Reminiscence: Red Sox the World Series Champion, Part II

I didn’t expect this to become so long that I had to break it into multiple parts. This turns out to be a lot more work than I previously thought. Anyway, this is part 2, with part 3 coming later.

The Playoffs – Can you say “The Biggest Comeback in the History of Professional Sports”? (Although “The Biggest Choke in the History of Professional Sports” works just as well, for the Yankees anyway.) The 2004 playoffs were some of the most exciting baseball I’ve ever seen. But the way it played out was really strange. The Sox obliterated the Los Angeles Angels in the Division Series, and then ran into a wall as they met the hated Yankees in the ALCS. They managed to get their acts together to pull off the historical comeback and went on to crush the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. It was almost as if the ALCS was really the World Series itself and Yankee Stadium was the last stop on the road to the championship. By no means were the Angels and the Cardinals bad teams. I simply didn’t expect they would bend over so easily that it was anti-climatic.

Division Series – I thought this was going to be a five game affair. I was afraid of the Angels. Any team that has Vladimir Guerrero, Troy Glaus, and Garret Anderson in the lineup, along with one of the best bullpen in baseball is scary. It is true that both Glaus and Anderson missed significant time due to injuries but one simply couldn’t count them out. Glaus still managed to hit 18 homeruns in 58 games during the regular season and Anderson hit .301 with 75 RBIs in 112 games. Fortunately due to a clash with manager Mike Scioscia, the Angels left Jose Guillen off their playoff roster. This is a guy who hit .294 with 27 homeruns and 104 RBIs during the regular season and could’ve make life more difficult for the Sox.

In the end though, it wasn’t even that close of a match as the Sox swept the Angels in 3 games. The Sox got 3 quality starts by Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, and Bronson Arroyo while the offense battered the Angels’ pitching. Jarrod Washburn and Kelvim Escobar both couldn’t get through 4 innings in game 1 and 3 while the Sox were able to get to Francisco Rodriguez and Brendan Donnelly in game 2. Game 3 wouldn’t be this close if it wasn’t for the Guerrero grand-slam off Timlin that tied the game and sending the game to extra innings. While Guerrero showed people why he was the MVP, David Ortiz just wanted to get this over with and go home by hitting a walkoff 2-run homerun off game 1 loser Washburn in the 10th inning. It was a curious move by Scioscia to bring in Washburn. Except Bartolo Colon, the Angels starters didn’t scare anybody, and certainly not Washburn. As for Ortiz, by that time everybody knew the big man can hit, but the walkoff homerun was a sign of things to come. People started to realize, not only he can hit, he can hit when the team needs it most.

Amid the excitement there was bad news. Schilling injured his ankle in game 1 and nobody knew how this would affect him as he was scheduled to start game 1 of league championship series against New York.

American League Championship Series – Repeat after me: The Biggest Choke in the History of Professional Sport! Alright, it happened twice in the NHL, but never before in the NBA or MLB. With that said this series had a nightmarish beginning and ended with euphoria. I, and probably a good number of Sox fans as well, wouldn’t want to go through this again despite the happy ending. For games 1 through 3 I felt as if I was suffering from severe depression. Then I felt my life was shortened by a couple of years with each game from game 4 through 7. There’s also the rising and dropping of blood pressure during each of those 4 games, they made me felt like I was going have a heart attack. At the end, it was a mixed feeling of euphoria, relief, and exhaustion.

As soon as game 1 started everyone knew immediately this wasn’t going the Sox way. Curt Schilling lasted only 3 innings while allowing 6 runs on 6 hits. He was clearly not himself due to the ankle injury. The Sox were able to close in within a run later but Mariano Rivera slammed the door shut at the end. Pedro pitched well in game 2 by allowing 3 runs, but not well enough to win. The Sox offense couldn’t solve Jon Lieber at all as he only allowed 1 run on 3 hits in 7 innings. A lot of people blamed Pedro for the loss, saying once again he couldn’t beat New York. I think this was unfair. It wasn’t as if Pedro got lit up. Three runs allowed in 6 innings against a Yankee lineup that was very familiar with pitcher should be considered a decent start. It was the offense that didn’t do much against Lieber. You are not going to win too many games (especially against the Yankees) when you scored only 1 run. In game 3, well, can I pretend it never happened so I don’t have to talk about it? The Sox got their asses kicked. Arroyo and the 5 relievers allowed 19 runs on 22 hits, on a night when Yankees starter Kevin “Owww My Back Hurts!” Brown lasted only 2 innings. Not only the Sox didn’t take advantage of Brown and his bad back, they gave the game away with an even worse pitching performance. This was definitely one of the ugliest loss to the Yankees in recent memory. With the loss the Sox were down 0-3 in the series and history showed the Sox had almost no chance for a come back. Well, almost.

