Well, they did it. The Red Sox have won the World Series in decided fashion, sweeping the Cardinals in four games. Before I reclaim my life tomorrow morning, I'd like to knock back a few margaritas and share some thoughts, memories, and statistics with you all. You'll forgive me if I talk as if I am the Red Sox; all of us in the Red Sox Nation is a part of this team, of the '86, '75, '67 teams.
This was an amazing team. This was a team that never quit. That sounds like a cliche, and it generally is - but consider that no team has achieved the gritty accomplishments that this team has achieved. They epitomize that famous quote by Yogi: "It ain't over 'til it's over." Think of it: the Sox were down 3 games to 0. One more win and their archrival New York Yankees would advance to Yet Another World Series. Game 4 saw the Yanks up 4-3 in the bottom of the ninth with the best closer in postseason history, Mariano Rivera, on the mound.
Every kid who has ever played baseball at the park, or listened to the hometeam on AM radio, or visited a beautiful pro ballpark, has dreamt of this moment. "Bottom of the ninth" is like a secret mantra murmured at every Little League game, in every young fan's vision of his future greatness. And here it was, but with a sour note: three outs from going home in disgrace, being swept by the "Evil Empire".
And then a walk. Kevin Millar, a key personality in the Sox clubhouse, drew a hard-earned walk to start off the inning. Little did anyone know that one measly base on balls would turn an entire franchise so dramatically.
Dave Roberts, a rabbit on the basepaths, replaced Millar as a pinchrunner. Roberts was a late-season acquisition from the(/my) Los Angeles Dodgers, and had become a situational player for the Sox. Everyone in the stadium, seeing the substitution, knew Roberts was stealing. Rivera threw over to first a couple of times because HE knew Roberts was stealing. Roberts almost got picked off because EVERYONE knew he was stealing.
Roberts ran on the first pitch. He successfully swiped second base on a close play, but got himself into scoring position. Bill Mueller ("Miller") singled up the middle to score Roberts, and suddenly the best closer in the game was vulnerable. When the game finally wrapped up, twelve innings and 5 hours 2 minutes after the first pitch, the Red Sox had won.
The following night saw fourteen innings and 5 hours 49 minutes (most in postseason history) and another improbable Sox win, and a return to the eye of the storm (New York) for Game 6.
The following night saw Schilling take the mound, having undergone a radical medical procedure to suture his nearly-ruptured ankle tendons out of place to allow him to pitch. He dominated, and the Sox beat the Yankees in New York to become the first MLB team to ever force a Game 7 after being down 0-3 in a best-of-7 series.
The following night saw a beatdown, where the Sox completely shut down the Yankees in Yankee Stadium and became the first team to ever win a best-of-7 series after being down 0-3. At that point, they completed most improbable feat in all of sports, having only ever happened twice (both times in hockey) in... well, in a LOT of chances. (Maybe 120 times in the major sports that have best-of-7 series...)
They went to the World Series to face a team that had obliterated the National League, winning 105 games (to the Sox' 98) and had sewn up first place MONTHS before. The talk was that it would be a tough series. While I hesitated to choose sides, having chosen the Yankees in 5 in a fit of bitterness, I believed the Sox would win in a long series, 6 or 7 games. Most people chose the Sox in a similar number of games.
Boy, were we wrong. After the Sox won the first two, I thought that the Series would not return to Boston, meaning the Sox would win in 4 or 5. I thought it would be 5. Rather, they completely obliterated the Cardinals in 4 games. They swept the Cardinals, never trailing in the series, and leading the Cardinals in 34 of the games' 36 innings. Their final three starters pitched 20 innings with ZERO earned runs. It was never close.
You might find it odd that I devote paragraphs and paragraphs to the ALCS against the Yankees, and just one to the World Series. The fact is that after coming back in Game 4 against New York, then winning the final three games in most improbable fashion, the World Series was a formality. No one could make that kind of bold, arrogant statement at the beginning of the series, but looking at it now, it really was a formality... a beautiful, delicious formality. ;-)
So now, 86 years after last winning the World Series, the Red Sox are champions again. A fanbase that has suffered so thoroughly through seasons of mediocrity, as well as seasons of excellence ended early (usually by the Yankees), finally has a reason to rejoice. As a fan that has "only" suffered for about 20 years, I can rejoice alongside the fans that remember their defeat to these Cardinals in '67, even the elderly fans that wanted to see just one championship in their lives. It's unreal. Decades of Pesky's late throw and Bucky "F'ing" Dent and Buckner and Aaron "F'ing" Boone... gone. Erased.
