Posted on 10/18/2003 8:33:45 AM PDT by johnny7
10/17/2003 3:28 AM ET--They had tears in their eyes as they spoke about friends, not just teammates. Baseball players talk about the family inside the clubhouse all the time, but this is a team that lived it like few others in recent memory, hugging their way deep into October.
The band of brothers inside the Red Sox clubhouse was hurting as one, feeling pain they'd never felt before at the end of a baseball season like none they'd ever experienced before.
After all they'd been through together through an amazing run in 2003, the Red Sox were one big, sad family in the visiting clubhouse at Yankee Stadium in the wee hours of Friday morning. The din was still ringing in their ears from Aaron Boone's homer off their ALCS pitching hero, Tim Wakefield, in Game 7, and Wakefield felt the burden of one of the most dramatic endings in postseason history. "All I have to say is I'm sorry," Wakefield said.
Sorry for what? Sorry for carrying the club to two of its three victories in the series? Sorry for one pitch out of hundreds in this series? Wakefield makes the point and misses it at the same time. Every single man on that team threw that pitch, just like every single man on that team was part of the victories he secured with perhaps his best two starts in a long, successful career. And every single man felt the pain of the loss, none more than the next. That doesn't ease the pain. It just spreads it around a little bit, and it's a pain that no doubt is being felt across Red Sox Nation after coming so close to reaching the World Series, that Holy Grail that has eluded Boston so much over the decades.
"We play this game with a lot of emotion," said Wakefield, incapable of holding in the emotion himself, and understandably so. "Every guy in this clubhouse left everything they had on the field, including myself. It's disappointing to come in here knowing that we're going home tomorrow." You almost get the feeling they'll all be pulling in the same driveway and plopping down on one big couch when they do go home for the winter.
Pedro Martinez, the superstar who very often leaves the talking to be done by his teammates, stood up to a huge media throng and professed his love for the group of men on this team -- it seems he caught the unity bug, too. In the wake of the most devastating start of his career, he felt the same pain everybody in that clubhouse felt. "I'm really proud of my team," Martinez said. "I'm as proud as (the Yankees) might be about their team."
That camaraderie extends into the manager's office as well, and it did so under as tough a circumstance imaginable. It was Grady Little's decision to leave Martinez in the game in the fateful eighth, and that decision backfired to the tune of a three-run rally that turned the tide toward a remarkable Yankees victory. Martinez supported his manager like a member of the family. "There's no reason to blame Grady," Martinez said. "Grady didn't play the game. We did. I did."
Sharing the pain means sharing the blame, and there was no finger-pointing going on in this clubhouse. Just reflection on a season that had so many opportunities to end earlier and then ended so suddenly with an 11th-inning bombshell of a homer by Boone. "It's a very rough ending for a very remarkable season," said Red Sox president and CEO Larry Lucchino, the man who has pushed the buttons that changed the franchise so much these last couple of years. Reversing the "Curse of the Bambino" was the goal, but that will have to wait for another year. Bringing the World Series back to Boston was the hope, and they fell five outs short. "History will reflect that we weren't champions of the world this year," GM Theo Epstein said. "But in a way -- this might sound corny -- we accomplished something just as meaningful."
What they accomplished was turning New England into one big high school. It was like the varsity squad rode the team bus all the way to the state finals, only to get beaten by their rivals from down south. Of course, we know these are athletes making millions for playing a child's game, but their innocence struck a chord that endeared them not only to their faithful, but to much of the rest of the baseball world.
Like the "We Are Family" Pirates of 1979, they had their song -- "Cowboy Up," so popular among the players and the fans that cowboy hats became fashionable in New England, which makes about as much sense as clam chowder in El Paso. They had their signs of unity -- those bald heads, which probably should have been shaved at a pep rally, just for good measure.
But most of all they had each other, and this year, a year unlike any other in Boston's deep baseball history, that was a lot. You might say it was just not quite enough, but that would be missing the point.
John Schlegel is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
Yea... and over the winter Theo Epstein will get more hitters who can't field and claim 2005 is the year.
A game that would not only have brought them into the World Series in the most dramatic way imaginable, but a game that would have forever ended the alleged "curse". A game that would have sent the smirking Yankees home to watch the rest of the season on t.v., and would have handed Roger Clemens his arrogant head on a silver platter. The importance of this particular game to Red Sox fans surpassed winning a world series.
The Red Sox were a team of superior ballplayers with a minor league mentality manager, and the Yankess won this series with an inferior team of ballplayers with a wise old sage for a manager. I hope the Sox finally understand that it takes both great talent and great managing to win it all.
No.
Now, now. You're in Mass. Calm down and get your Grady Little poster out.
Yes, I think so.
Verrrrrry strange.
Every Red Sox field position player is a more than adequate fielder, and many of them are excellent fielders, like Nomar Garciapara, Bill Meuller, Jason Varatek, Kevin Millar, and Johnny Damon. Don't forget that Todd Walker made two acrobatic, diving stabs of vicious line drives for outs in game six; plays that would have had Tim McCarver raving with his nose covered with Yankee stool sample had Alfonsio Soriano had made them.
Wait till next year.
Of course, the Red Sox were better defensively than the Yankees at at least 6 defensive positions, including all of the vital "up-the-middle" ones (C, SS, 2B, CF). In fact, the Yankees would probably have won in 5 if Jeter and Soriano had turned the double play on Varitek in game 4. (Hint: the fact that McCarver raved about the Yankee defense doesn't actually mean that the defense was good.)
The Red Sox lost because the manager sent a tired starter out for the 8th inning instead of going to the bullpen which has been dominant in the post-season. And then, after the game was tied, he went to the knuckleballer instead of the sinkerballer, when any HR would lose the series. The Red Sox were the better team - the Yankees had the better manager. The one move that Theo Epstein needs to make this winter is the one that a lot of us were calling for last winter - find a real manager.
Oh yea... they had to scrape off the world series logo they brazenly applied to the turf at Fenway.
I understand your point, but there is a huge difference with the Litte-Martinez situation. Little took Pedro out after 7 innings,(or earlier), during the entire regular season and all of his previous playoff starts because he knows Pedro cannot reliably go more than seven innings. Martinez throws very hard and is slightly built, which means he runs out of gas after seven innings. His pitching limit has been about 115 pitches for the last two years. This everyone knows, especially Grady Little.
The fact that Grady Little made the trip to the mound after seeing Pedro fall apart in the eigth, and then decide to leave him in anyway, will forever remain a mystery to some, and a downright mindless blunder to the rest of us. Especially since his entire bullpen was chomping at the bit and ready to go. The Sox bullpen had been superb and almost untouchable throughout the playoffs. This will go down in Red Sox annals as the most bizarre, counfounding and self defeating act in thier entire history. There is nobody who can ever adequately explain Grady Little's bizarre reversal of strategy in how to manage the arm of Pedro Martinez. All of New England groaned when Grady Little walked off the mound that night and left Pedro in for the slaughter.
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