I will be the first one to admit that at that point I pretty much curled up on my bed with a blanket over my head, depressed, thinking this is it. Who can blame me? No team had ever come back from a 0-3 deficit and won in a 7-game series. I was whining, crying, and bitching to my friend DG, saying “It’s OVA, O-V-A! Ugh! #^%#%@%^(&^^&%” and he laughed at me saying how I can call myself a fan with so little faith in my team. I would like to keep my faith in the team but it was difficult with the way they lost game 3. DG, who really isn’t much of a baseball fan, said he had faith in the Sox, because he could almost smell it that this is the year. I said I still think this is over, although I would love to be proved wrong. Going into game 4, I was 99.9% sure this is over, with that .1% hope that I was wrong.

“Never Say Die” is how I would describe the Sox in game 4 and 5. In both games the Sox came back to tie the game in late innings and then won it with the bat of, who else, David Ortiz. To be fair, his teammates helped out too. In game 4 going into the 9th, the Sox were down by a run with “The Last Man You Want To See In The 9th Inning” – Mariano Rivera on the mound for New York. Kevin Millar somehow worked a walk to begin the inning and Roberts was in to pinch run. Everybody knew Roberts was going to steal and he did, barely beating the throw by Jorge Posada. (This was later known to Sox fans as “The Steal.”) The next batter was Bill Mueller, who has had some success against Rivera, singled to drive in Roberts and tied the game. Going into the extra innings, Alan Embree and Curtis Leskanic shrugged off their poor outings from game 3 to pitch 3 scoreless innings and let Ortiz had a chance to bat in the 12th. Manny Ramirez singled against Paul Quantrill to begin the bottom of the 12th inning and Ortiz finally ended the 5 hour game with a homerun into the bullpen area. My .1% hope suddenly jumped to 1%. In game 5 Pedro didn’t pitch well, allowing 4 runs on 7 hits and 5 walks in 6 innings. The relief corps, on the other hand, combined for 8 innings of scoreless relief. Tim Wakefield, like Embree and Leskanic, also put his poor outing in game 3 behind him to pitch 3 scoreless innings. With the bullpen holding the line the offense was able to tie the game at 4-4 in the 8th with an Ortiz homerun and a sacrifice fly by Jason Varitek, and the game went to extra innings again. In the bottom of the 14th, with Johnny Damon and Manny walked, Ortiz came through with a single to drive in Damon and sent the series back to New York. Two straight extra inning come back wins, two straight games that ended with an Ortiz walkoff hit, and two straight nights of growing hope for a come back. My 1% hope jumped to 10%.

It was all about Curt Schilling in game 6. His ankle was diagnosed as a dislocated tendon that it was rubbing against the bone when in motion thus causing a lot of pain. They had hoped a high top shoe would help stabilize the tendon and allow him to pitch effectively. It didn’t work. Team doctor Bill Morgan thus came up with an idea – suture the tendon to the skin to stabilize it. Schilling had the procedure done the day before the game and finally he was able to make 50,000 people in Yankee Stadium to shut up. (He was being ridiculed for making such a statement, especially when he got lit up in game 1.) With a relatively pain free ankle Schilling returned to his old self and shut down the Yankees by allowing 1 run on 4 hits over 7 innings. The Sox offense also was able to get to Yankees starter Jon Lieber. Mark Bellhorn, who had been struggling so far in the series, hit a 3-run homer off Lieber to put the Sox in the lead for good. During the game, Fox had a shot of Schilling’s ankle that showed blood seeping through the sock. Schilling’s gutsy (I hate using that word, but it was what it was, gutsy.) performance and that “Bloody Sock” became one of the biggest highlights of the series, along with the 2 walkoff hits by Ortiz. (The bloody sock was later given to the Baseball Hall of Fame.) So where was my hope % as the Sox forced a game 7? While I was telling myself “Oh no, I hope this is not another 2003 game 7!” my 10% hope went all the way up to 50%. I’m a pessimist by nature and as a Red Sox fan the Murphy’s Law is deeply ingrained in my mind. With that said one really has to like the Sox’s chances to win game 7. The Sox had the momentum and confidence as they won 3 straight while the pressure was on the Yankees. (Who wants to be remembered as “The Chokers”?) Another advantage for the Sox was that the Yankees would have Kevin Brown as the starter. This guy sucked and I liked the chances that the Sox would give him a nice beating. Going into game 7, I have to say I was nervously optimistic.

