Miranda mobbed by teammates after his walk-off walk)

The season may have ended yesterday for two storied franchises. The Red Sox and the Dodgers both blew late-in-the-game leads (the Sox to the Blue Jays, the Dodgers to the Phillies) and lost on the road as they attempted to chase down a wild card slot in their respective divisions. The Nation, who are four games back in the Wild Card race, look to be in better shape than the Trolleys — who trail in the N.L West by six-and-a- half. But the similarity between the two teams, and the reason they both may be done, is their fate-crossed closers. Jonathan Broxton of the Dodgers and Jonathan Papelbon of the Sox sport very similar lines, and they’re not pretty.  Both closers have four losses, both have ERAs over 3.0, and both have blown an inordinate number of saves (Papelbon has blown six; Broxton has blown five). And both closers also took the loss yesterday.

The Dodger implosion was the more bloody of the two, with the Torre squad blowing a seven run lead with six outs to go. The only reason I continued to watch the game into the late innings was that I don’t like the Phils –while I’ve got an unexplained affection for the Dodgers. Basically, I wanted to see the Ponies getting drubbed. But, I’d forgotten about the Dodger bullpen (though that’s not hard to do if you don’t have one). Torre looked absolutely gray in the last two innings (especially in the ninth), when Broxton hit the first batter and then walked the second. Torre trudged to the hill to tell his man to “trust [his] stuff.”  Actually, he said it twice (you could read his lips). Broxton promptly walked the next batter, and then it was only a matter of time.

The Sox weren’t much better: they led the Blue Jays 5-2 going into the final frame, but they couldn’t hold it. Starter John Lackey started off the ninth and gave up a solo dinger; he was pulled. That said, Lackey had pitched effectively, scattering seven hits over eight innings with only one walk. Then Papelbon came on: and the wheels fell off. In one-third of an inning Papelbon gave up four hits and walked one. Fireballer Daniel Bard then entered the fray, but it was too late. While Bard got his man to fly out to center by then the game had been tied and the winning run had tagged from third to score.

The Dodgers are certainly done. Broxton looks absolutely lost on the mound. It’s not clear how, in the wake of the Broxton disaster, the Trolleys can rebound from “the Philadelphia Massacre.” And the Sox? Well, we’ll see . . . but it doesn’t look good. And it’s because of their closer. Effective closers don’t blow six save opportunities and keep their team in contention. It’ll be a mammoth test of the Sox stick-to-it-iveness to continue the march to the Wild Card.  They’ve certainly showed their mettle thus far, particularly given the almost unbelievable number of key players they’ve had on the DL this season. But with Kevin Youkilis gone for the year with a thumb injury its just not certain they can come back from their collapse in Toronto.