Authors: John Powers
Fenway Park (56 page)
When Schilling shut them down, 2-1, in Game 2—helped by Papelbon’s killer eighth-inning pickoff of Matt Holliday, the first of his career—the Rockies were facing a steep climb.
The Sox adapted quickly to Denver’s thin air, scoring six runs in the third inning of Game 3 without a homer and three more in the eighth for a 10-5 decision that put them on the verge of joining the Yankees and Reds as the only clubs to sweep World Series in consecutive appearances. Still, they were taking nothing for granted. “We don’t want to eat the cake first before your birthday,” cautioned Ramirez.
The celebration came the next day with two unlikely heroes blowing out the candles. Jon Lester, the young gun who’d begun the season in Single A and wasn’t on the initial playoff roster, pitched flawlessly and pinch hitter Bobby Kielty, who’d been released by the Athletics at the end of July, smacked what turned out to be the game-winning homer in a 4-3 victory with his only swing of the Series. “I felt like I was running on clouds,” said Kielty, who never played another game in a Boston uniform.
Despite the high-altitude giddiness, Sox management was quick to tamp down talk of a dynasty only three years after an 86-year curse had been lifted. “Baseball will humble you in a hurry,” observed Epstein. “Just when you think you have something, it turns on you.”
The odds were against Boston retaining its crown in 2008—only the Yankees had managed back-to-back World Series titles since 1993. Even repeating as division champions proved impossible as Tampa Bay, which had never had a winning season, finished two games in front. For most of the spring the Sox had been the front-runners, inspired by Lester’s 7-0 no-hitter against Kansas City on May 19, less than 21 months after he’d been diagnosed with lymphoma.
But the Rays, who lost the first seven meetings at Fenway by a 45-16 aggregate, gradually made up ground and left a calling card in September when they won the final two games there, taking the finale on Carlos Pena’s three-run homer in the 14
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inning off Mike Timlin. With the Yankees missing the playoffs for the first time since 1994, it seemed inevitable that Boston and Tampa Bay would meet in October.
First was the customary date with the Angels in the divisional series. This one, though, proved decidedly more stressful. Though the Sox won the first two games in Anaheim to run their unbeaten playoff streak against the Angels to 11, they needed a two-run homer from Drew in the ninth to win the second encounter, 7-5, after frittering away a 5-1 lead.
Fans got a shower of champagne from Curt Schilling, who climbed on the dugout to celebrate after the Red Sox clinched the 2007 AL East Championship.
NO LOAVES, JUST FISHES
BY KEVIN PAUL DUPONT
October 13, 2007—As the Red Sox opened the 2007 American League Championship Series with Cleveland, the weather was unpredictable. For Fenway Park director of grounds Dave Mellor and his crew, that was hardly unusual.
“Weather dictates so much of what we do,” said the 43-year-old Mellor, who became Fenway’s lawn doctor when longtime director of grounds Joe Mooney handed over the rake just prior to the 2001 season.
When Mellor took the job at Fenway, on the recommendation of Mooney, a man he calls his mentor, the new man had to be schooled on the many different ways rain could foul up Fenway. Day No. 1 on the job, the two men sat in the stands, and Mooney told Mellor that heavy rains often flooded the dugouts.
“Not really a problem,” said Mellor. “I saw plenty of that at County Stadium [in Milwaukee].”
Heavier rain, Mooney told him, would blow the drain covers off beneath the stands on the third-base side, and water would shoot up, geyser-like, from the ground.
Right there, with that bit of Old Faithful imagery, Mooney had the new hire’s attention. Gushing water. Something he had never seen in Milwaukee.
But wait, Mooney warned, there was more.
“He tells me, ‘And when it really, really, really rains, the camera pit over on first base will flood,’” recalled Mellor. “And then he says, ‘And fish will swim out on the field.’ Hey, I’m new here, right? I didn’t challenge him. All I said was, ‘OK, Joe, yeah, got that.’”
Fast-forward to Opening Day 2001, with the Yankees in town. It rained and rained, to the point that the tarp cradled two-and-a-half inches of water. Making his appointed rounds, Mellor swung by first base, and there it was, just as Mooney warned—a fish.
“I kid you not . . . I couldn’t believe it,” said Mellor. “A fish! I looked all around, figuring they had some camera in the stands or something, and I was on Candid Camera. But then I looked over to second base, and there was more. From the camera pit to second base, a total of eight fish. I only wish I had taken a picture. In fact, I should have kept one and had it mounted.”
According to Mellor, when contractors ripped out the old field after the 2004 World Series, sure enough, they found a drain line that acted as the conduit that made Fenway the fish-friendliest ballpark in North America.
“Next time I saw Joe,” recalled Mellor, “I said to him, ‘Oh my gosh, Joe, tell me anything and I’ll believe you.’”
When the scene shifted to Fenway, the Angels were determined to make a fight of it after having been swept in the previous two postseason showdowns between the clubs. It took 12 innings, and 5 hours and 19 minutes, but the visitors managed to stay alive when Erick Aybar dropped a single in front of Crisp to score Mike Napoli from second for a 5-4 triumph.