The only team EVER to come back from 0-3 to win four straight, the only team EVER to win 8 straight postseason games. One of four teams to never trail in a World Series. For my money, the greatest team ever. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2004 World Series champions: the Boston Red Sox.
More baseball - if you don't like it, you can kiss off. The Sox have taken Game 1 of the World Series with the Saint Louis Cardinals. It was a terribly ugly game, with four errors by the Sox - two by Manny Ramirez, who is rumored to still out in left field shagging fly balls. Still, the Sox showed terrific resilience, coming back after giving up a 5-run lead and other late-inning leads, with (the improbable) Mark Bellhorn providing the game-winning home run off Peskie's Pole in the eighth.
If you haven't heard, I didn't even pick the Sox to MAKE the Series. I picked the Yankees against the Sox in five games. As is now obvious, I could not have been more wrong about these Red Sox. They are the grittiest, yet most relaxed team I've ever seen. They can scrap for a run, they can mash, they can pitch in a tough situation. They can pitch with their backs against the wall, they can pitch when it counts in a Game 1.
While I hesitate to pick anyone, given my previous record, I would have to say my gut is with the Sox in five games. I'm not sure the Cards will allow it to be that much of a blowout, thinking that they might take two in St. Louis, and take it to at least six. But with the way the Sox are playing, it's hard to see how they might lose again. Game 1 of the WS was about as poorly played as possible, yet they still pulled it out...
Finally, I would like to make clear: there is no curse. There wasn't a curse before the Sox beat the Yankees, there isn't a remnant of a curse after the ALCS but before the Sox win the Series. There has never been a curse. There has been a rash of BAD Red Sox teams. There has been an arrogance by Yankees fans. There has been a grasping attempt by Boston natives (especially Shaunessy, who coined the phrase, "Curse of the Bambino" in the '80s) to explain why the Sox have not won it all since 1918. There may have even been an attitude of self-defeatism by Sox players that bought into the fraud of the curse. The fact is that THERE IS NO CURSE. There has never been a curse. There is no such thing as a curse. At the same time, we (the Sox) need to defeat the curse. We need to completely subjugate all appearances of a curse. We need to shut down the Yankee "spin" machine from latching onto any false semblance of a curse. We have started on that laudable goal - we are three games away from erasing 86 years of history and superstition.
GO SOX!
Well, they did it. Even after they won Games 4 and 5, I couldn't allow myself to think the unthinkable. There was no way the Red Sox could win twice at Yankee Stadium.
Then they won Game 6. Certainly it was a fluke. The Sox were carried by the sheer studliness of Curt Schilling for Game 6. Schilling had his ankle sutured before Game 6, with his skin being stitched to the sheath of his ankle tendons. This was to prevent his ankle tendons from snapping across his ankle bone as it was in Game 1. The shot of his blood-soaked right sock was epic. He threw 99 pitches in seven innings of one-run ball in the gutsiest performance in all of sports, ever. EVER.
But certainly that was a fluke. The Yankees know how to win when the chips are on the table. They are the biggest closers in the history of sports, having won 26 championships since the '20s. Certainly they would show up for Game 7 of the ALCS. Certainly they would smack their pesky little brother, that "other" northeastern team around and dash the hopes of myriad Sox fans yet again.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Yankee Stadium. "The House That Ruth Built", for one night, became "The House That Sox Broke". Johnny Damon, he of the .103 batting average in the leadoff position, hit two bombs for six runs, including a grand slam that broke the game wide open. Derek Lowe, he of the "why are you guys always calling me a basket case?!" press conference a while back and the 5.42 ERA this year, pitched six innings of ONE HIT baseball.
The Red Sox won.