It turned out this game 7 was nothing like the year before. Two innings into the game every Sox fan knew that “mystique and aura” nonsense for the Yankees was gone. (They even had Bucky Dent threw the ceremonial first pitch before the game. It seemed they really believed in all that superstition stuff.) As expected Kevin Brown had nothing and the Sox jumped right on him with a 1st inning 2-run homer by Ortiz. Brown was taken out in the 2nd with the bases loaded and Javier Vazquez was brought in to face Damon. The Caveman gave Vazquez a nice greeting by hitting the first pitch out for a grand slam. It was 6-0 after 2 innings. Damon came to bat again in the 4th and he showed Vazquez more love by hitting a 2-run homer to the upperdeck. (When Damon hit the ball, I thought they were showing a replay of his 2nd inning grand slam because the swing looked exactly the same. As I watched the ball reached the upperdeck I realized it wasn’t a replay, he just hit his 2nd homerun of the game! Silly me.) On the other hand, Derek Lowe seemed to thrive only when under pressure. Pitching on 2 days rest, Lowe put the nails in the coffin on the Yankees by allowing 1 run on 1 hit over 6 innings. Pedro came in in the 7th to relieve Lowe and allowed 2 runs. Just when people thought the Yankees were gaining some momentum, Bellhorn made sure nothing would materialize by hitting a solo homerun leading off the 8th. The Sox added another run in the 9th to make it 10-3. The Sox finally defeated the Yankees, sent them packing in the most humiliating manner and avenged the game 7 loss of 2003 ALCS. And yes, The Legend of the Biggest Chokers in Sports was born at this very moment.

As the Sox got the last out, I literally fell on my back and screamed “Yes!! They did it!! Woohoo!!” and “Wuahaha! Chokers! Take that!” I felt exhausted but happy. I felt like I just worked 48 hours straight without sleep and barely managed to complete an impossible job. The feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment just kept flowing in as I talked to my friends on the phone about how we just witnessed the impossible. Remember this is from a fan’s perspective, I wasn’t even one of those players on the field who actually played the games and got the job done. I couldn’t imagine what the players were feeling as they were celebrating on the field. After the game, as I was watching the post game celebrations, I was walking and jumping around in my apartment, screaming, laughing, and giggling like a little girl. I couldn’t remember how long it took to let go of that grin on my face.

A few random thoughts about this series:

• The headline of the sports section of New York Daily News in the morning: HELL FREEZES OVER.
• The decision to bring in Pedro in the 7th inning was a curious one as Pedro allowed 2 runs on 3 hits. In all fairness though the Sox bullpen was in very bad shape, bringing in Pedro to eat up an inning or two with a sizable lead wasn’t necessarily a bad idea.
• Unfortunately some people were just too obsessed with the idea of “Pedro can’t beat the Yankees.” One example was WEEI’s D&C. In their morning show the day after the win, the first thing they talked about wasn’t the Sox’s historic comeback, it was a bitchfest on why brought Pedro into the game. Miserable scumbags.
• More scumbag alert: according to BSMW (near the bottom of the page) , CHB was on radio telling people he invented the curse, so he decides when it is over.
• Alex Rodriguez’s chop in game 6 was bush league. No matter how he and others spin it, it was bush league. Come on now, even little leaguers won’t do that stuff and we are talking about the supposedly best player in baseball.
• David Ortiz was the MVP for ALCS. In this series he established himself as one of the best clutch hitters in the baseball.

World Series – Before the NL pennant was decided I was asked a tough question: do I want the Sox to play the Astros or the Cardinals in the World Series? Do I want to see Roger Clemens and Roy Oswalt to start 4 of the 7 games or did I want to see a lineup that has Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, Jim Edmonds, and Larry Walker? “Pick your poison huh,” I thought. Both teams had its problems. The Astros had an anemic offense while the Cardinals’ starting rotation didn’t scare anybody. At the end I picked the Cardinals and my wish came true. Following baseball’s golden rule – in the post season good pitching beats good offense – I would rather see how the Sox’s two aces would fare against that Cardinal lineup and hope that even in the worst case the Sox would come out on top in a slugfest against the mediocre Cardinal starting pitching.

