Boston built a lead Thursday night. Chicago erased it. Boston built another one. Chicago erased that one too. This happened five separate times before Caleb Durbin ended it with a walk-off single in the 13th, and the Red Sox somehow won 12-11 to push the winning streak to eight.
Five blown leads in one baseball game against a White Sox team playing out the string in August. Shouldn’t happen. Happened anyway.
Yahoo Sports has the full rally sequence, and it reads like a fever dream: down 4-0, tied it up. Down 5-2, tied it up. Down 7-5, tied it up. Down 9-7, tied it up. Down 11-10 in extras, and then Durbin ends the whole circus.
Here’s the tweet that lays out the entire chain, tie by tie:
Caleb Durbin walks it off in the 13th!
Red Sox down 1 in the 9th, tie it
Red Sox down 2 in the 10th, tie it
Red Sox down 1 in the 11th, tie it
Red Sox down 1 in the 12th, tie itThey extend their winning streak to 8, 26-3 in their last 29 games.pic.twitter.com/bWOej7n6s7
— Underdog MLB (@UnderdogMLB) August 7, 2026
That’s not a stat line. That’s a heart attack with a box score attached.
And the record itself isn’t even the wildest part. Sports Illustrated flagged the actual historic bit: Boston scored in five straight innings from the 9th on. Nobody in the modern era has ever done that in a single game, not the ’27 Yankees, not the ’04 Sox — nobody, until Thursday.
The bigger stretch is still absurd on its own terms. Boston is 26-3 in its last 29 games — the fourth-best run of its kind in 70 years, behind only the 2017 Guardians and the 1977 Royals. On June 24 this team was fourteen games under .500. Somebody go find June Red Sox and tell them what’s coming.
Payton Tolle backed the whole thing up a day later, striking out 14 in a start that got completely buried under the Durbin insanity. Criminal, honestly, for an outing that good.
We said it back in July: Breslow had to buy, and look what buying got them.
Nobody’s clinching anything in August. Keep playing like this, though, and October handles itself.
