After their Sept. 14 game against the other Texas team, the Astros were in first place in the American League West. Only 18 games remained to be played, and the Astros were on the verge of winning the division championship after six successive losing seasons, including three straight with more than 100 losses.

It’s not as if the Astros were visitors to first place. They led the division for 132 of the first 164 days of the season. They owned first place. Suddenly, though, when they went to sleep Sept. 15 they were no longer in first place. They weren’t there when the season reached its last weekend and worse, they weren’t even guaranteed a wild-card spot in the playoffs.

They had lost 9 of their last 16 games, were three games behind the Rangers in the division and were clinging to a one-game lead over the Angels and the Twins in the race to be the A.L.’s second wild card.

As stunning and jarring a development the Astros might have undergone, they were not in the same category as the Washington Nationals. The Nationals were widely expected to win the National League East title and the N.L. pennant, maybe the World Series, too.

However, the Nationals have been the worst excuse for a team in years. Seldom has there been a supposedly good team so embarrassingly bad. If the team’s owners are hiding out to avoid that embarrassment, they may want to stay there until they find people who can get it right.

The Astros, on the other hand, have nothing to be embarrassed about.

They faltered in the last three weeks, but it also took a remarkable turnaround by the Rangers to deprive them of the division championship.

Seemingly coming out of nowhere, the Rangers were in third place 9 games from first a week after the All-Star game. They had a 43-49 record. In their remaining 70 games, they compiled a 45-25 record. Over a full season, that rate of winning would produce 104 wins.

The Rangers might have steamrolled the Astros, but the Astros had enough left to edge the Angels by one game for the second wild card.

The Astros should know they are not alone in squandering a late-season division lead. Many others have experienced the same depressing development. Like the Astros, some teams have overcome their first-place failure and made the playoffs nevertheless as wild cards.

“It’s quite common for teams in sole possession of first place through 144 games OR LATER to fail to finish first,” Elias’ Waterman reported after completing his research into my question.

You need go back only a year to find the most recent example. The Kansas City Royals suffered a late-season first-place fumble, but they overcame it, reached the playoffs anyway and went to the World Series.

Except for one day, the 2014 Royals were in first place in the A.L. Central for a late-season month, from Aug. 11 through Sept. 10. They had 17 games left to play, and they won 9 of those games. Detroit, however, won 10 of its last 17 games and edged the Royals by a game for the division title.

The Royals, though, did not slink away with their tails between their legs. They won the A.L.’s first wild-card spot, defeated Oakland, 9-8, in a 12-inning wild-card game, swept three games from Anaheim in the division series and took the final step to the World Series with a four-game sweep of Baltimore in the league series.

The sweeps stopped there. The wild-card Royals took wild-card San Francisco to the seventh game of the World Series but lost, 3-2. Madison Bumgarner, who had already started two games, winning both, for the Giants protected a one-run lead with five shutout innings of two-hit relief.

The 2012 schedule came to an end with both the Texas Rangers and the Chicago White Sox squandering late-season leads.

In one of the most spectacular flops in history, the Rangers led Oakland by 5 games with 9 to play but lost the A.L. West title by 1 game by losing 7 of their last 9 games while the Athletics won 8 of their last 9. The A’s beat the Rangers in the first 2 and last 3 games of that stretch.

The White Sox collapsed in less spectacular fashion. They led the A.L. Central for nearly two months, from July 27 until Sept. 25, but they lost 6 of their last 9 games while the Tigers won 8 of their last 10 and the division title by 3 games.

While the Rangers and the White Sox both lost division titles, the Rangers, who had played in and lost the World Series the previous two years, made the playoffs as one of the league’s two wild cards in the year a second wild card was added in each league.

The 2010 season also featured two teams that lost late-season leads, one in each league, and again one reached the post-season as a wild card.

That team was the New York Yankees, who spent a week in mid-June tied for first in the A.L. East, then basically led the division until 10 days remained. Tampa Bay supplanted them in first for a week, and then came the final weekend.

The Yankees split two games with the Red Sox while the Rays did the same with the Royals, leaving the teams tied for first on the last day of the season. On that day, the Yankees lost, 8-4, and had to wait for the Rays to win, 3-2, in 12 innings on a two-out error by Wilson Betemit.

The Padres were the team that lost its chance for post-season play that year. They were in first place in the N.L. West, ahead of the Giants, with18 games to play and lost 10 of the 18.

Finishing the season with a three-game series in San Francisco, they won the first two games, slashing the Giants’ lead to one game. But Jonathan Sanchez and five relievers combined on a four-hitter in a 3-0 victory.

The 2009 Tigers collapsed but did so with a difference. They were in first place in the A.L. Central for 146 days of the 182-day season, from May 10 through Oct. 2. Minnesota didn’t see first place until they tied the Tigers on the next-to-last day of the season.

Both teams won their final game on the regular-season schedule, creating a one-game playoff. The Twins won it, 6-5, on Alexi Casilla’s run-scoring single in the 12^th inning. The Tigers did not get the wild card.

Two more examples will suffice. The New York Mets are the centerpiece in both.

