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The Toroidal/Season 15 postseason carried the weight of the San Francisco Boat Shoes franchise's future and their fading hopes at postseason glory. Standing in the way was a Division Series showdown with their most bitter rivals: the Sacramento Boot Lickers . After many Toroidal Cup seasons being tormented by the Boot Lickers, the Boat Shoes had finally gained the upper hand in their regular-season matchups. This gave Boat Shoes fans a fragile sense of optimism. Commentators billed the matchup as the most important series in the history of the Boat Shoes-Boot Lickers Cali Crown rivalry.

The series was a brutal, back-and-forth war, leading to a decisive and fateful Game 5 ( 0fe0cbc8-adaf-4c27-84bc-6ea2fa720870). The teams battled, neck-and-neck until the end. Then, in a single, crystalline moment of horror for San Francisco, Sacramento deployed a counter-pattern to their most powerful formation, the clock suddenly stopped, and final score read 159-158, in favor of the Boot Lickers.

The Boot Lickers shocked the Boat Shoes and the entire Golly world with a one-point photo finish. That one-point loss was the emotional cataclysm from which the Toroidal Cup Boat Shoes would never recover. It was a moral defeat of the highest order. As if to twist the knife, the Boot Lickers would advance to the Toroidal Cup series, only to be cheated out of the title by the Ft. Worth Piano Tuners in a sordid hacking scandal that offered no moral comfort to the shattered Boat Shoes. Their own loss was too personal, too absolute.