The Front Row with Jason Elliott October 1, 2011

Wednesday was just one of those days.

Between the final day of the regular season in baseball and the first college soccer match I've ever seen, there's a good chance that the series of events that started at 6 p.m. won't be repeated anytime soon.

THE AFTERNOON began with the North Idaho Cardinals taking on the Sasquatch from the Community Colleges of Spokane in a women's nonconference match.

Entering the day, both teams were unbeaten and from the opening whistle, you could tell that neither wanted to leave Eisenwinter Field with a first loss of the season.

The intensity of the match was obvious from the opening whistle as each team clawed, fought and battled for each possession. As with any competitive soccer match, there was a little holding and even more tackles to keep the other from having scoring chances.

Once Spokane found the net, the Sasquatch added another goal just as quickly, with its second of the match coming less than a minute later.

NIC broke into the scoring column late in the first half, but found itself down 2-1. In the second, the host Cardinals scored three goals and held the Bigfoot without a shot on goal on the way to a 4-2 win.

And judging by the way that match ended, neither appears likely to be concluding their season anytime soon.

THERE MIGHT be no argument that the final month of the regular season was nothing short of ugly for the Boston Red Sox.

Entering the month, Boston led the AL wild-card by nine games and actually were threatening to win the AL East.

Neither of those things happened.

Instead, the Red Sox, with so many injuries they were shopping around for a pitcher, any pitcher, to take the mound to get them into the playoffs, finished September 7-20 and allowed Tampa Bay to sneak past them for the playoff berth.

Meanwhile in the National League, Atlanta suffered a similar fate (9-18 in September), losing to Philadelphia in extra innings and allowing St. Louis to get in after beating Houston.

But on Thursday morning, nearly all of the talk on social media and sports websites was more about the Red Sox collapse than the Braves.

Why? I still have no clue.

Both teams blew huge leads and all they had to do was win once, maybe twice in the final week to make the playoffs. Even in their final games of the season, neither could buy an out to force a winner-take-all final game of the season.

While the jury remains out on which collapse was worse, the likelihood that this happens again anytime soon I'd think is pretty slim.

To watch two teams fall apart at the end of a season is one thing, that kind of stuff happens all the time.

You just don't see two teams fall apart that quickly, and in less than an hour go from in to out of contention.

At least, not in my lifetime.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d'Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at [email protected].