In 2008 the Mets overcame a 7 ½-game deficit and played their way into first place in the N.L. East. Except for one day they were in first from Aug. 14 through Sept. 15. But they lost 9 of their last 15 games. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Phillies, who had led the division through all of June until just after the All-Star break, regained the lead by winning 13 of their last 16 games and vaulting from 3 ½ games behind the Mets to 3 ahead.

That Mets’ collapse followed an even more spectacular plunge. A year earlier the Mets had a 7-game lead with 17 games to play. Those numbers are imbedded in the minds of Mets fans.

The Mets fell out of first Sept. 28 but tied the Phillies the next day, which was the day before the last game of the season. The Mets had Tom Glavine, their veteran left-hander, starting that game, and felt they were in good shape.

Glavine, a five-time 20-game winner with Atlanta, had gained 13 victories in his fifth season with the Mets, and fans expected this game to give him his 14^th. Eight years later, some of those fans might still feel the shock.

Glavine didn’t get out of the first inning. He faced only nine hitters, seven of them scored, five got hits, two walked, one was hit by a pitch (with the bases loaded) and one made an out. The Mets lost to Florida, 8-1, while the Phillies topped Washington, 6-1, behind Jamie Moyer and won the division championship.

“It was stunning; it’s still stunning,” said a veteran writer who covered the Glavine game. “People attacked him for not being devastated. He was asked ‘How devastated are you?’ He said ‘I’m not devastated. No one died.’”

THE WHITE BEAT GOES ON

Last week the Atlanta Braves named John Coppolella their general manager after three years as assistant general manager. On Sunday the Anaheim Angels announced what was reported in this column two weeks ago, that Billy Eppler, the New York Yankees’ assistant general manager, is their new general manager.

The Coppolella and Eppler appointments bring to 10 the number of white American men out of 11 executives who have been hired in the last three months by major league teams for high-ranking positions. Adding two (Billy Beane as president of baseball operation for the A’s and David Forest who will replace Beane as general manager) whose pending appointments have yet to be made official, the minority scorecard reads 13 white males, one Latino.

And Commissioner Rob Manfred has the gall to herald Major League Baseball’s efforts in diversity hiring.

Speaking in New York last week at the Sports Diversity and Inclusion Symposium, Manfred said, as quoted by MLB.com, “Our people want to do the right thing. But it’s much easier to get people committed to doing the right thing when your programs are supportive of your fundamental business objectives.”

Manfred also said, “You can’t just say, ‘I’m going to improve my employment statistics’ and rest on that as your diversity program in today’s world.”

Yet he blatantly defended the way teams have ignored the rule that requires teams to interview minorities when filling decision-making positions, such as general manager. Steps were being taken, he said, to ensure compliance.

But he went on to say there was nothing wrong with the Boston Red Sox decision to hire Dave Dombrowski as president of baseball operations. The Red Sox didn’t interview any minorities for the job, but that was OK, Manfred said.

Dombrowski, Manfred said, had a previous relationship with owner John Henry with the Florida Marlins, the Red Sox weren’t actively trying to fill a position when Dombrowski became available and that he had a proven track record.

“I see it as a unique set of circumstances,” MLB.com quoted Manfred as saying, so “I let the hiring go forward.”

How did any of that prevent the Red Sox from interviewing a minority candidate? I guess if you’re the commissioner, you can ignore rule violations for any reason you can make up.

Instead of making excuses for violations he allows, I think Manfred should be promoting worthy minority candidates. I also think he should hire an adviser on minority hiring. I have just the man for the job. He is Frank Marcos, the former director of the MLB Scouting Bureau, who with his last 20 hires hired 10 Hispanics, 8 blacks, 1 woman and 1 white.

I heard from Marcos last week when he responded to my column in which I lamented the lack of interest clubs seeking a general manager had shown in De Jon Watson, Arizona’s senior vice president of baseball operations.

Marcos wrote:

“I know De Jon very well. He is extremely intelligent, has more ‘baseball’ credentials than most looking for that first GM position and he’s a great guy with a terrific personality. Normally I would say it baffles my mind why he isn’t a GM yet, but then I remember we are talking about MLB. Not much makes sense about many things going on in MLB.

“I predict that once De Jon cracks the barrier, he will emerge as a highly successful GM who is well liked by all in the baseball industry. He just needs that chance.

“De Jon has incredible credentials – and you can forget about his race. He’s a damn good baseball man who happens to be black.

“Someone please hire Mr. Watson as the GM.”

After my last column on the subject of diversity hiring, a reader named Larry wrote, “Enough story recycling. Signed up for baseball game/player coverage. Lots to discuss considering playoffs and player injuries. Some teams other then Yankees, Mets or Red Sox.”

Two comments on Larry’s comment:

I do not consider it recycling to comment on developments in an area in which I obviously have great interest.

Larry can expect to see more columns on the subject, when they are called for, because I am not aware of other writers and columnists who care about whom teams hire or how unfair they are to those who are not white. Someone has to show MLB and its commissioner for the charade they perpetrate.