To quote the late Cardinals announcer Jack Buck (ironically enough):
“I don’t believe what I just saw!”
I watched it. I watched a lot of it. (I still think Bud Selig’s an asshole, but even HE couldn’t get in the way of this story. However, I’m surprised I didn’t see him giving Joe Torre and Rudy Giuliani simultaneous hand shandies before game 6 and 7 of the ALCS, but I digress…)
I simply cannot fathom what it must be like to be in Boston right now or to be a life-long or even multi-generational Red Sox fan. For the greatest sports town on the planet to finally get out from under the curse talk and step into the spotlight as best team of 2004 is, well…amazing.
As I was watching the final innings and outs unfold last night, I started pondering everything from Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS forward. Even just that short time tells a lot of the story. After tearing out the hearts of the Red Sox Nation in game seven last year with Aaron Boone of all people, the Sox decided to make some changes.
The hated Yankees had a payroll approaching 200 million dollars with money slung all over the world for the likes of Sheffield and A-Rod and Olerud and Kevin Brown and Esteban Loiaza and John Lieber. All the while the Sox spent money the right way. They brought in Schilling, Foulke, Ortiz, Pokey Reese, Orlando Cabrerra and Doug Mentkavitz. (I simply refuse to look up how to spell that name). They didn’t bring in A-Fraud, they kept Manny, they traded Nomar and they brought in Terry Francona. While the Yankees were choking on their on tongues, the Red Sox were building momentum on the backs of great pitching and timely hitting.
After 86 years of frustration and incredibly painful failures, the Red Sox have done it. They won a World Series title.
So now, the world is devoid of one less patsie. Devoid of sportscasters having that easy cliche in their pocket about anything Red Sox plus 1918. No more. Period. Now we can forgive Johnny Pesky and Grady Little and Calvin Schiraldi and John McNamara and, most of all, Bill Buckner. I hope every person who crank called his house and egged his house or cars or yelled at his kids writes an apology letter or begs for Buckner’s forgiveness. He wasn’t the reason the Sox lost in 1986. He was just the face of that collapse.
The Red Sox won the World Series.
Think about that sentence for a minute. The Red Sox won the World Series.
No more watching every playoff game thru your nearly closed fingers. No more leaving the room when the Yanks or Cards or anyone else bats. Now their just a baseball team like any other. Well, any other that has won a championship that is.
And to think, the Sox scored in the bottom of the ninth to tie game four of the ALCS, faced down one out, Miguel Cairo on second in the 11th and came back from the absolute nowhere thanks to a two-run homer in the bottom of the 12th by David Ortiz. Everything that usually went wrong for the Sox started going right. At every turn, and opportunity to fold fell by the wayside or, more accurately, into the Yankees dugout.
Game 5 featured another extra innings, game-winning hit by David Ortiz. All I hoped was that the Sox would go back to Yankee Stadium and not lose at home.
Game 6 gave us Curt Chilling’s best Roy Hobbs in “The Natural” moment in decades. With a jerry-rigged ankle and blood oozing thru his sock, Curt Schilling pitched a career game and brought the Red Sox Nation to the brink again…a game 7 in Yankee Stadium. Only this time, the babe was going to be Boston’s bitch.
Derek Lowe came into a game seemingly overmatched, and yet he and the Sox lineup made it almost a laugher…almost. Until it’s a final, a playoff with the yankees is never over. That is until Ruben Sierra grounded out to second, and all 55,000 fans in the house that Ruth built got a taste, just a taste, of how the other half lived.
The World Series started the way the ALCS ended: with great pitching and clutch two-out hitting. Every time there was a meaningful opportunity to score runs with two outs, the Red Sox did it. And every time there was a meaningful scoring opportunity for the Cardinals, the Red Sox pitched their way out of it. Game 1 was the only game the Cardinals were really in at all. The telling stats are these:
The Cardinals 3-4-5 hitters went a combined 6-45 or a combined .133, scored but three runs, hit no homers and drove in one measly run.
The Cardinals vaunted closer, Jason Isrinhausen, only got to pitch in game four when his team was trailing 3-0.
I am still completely stunned. This is all just a keyboard version of diarrhea. I cannot fathom that the Red Sox are finally free and their fans are free as well.
What will next season bring? Who knows. There are many free agents on the current Sox roster including Pedro, Varitek (arguably the team’s leader and captain) and Derek Lowe, and several others are coming up on option years. This year’s payroll will be dwarfed by next year’s if all players stay and get new contracts. Few people get less money AFTER winning a World Series.
But that’s another worry for another day. Theo Epstein and his team of geniuses can figure out a way for this team to compete for a ring again next year. For now, it’s all about 2004 and the here and now.
I do wonder what Dan Shaughnessy is going to write about, since he has spent his adult life writing about The Curse and how the Sox are doomed to never win and blah blah blah blah.
I want to wish congratulations to some of my favorite Red Sox fans:
My friend Falmouth Matt from college, Peter Gammons (easily the nicest professional sports personality I’ve ever met), and Bill Simmons. Congratulations in advance on the August 2005 birth of William Pedro Papi Derek Schilltek Rogerisatraitor Simmons. I’d also like to congratulate every Sox fan I don’t know that said “Go Sox” to me when I was wearing my Sox hat. Congrats to all of senior citizens from Kroger Wednesday shopping that stopped my wife in her Sox sweatshirt and smiled wide as my precious daughter answered the following question:
“Lauren, what do we say when baseball’s on tv?”
Her answer: “GO SOX!!”
I think we should all remember the great Red Sox players that never won and imagine how they feel now. Unlike the 1972 Dolphins players who break out champagne every time an undefeated team loses and is no longer a threat to their collective manhood, old Red Sox players will come out of the woodwork to celebrate this win.
Hooray for Fred Lynn and Dwight Henderson and Yaz and Wade Boggs and the spaceman Bill Lee and Pudge and Luis Aparicio and Lou Boudreau and Orlando Cepeda Joe Cronin and Bobby Doerr and Jimmie Foxx and Lefty Grove and Juan Marichal most of all, at least in my mind, Ted Williams. I wish he was still alive so he could give the Yankees the finger like we all know he would.
I could gush on and on about this, and probably will as we move forward and I continue to peel away the layers of how great this is, but I will stop for today.
Oh, and one more thing. Get used to this, Yankee fans. That chanting you hear?
“CLAP-CLAP-CLAPCLAPCLAP…YEAR-TWO-THOUSAND!!”
It’s all for you. That’s what you’ll hear all ten or so games where the Yankees visit Fenway Park in 2005. In the same cadance and excitement in which Yankee fans yelled “Who’s your daddy?” to Pedro and “1918″ to the Sox as a whole for the last ten or twenty or eighty six years, the Red Sox Nation will return it in spades.
Now, I have one request. Can I please get a hug?
What say you?