I felt a lot better about the Sox’s chances with the way they sent the Yankees packing. If anything though, the job wasn’t finished as there were 4 more wins to go. I was fairly optimistic but Murphy’s Law was still looming in the back of my mind. I also knew what happened in 86 even though I didn’t watch the games in person. (I was too young and hadn’t become a baseball fan yet.) I was still nervous, but unlike during the ALCS this time I had faith in this team.

None of my worries turned out to be true. Besides the sloppily played game 1 the Sox simply rolled over the Cardinals. Game 1 was such a sloppy game that it ended up being more or less a slugfest. Both game 1 starter pitched poorly. Wakefield didn’t have control of his pitches. He allowed 5 runs on 3 hits and 5 walks and couldn’t get out of the 4th inning. The Cardinals’ Woody Williams was even worse, 7 runs on 8 hits and didn’t last 3 innings. The two teams combined for 5 errors, unfortunately the Sox had 4 of them. (I think that’s a World Series record…) The back and forth finally came to an end when Bellhorn hit a two-run homer off Julian Tavarez to take a 11-9 lead. Keith Foulke, who hadn’t been scored on in 9 innings so far in the post season, then slammed the door shut in the 9th. I said earlier that none of my worries turned out to be true, that was because I was looking at the series as a whole. After watching game 1 I became a little nervous. The consolation was that Schilling and Pedro would go for game 2 and 3. Schilling’s ankle was a concern, but he said he had that same procedure done again and would be ready to go. I wasn’t particularly worried about Pedro. The Cardinal hitters weren’t as familiar with him as the Yankees hitters did. He also would be pitching in St. Louis where there would be no DH. That should help him a bit.

There was really not a lot I can say about games 2-4. Take a look at these pitching lines by the Sox starters:

Game 2 - Curt Schilling - 6.0IP 4H 1R 0ER 1BB 4K
Game 3 - Pedro Martinez - 7.0IP 3H 0R 0ER 2BB 6K
Game 4 - Derek Lowe     - 7.0IP 3H 0R 0ER 1BB 4K

The 3-headed monster silenced the bats of the Cardinals for 3 straight games. Game 2 the Sox won 6-2 with Timlin allowed a run late in the game. Game 3 the Sox won 4-1 where Foulke allowed a solo homerun to Larry Walker in the 9th inning. Game 4 the Sox shut out the Cardinals 3-0. After coming back from 0-3 to beat the Yankees in 4 straight games, the Sox swept the Cardinals to make it 8 straight. Finally the Boston Red Sox won the World Series after 86 years.

My reaction after the last out was made was pretty much the same as right after the Sox beat the Yankees. Instead of screaming “Ha-ha-ha, take that, Chokers!” though, I yelled “Go to hell 1918!” and “Curse my ass!” I also finally felt good enough to sit down and enjoy a drink, thinking that with this win even if I die now I can rest in peace. (Yes I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but that’s really how relieved and satisfied I felt.) Actually I had way too many drinks that I was drunk that night. The next morning I had a pounding headache as I was looking through all the newspapers and web sites for game stories and information on the parade.

Here are some more random thoughts:

• I expect I would not hear anymore “1918″ chants, especially from Yankees fans.
• That ridiculous “Curse of the Bambino” can finally die. There was no curse to begin with. It was more like decades of bad luck and incompetent management.
• CHB you can go to hell too. Unfortunately the victory lets you add that final chapter to your pathetic book to reap in some more money, though hopefully for the final time. I hope nobody would buy it.
• I hope there’ll be fewer of those “Angry Bill” types of Sox fans. We won. There’s no need to have anymore of these “Is this the year???” “We have to do everything to win now!!!” kinds of hysteria. I would like to enjoy the game without all that hysteria and stress.
• Is less hysteria + less stress = less negativity?
• Fox Sports hopefully would stop their stupid 1918/Curse/whatever crap whenever they broadcast Sox games. 1918 and the Curse are not “in” anymore.
• My friend DG deserves some credit for telling (more like laughing at) me that I need to have more faith. There weren’t too many occasions where I was happy and wanted to be proved wrong.

(To be continued…)

~ by haydeé on June 29, 2005.