Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Greatest Comebacks of All Time

Episode Date: July 13, 2025

More often than not, in competitive sports, when a team or player has a significant lead, the outcome is often 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 is down can beat the odds and come from behind to win.  In the rarest of cases, those come-from-behind victories become legendary.. Learn more about the greatest comebacks in sports history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. ***5th Anniversary Celebration RSVP*** Sponsors Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! Mint Mobile Get your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/eed Jerry Compare quotes and coverages side-by-side from up to 50 top insurers at jerry.ai/daily American Scandal Follow American Scandal on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/  Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. 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 2013 America'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 to point. 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 to 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 a win.

One memorable race was that of Collidoscopio at the 2013 Brooklyn Handicap. The track that day was extremely muddy. When the race started, Collidescopio fell back and at one point was a full 22 length. behind the leader. A length is approximately 8 feet 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. At the halfway point of the race, mine that bird was in last place. However, over the last time,

half the race, the horse shifted into whatever the highest gear for horses is 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 21st, 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 5 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 7-6, 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, 4 to 0. And at this level of competition, that is an almost insurmountable lead. However, in the second game, Barcelona won by a score of 6 to 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 to 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 22nd, 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&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&M managed to tie the game and eventually win in two overtimes. However, the ultimate last-second comeback was probably in 1990. 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 5 to nothing against the Toronto Maple Leafs with just 3 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 5-0 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 Leaves in the 1942 Stanley Cup finals, and they remain the only team to do so 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 victory. 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 searched back to tie the game on a two-point conversion with two 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 wildcard round of the NFL playoffs. The Buffalo Bills closed a 35 to 3-3-5. 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 28 to 3 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 Vandeveld.

Vandeveld had a five-stroke lead going into the last round over Justin Leonard and Craig Perry. Lowry's comeback was mostly due to Vandeveld's collapse. Vandeveld 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 2025, 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 25th, and the Brewers of 2001 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 9th, the Brewers were up 13 to 4, and the Tigers scored 10 runs in the last inning to win the game 14 to 3. However, that performance may have even been beaten by a game that took place less than a month later. On May 23rd, 1901, the Washington Senators were playing the Cleveland Indians. The Senators were ahead 13 to 5 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, with no. No one on base, and no outs to spare, Cleveland scored nine runs to win the game, 1413.

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 Bs. Both teams are in the Prospect League, which is a summer league for college baseball players. after five innings, Burlington was ahead, 17 to 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 12, winning 20 to 17.

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 2004 American 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 Currower. 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 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 endings 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 Oakden 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 boostagram. You two can have it read on the show.