Just in case they couldn’t close things out the following night the hosts packed their bags for the West Coast. But with the score tied in the ninth, Jason Bay, who’d been acquired from the Pirates in a trade that sent Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers, hit a ground-rule double into the right-field stands, and then came home on rookie Jed Lowrie’s single. “When he hit that ball I was going to score,” said Bay, who’d stumbled rounding third and needed to sweep the plate with his hand to produce the run that clinched the 3-2 win. “There was no question. I was gone.”
After their champagne shower, Bay and his teammates headed for Florida and a championship-series date with the Rays, who’d taken down the White Sox. While Tropicana Field had been a hothouse of horrors for Boston, which had lost eight of its nine meetings there during the season, the visitors very nearly took the first two games.
First, Matsuzaka shut out the Rays, 2-0, in the opener. Then the Sox led their next meeting three times before Tampa Bay prevailed, 9-8, in the 11
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on three walks and a sacrifice fly. “We’re not frustrated,” insisted reliever Mike Timlin, who took the loss after not having pitched in nearly two weeks. “You come down to somebody else’s place and you split, we’re still looking pretty good.”
But the club looked marked for death after two staggering losses on Yawkey Way pushed it to the brink. The Sox, who hadn’t dropped more than two home dates to the Rays in six seasons, lost that many in consecutive nights. The visitors scored 22 runs in six-and-a-half hours of play in by far the worst consecutive postseason defeats Boston had ever suffered.
The hosts could shrug off the 9-1 battering in Game 3 as an aberration. But the 13-4 loss in Game 4, ignited by back-to-back, first-inning homers off Wakefield by Pena and Evan Longoria, left the Sox reeling. “We’re down 3-1 and if we lose we’re going home,” said Pedroia. “Hit the panic button.”
His colleagues, who’d escaped from 3-1 deficits in three previous championship series, responded with the greatest playoff comeback in franchise history two nights later, coming from seven runs down in the seventh to win, 8-7. “I’ve never seen a group so happy to get on a plane at 1:30 in the morning,” Francona noted.
The Red Sox found a way to top their 2004 world title, literally. The 2007 banner was hung on Opening Day 2008, and the flags of 62 nations were also displayed, to represent the reach of Red Sox Nation. The Sox had opened the season in Japan, then played in California and Canada before their home debut.
When the Sox won Game 6 by a 4-2 count at The Trop on a blinding performance by Beckett and a winning homer from Jason Varitek, who’d been 0 for 14 in the series, they were only one game from their third World Series appearance in five years. But Boston couldn’t solve Matt Garza in the finale and its most improbable resurrection ended there. “We played as hard as we could,” Pedroia said after the Rays had won, 3-1, and earned a World Series date with the Phillies. “We just ran out of magic.”
Tampa Bay, crushed by the Phillies in the Series, proved a one-hit wonder.
A century’s worth of experience had taught Boston that its perennial rival hadn’t changed. “Year after year,” Henry had said, “the Yankees are Halliburton.” So they were again in 2009, even though the Sox won their first eight meetings with New York and led the division at the All-Star break.
The season essentially came undone in a bizarre Fenway series in late August. After New York had won the opener in a 20-11 bashfest and Boston had responded with a 14-1 blowout, the visitors took the Sunday finale, 8-4, crashing five homers off Beckett. “Right now, they’re definitely better than we are,” conceded Bay after the Yankees had grabbed a seven-and-a-half-game lead.
Though Francona’s club finished eight games behind, it still earned its sixth playoff appearance in seven years during a month that fans had come to regard as Soxtober. As usual, Boston’s dancing partner was the Angels.
This meeting, though, was unlike the others because Boston was forced to operate with a discombobulated rotation. The Sox, who hadn’t lost a playoff game in Anaheim since 1986, dropped the first two as haloed aces John Lackey and Jered Weaver held the visitors to a total of one run. “I don’t think it’s the way we scripted it before we got here,” observed Lowell after Boston had been stifled, 5-0 and 4-1. “We’ve definitely dug a pretty good hole for ourselves.”
Boston, which had won nine of 11 elimination games under Francona and lost only one at Fenway since 1999, figured that it could make a last stand at home. Leading, 6-4, in the ninth inning of Game 3, the Sox seemed secure. But Papelbon, who hadn’t allowed an earned run in 26 playoff innings, came unglued.
After allowing two inherited runners to score in the eighth, the star closer was one strike away from victory three times in the ninth, but conceded a single, a walk, and a double before Vlad Guerrero smacked a fatal two-run single to center. “The season doesn’t wind down,” remarked Francona after his club had absorbed a shocking 7-6 loss that left the faithful sitting stupefied in the stands. “It just comes to a crashing halt.”
The 2010 season never got started, as the Red Sox lost nine of their first 13 games and were in first place for only one day—after beating the Yankees on Opening Day. Storm warnings were evident as early as Patriots Day weekend, when the Sox were swept at home by Tampa Bay, dropping the final two games by a combined 15-3. “When you don’t show up to play, you’re going to get beat,” Pedroia said after he and his mates had fallen into fourth place, six games off the pace. “Doesn’t matter if you play the Rays or Brookline High School.”