They beat the Yankees. In Yankee Stadium. They won the ALCS. They won a Game 7. They came back from being down three games to none. They beat the Yankees.
It's likely many of you, o faithful readers, will be unable to truly grasp what this means in the overall context of history. Even the non-fans among you have probably heard, in some cursory fashion, of the Red Sox' futility. But you cannot have a full understanding of the gravity of this win in terms of the last 86 years. There is no curse.
"But surely", I hear some of you saying, "the curse is not banished until the Sox have won the World Series." Ah, good point... to you, I say, "Go to hell." Let us enjoy this one. ;-) Seriously, the curse has historically been a Red Sox versus Yankees thing. World Series Championships since the trade of the Babe: Yankees 26, Red Sox 0. But the curse can be considered in a different light: the Sox have not beaten the Yankees in the postseason since the trade in 1920. In that light, the curse is OVER.
I would really love if the Sox would win the World Series. But I'm not ready to write off their season and invoke the curse if they don't. For now, I'm content to say congratulations to the most riveting comeback team in the history of sports. GO SOX!
Okay, what kind of parallel universe is this? Nothing seems to be going "as it should" in the ALCS. The Red Sox were favored to beat the Yankees pretty soundly. (They haven't.) The Yankees starting pitching was supposed to be suspect. (It hasn't been.) Pedro Martinez was supposed to step and pitch big. (He hasn't, for the most part.) After the Yankees took the first three games in a best-of-seven series, the Red Sox were done. (They aren't.) The Yankees were going to take the fourth game and sweep. (They didn't.)
So here we are. The three games in Boston took something like fifteen hours and featured, separately, the longest 9-inning game *and* longest overall game, both postseason records. The series is knotted with the Yankees maintaining a 3-2 lead in games, and the series heading, improbably, back to New York for tomorrow night's Game Six. In the history of the postseason where one team has won the first three games in a best-of-seven series, that team has gone on to sweep 20 of 25 times. Only twice has the series even been extended to six games. No team has ever extended it to seven games, much less come back to win the series.
I'm not sure the Sox can do it. I had predicted the Yankees in five games at the beginning of the series, and my choice started to look pretty darn good by yesterday. (Actually, I was in danger of being wrong if the Yankees swept in four.) But now, Game Six is on its way, and I'm not sure how much to let myself believe they can do it. The Yankees always seem to win when the chips are down, and the Sox always seem to fold when in the same position. I have to like the way things match up in Game Six, but I liked how the first THREE games matched up, and those went to hell rather quickly.
The Yankees bats have gone VERY silent since their 19-run outburst in Game Three. In Games Four and Five, they have scored eight runs in 26 innings. And they've left about 30 runners on-base in those two games. Is Boston's pitching (especially their bullpen - scoreless for the last 13 2/3 innings) really that good? Or will the Yankees' bats suddenly awaken, dashing all Sox hope against the jagged rocks of a torturous 86 years?
Curt Schilling is going to start Game Six for the Sox. He of the "torn ankle tendon sheaths" whose "tendons are just snapping back and forth over the ankle bone" is going to, get this, try some high top shoes and see if those help. This is an injury that would generally put the foot in a cast for a couple of months, but heck, there's PLENTY of time for rest after the baseball season! Will Schilling "take his walker", as some Sox fans are nervously suggesting, and turn in a Schilling-like performance? Or will he bow out early and leave it to the already-taxed Sox bullpen to somehow come up big again?
As I mentioned earlier, I had the Yankees knocking out my beloved Red Sox in five games. Given the way this series has progressed, I don't see how anyone can say how this roller coaster is going to end. For my part, I'm watching the games again and rooting for my Sox!
(As an added bonus, I would like the following people to catch a foul ball in the mouth: Tim McCarver and Scooter, the Talking Baseball. Jack Buck: my eye's on you. Leiter: you can become America's hero by throwing those two clowns from the pressbox. Everyone at FOX in charge of these things: bring in real sportscasters, or continue to suck it. I, for one, will be muting Jeter's love slave (McCarver) and Jack "My Dad is Joe!" Buck and flipping on Gary Miller and Joe Morgan on ESPN Radio. That is all.)