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Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More
The Greatest Comebacks of All Time
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More often than not in competitive sports, when a team or player has a significant lead, the outcome is just a formality. While that is usually the case, it isn't always the case. On rare occasions, sometimes very rare occasions, a huge lead does not guarantee victory. A team that's down can be the odds and come from behind to win. In the rarest of cases, those come from behind victories can become legendary. Learn more about the greatest comebacks in sports history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Fiji Water. You've probably heard of Fiji Water and have seen it in stores. Well, Fiji Water really is from the islands of Fiji. Drop by drop, Fiji Water is filtered through volcanic rock 1,600 miles away from the nearest continent and all its pollution protected and preserved naturally from external elements. In this process, it collects a unique profile of electrolytes and minerals, resulting in more than double the electrolytes as the other top two premium bottled water brands, giving Fiji Water its smooth taste. Fiji Water's electrolytes are 100% natural and this water even has a perfectly balanced pH of 7.7. I've recently been trying to reduce my consumption of diet soda and I found Fiji Water to be a great alternative. Visit your local retailer to pick up some Fiji Water today for your next backyard party, beach day hike, or even your home office. Fiji Water is Earth's finest water. This episode is sponsored by Quint's. No one is ever going to confuse me with someone fashionable or trendy. That being said, if I'm going to buy something, I want it to look good, be of high quality and ideally be affordable. That is where Quint's comes in. Quints is the kind of stuff you'll actually wear, like breathable flowknit polos, crisp cotton shirts and comfortable, lightweight pants. In addition to clothing, they also offer a range of great items for the home and travel. Everything with Quince is half the cost of similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and eliminating the middleman, Quintz offers luxury pieces without the markup. And I've told you all about the great items that I've purchased from Quince. From towels to blankets to a duvet, Quince has become my go to source. Stick to the staples that last with elevated essentials from Quince. Go to Quince.com daily for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-E.com daily to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com daily when I talk about comebacks, there are probably a few that instantly come to mind, and one of the reasons they're so memorable is that they're so rare. If a team has a huge lead in a game, a series, or even a season, it more often than not ends up winning. In this episode, I'm going to focus on comebacks that take place on the field. I'm not going to focus on individual players who were injured and came back as that's a different type of comeback. I'm going to focus on teams or people who were on the brink of losing a game or championship yet managed to pull out a win. And I'll start with the one comeback that has been the subject of a previous episode and can make the case for the greatest comeback of all time the 2013America's cup the finals of the America's cup that year were determined by the first team to win nine races. The two yachts competing were the defending champion, Team Oracle USA and the challenger, Emirates Team New Zealand. After 11 races, Emirates Team New Zealand was up 8 1. The Americans actually won three races, but were docked two points due to a rules violation. So the Kiwis needed just one more win out of the next eight races to take home the Cup. However, that didn't happen. Team Oracle won the next eight races to win the America's Cup. Assuming that each team had a 50% odds of winning each race, that put Team Oracle's odds at 250 1. Horse racing has seen its share of come from behind victories. When I'm talking about coming from behind in a horse race, I'm not talking about long shots. Horses with long odds can win often because the odds are not accurately given at the start of a race. However, some horses have come from huge distances behind to win. One memorable race was that of kaleidoscopio at the 2013 Brooklyn Handicap. The track that day was extremely muddy when the race started. Kaleidoscopio fell back and at one point was a full 22 lengths behind the leader. A length is approximately 8ft or about 2.4 meters, which is the average length of a horse from nose to tail. At the last turn, however, he ran on the outside, which is the longer route, and passed everyone in the field to win in the final stretch. Another notable come from behind win was Mine that bird at the 2009 Kentucky Derby. @ the halfway point of the race, Mine that Bird was in last place. However, over the last half of the race, the horse shifted into whatever the highest gear for horses is and and ended up winning. However, mind that Bird didn't just win the race, it won by the largest margin of victory in the Kentucky Derby since 1946, association football, aka soccer, has had its share of dramatic comebacks. Perhaps the greatest comeback ever took place on December 21, 1957 in London. Charlton Athletic was playing Huddersfield Town. Charlton was playing with only 10 men on the field due to an injury and with only 27 minutes remaining in the game they were down 45 to 1 and at that point Charlton striker Johnny Summers decided to take matter into his own hands. He proceeded to score four goals having already scored Charlton's only goal. Charlton ended up winning the game 76 and Huddersfield Town remains the only team in English football history to have scored six goals in a game and lost. A notable and recent come from behind victory took place in the 2017 UEFA Champions League. Barcelona was playing Paris Saint Germain in the knockout stage of the competition. The format had the teams playing two games home and away, with the total goals from the two games determining who would advance. The first game in Paris was won by psg, four to nil, and at this level of competition that is an almost insurmountable lead. However, in the second game Barcelona won by a score of 6:1, giving them the overall goal total of 6 to 5. In basketball there have been several dramatic come from behind wins with different types of drama occurring with different amounts of time left. The greatest point differential that has ever been overcome in an NBA game is 36 points. On November 27, 1996, the Denver Nuggets had the lead over the Utah jazz in the first minute of the third quarter with a score of 72 36. The Nuggets had literally scored twice the number of points, but the Jazz went on to win the game 107 to 104, giving them a 39 point turnaround. And this is actually bigger than the largest point deficit in NCAA history, which is when Drexel came back from 34 points to beat Delaware on February 22, 2018. A 34 point comeback is nothing to sneeze at, but Drexel had most of the game to make up their difference. One of the greatest last minute comebacks has to be the game between Texas A and M and Northern Iowa in the second round of the 2016 NCAA tournament. Texas A&M was down by 12 points with only 34 seconds left on the clock. Through a series of very timely steals and clock management, Texas A and M managed to tie the game and eventually win in two overtimes. However, the ultimate last second comeback was probably in 1995 when the Indiana Pacers Reggie Miller scored eight points with only 8.9 seconds remaining on the clock to beat the New York Knicks. The record for come from behind wins in the NHL is five goals, which has actually been done several times in the regular season. There have been nine games where a team has overcome a five goal deficit and has managed to win. Most of those games involved giving up five goals early and then making a comeback during the rest of the game. However, on January 26, 1987, the Calgary Flames were down five to nothing against the Toronto Maple Leafs with just three minutes and 58 seconds remaining in the third period. The Flames managed to score six goals in that time to win the game. The biggest comeback in NHL playoff history was known as the Miracle on Manchester in 1982. The Los Angeles Kings were down 50 going into the third period. Then they scored five unanswered goals and won the game in overtime. And I should also note that there have been four teams in NHL history that have come back to win a seven game series after losing the first three games. The first team to do so was the Toronto Maple leafs in the 1942 Stanley Cup Finals and they remain the only team to do so in in the finals of the Stanley Cup. There has never been a team that has come from three games down to win a seven game series in the NBA. American football has seen remarkable come from behind victories. The largest comeback in NFL history occurred in 2022 when the Minnesota Vikings were down 33 to nothing to the Indianapolis Colts at halftime. The Vikings surged back to tie the game on a two point conversion with 2 minutes and 15 seconds left on the clock and then won the game in overtime with a field goal. This beat the previous record of erasing a 32 point deficit which took place in 1992 during the wild card round of the NFL playoffs. The Buffalo bills closed a 353 halftime gap to also win the game in overtime. However, the game that most people probably remember as the biggest comeback took place during the 2016 Super bowl between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons led 283 at halftime. In the second half, the Patriots scored 25 points to tie the game with less than a minute left and then won the game and the NFL championship with a touchdown in overtime. There's one golf comeback that I'll cover and if you follow golf at all, you probably know what it is. It was Paul Lowry's comeback at the 1999 British Open going into the fourth and final round, Lowry was 10 strokes behind the leader, Jean Van De Velde. Van De Velde had a five stroke lead going into the last round over Justin Leonard and Craig Perry. Lowry's comeback was mostly due to Van De Velde's collapse. Van De Velde shot a triple bogey on the 13th hole to force a three way tie between himself, Lowry and Leonard and this forced a four hole playoff that Lowry won by three strokes. It remains the biggest final day comeback to win a major in golf history. I'm going to end the episode with baseball because in baseball there's no clock and in theory a comeback can happen at any point in the game. The greatest run differential that's been overcome in a Major League baseball game is 12 runs. It's happened on three occasions. The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox in 1911, the Philadelphia Athletics beat the Cleveland Indians in 1925 and and the Cleveland Indians beat the Seattle Mariners in 2001. However, an even more impressive feat was achieved by the Detroit Tigers in 1901. They were playing the Milwaukee brewers on April 25, and the brewers of 1901 are not the same as the franchise today. They went on to become the St. Louis Browns and are now the Baltimore Orioles. Going into the bottom of the ninth, the brewers were up 134 and the Tigers scored 10 runs in the last inning to win the game 14 3. However, that performance may have even been beaten by a game that took place less than a month later. On May 23, 1901, the Washington Senators were playing the Cleveland Indians. The senators were ahead 13:5 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning with no one on base and no outs to spare. Cleveland scored nine runs to win the game 14:13. Coincidentally the exact same score as the Tigers brewers game less than a month earlier. Perhaps the most remarkable comeback in all of baseball occurred in an amateur league in 2014. On May 8th of that year in Iowa, the Clinton Lumber Kings were playing the Burlington B's. Both teams are in the Prospect League, which is a summer league for college baseball players. After five innings, Burlington was ahead 17 1. And here I should note how rare it is for any team ever to score 17 runs in a game, let alone by the fifth inning. Clinton then went on to score six runs in the sixth inning, five in the eighth inning and five more in the ninth inning to tie the game at 17. The game went into extra innings and Clinton scored three runs in the 12th, winning 2017, completely erasing a 16 run deficit. And there's one series in particular that many of you are probably wondering when I would get to that is of course the 2004American League Championship Series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. This series had everything going for it. The Yankees and the Red Sox are arguably the most storied and enduring rivalry in all of baseball. And on top of the rivalry was the Red Sox championship drought known as the Curse of the Bambino. The Red Sox hadn't won a world series since 1918. In 1920, they sold the contract of their best player, Babe Ruth, to the Yankees, a move which resulted in the Yankees winning seven championships With Ruth and the start of the greatest dynasty in baseball history, it looked as though the Red Sox were going to extend their 86 year championship drought. The Red Sox had lost the first three games in the series and and no team in baseball history at that point had ever come back from being down three games to none to win a seven game series. Yet that is precisely what the Red Sox managed to do with games four and five both going to extra innings as well. The Red Sox managed to go on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series and broke the Curse of the Bambino. Now, if I know my audience, I'm sure many of you will come forward with comebacks that I didn't cover in this episode. And there are many that I couldn't cover due to time constraints. However, if there are enough suggestions, I might just have to come back to this subject. The Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Oakton and Cameron Kiefer. I want to thank everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. I'd also like to thank all the members of the Everything Everywhere community who are active on the Facebook group and the Discord server. If you'd like to join in the discussion, there are links to both in the show notes and as always, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you too can have it read on the show.