As my readers know from my articles on
baseball my household – particularly my mother – is a Yankee household. I never
quite inherited the title mainly because by the time I started watching the
sport seriously around sixteen I was watching baseball as a fan of narratives.
To be clear, while I devoured box
scores with a passion and watched the records that were being set in the
steroid era (I was as oblivious as any
fan was, for the record) my real focus didn't begin in earnest until the
postseason which was about to shift from the division race to the wild card
race. At the time this was met with derision from every single sportswriter and
broadcaster at the time and I imagine that there are still quite a few Boomers
who think it's an abomination.
As I've written before I thought it
was an improvement. As I've written a couple of times before the idea of the
season long pennant race for one league, much less both, is sepia toned. This
was especially true when the Yankees were in their period of dominance between
1921-1964 but it was never that common for the National League much of the time
either. Many of the things purists deride, such as divisional races, had done
much to make the sport more competitive. Between 1978 and 1987 ten different
teams won the World Series, something that had never happened before in
baseball history. For the first time the possibility of any team winning the
World Series was becoming closer to a reality and as we've seen in the 21st
century, it's led to the breaking of some of the larger championship droughts
in history and several expansion franchises finally win the World Series after
going for decades without one.
Of course I didn't know that in 1996.
Then I was very much rooting for the Yankees as they finally broke the longest
gap between championships in their history when Joe Torre led the Yankees to
their first World Series victory in eighteen years. And I was as much a fan of
Jeter and Bernie and Jorge and Petite as any New Yorker was back then.
I was also in awe of them in 1998 as
they had what was the greatest season in American League history going 114-48
and sweeping towards the World Series.
By 1999, the luster was beginning to
dim. By 2000 I was pulling for the Mets in the Subway series. And by the fall
of 2001 I may very well have been the only person in America not pulling
for the Yankees to win their fourth consecutive World Series.
This is public knowledge in my family;
in fact my first byline was an op-ed I wrote for Newsday in 2002 'Rooting
against the Yankees is an act of love.'
In it I argued much of is had to do with my mother's die-hard devotion
to the team. With the benefit of hindsight I'm pretty sure that had less to do
with it then her.
The truth of the matter is dynasties
in sports can be infuriating if you don't happen to be a fan of the team. It
had to have been exhausted for the seven other teams in the American League
during the 1920s, thirties, forties and fifties as well as for so many of the
franchises in the National League that had to face them and usually lose year
after year. There's a reason the Broadway show was called Damn Yankees and
not Go Senators! – hating the Yankees in the 1950s was something that
could be universally understood if you didn't live in the Bronx. And when your
name is synonymous with winning I'm pretty sure it’s a big reason the rest of
the country hates New York with a passion.
During this same period I was started
my pattern of looking for narratives in the postseason. I would root for
Cleveland because they hadn't won a World Series in forty years and until 1995
wouldn't make the postseason at all. The Mariners hadn't won during that period
when they were starting to become a force of nature (unfortunately right when
the Yankees were in resurgence). And I'd root for the Orioles and the Rangers
for the same reason.
My problem with dynasties wasn't just
held to the Yankees. Much I admired and loved the Braves pitching staff I
wasn't thrilled that they were making it to the World Series every year and
were always winning the NL East. I pulled for the Padres, who'd never won a
World Series, the Cubs for obvious reasons, and back then it was easier for me
to pull for the Mets. (I've essentially given up on them, though every so often
they do surprise me.)
Now it wasn't like the Red Sox were
doing poorly during this period. They won the AL Wild Card in 1995 and again in
1999. They frequently contended for the division title and they sometimes got
close to both. But I'd basically stopped taking the Red Sox seriously after
Roger Clemens went to Toronto (and of course later the Yankees.)
I should be honest, despite the fact
I'd watched Ken Burns' Baseball multiple times by that point, I was
still very skeptical of the idea of a curse. By this point I'd read a lot of
other histories of baseball, the World Series and many seasonal ones. And even
by 2002 I'd noticed a pattern that, in the aftermath of the 2004 World Series,
other writers would put in various books on the Sox.
In 1946 when the Red Sox won their
first pennant in 28 years, their opponents were the St. Louis Cardinals.
Between 1942-1944, as I've written, the Cardinals won 106, 105, and 105 wins
respectively, three consecutive National League Pennants and two World Series.
Much of the 1944 team was facing off against the Red Sox and they won their
third World Series in five years.
In 1967 the year of the Impossible
Dream, they faced the Cardinals again. There was no question who the better
teams was that year as the Cardinals had, even with Bob Gibson missing much of
the summer with a broken leg, run away with the National League Pennant. This
was a team with four future Hall of Fames, Gibson, Lou Brock, Orlando Cepeda
and Steve Carlton and they'd won the World Series over the Yankees three years
earlier.
In 1975 the Red Sox ended up facing
the Big Red Machine, which is of course one of the greatest baseball dynasties
in history. The Reds would have the best win-loss record of any National League
in the 1970s. They'd win six NL West Titles, four NL Pennants and 2 world
series during that period. That year they'd won the NL East by 20 games over
the Dodgers. They were powered by Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe
Morgan to win 108 games.
And while every Red Sox fan of a
certain age will gnash their teeth at this the New York Mets in 1986 were by
far the best team in baseball that year. They went 108-54, which was the best
single season record any team had during the 1980s. The Philadelphia Philles
who came in second, finished 21 and a half games behind them. That year the Red
Sox were 95-66. And need I remind you the Angels were beating you 3 games to 1
in the ALCS that year and were down to your last strike in Game by before Dave
Henderson saved your season? (Those who know baseball history are aware there
were more tragic consequences to that for the Angels that year, but I won't
relate it here.)
And to be clear, Bill Buckner only
lost Game 6 for you. You could have won Game 7.
Just a reminder.
So if you think about there wasn't so
much a curse hanging over the Red Sox during this period but the simple fact
that every time they made to the World Series they ran smack into a much better
team. Teams that should by any measure have made mincemeat out of the Red Sox
each time. And a couple of times it nearly was. In 1967 the Red Sox were
actually trailing the Cardinals three games to one before winning the next two
games to force a game 7 and we all know the lore of Game 6 in 1975.
I get that the curse of never being
able to win Game 7 fits a certain narrative but it leaves out the fact that the
Red Sox didn't win Game 7 before the curse. To be clear you won in the
first World Series in 1903 but that was a best of 9. In 1912 the Red Sox won
the World Series when they won Game 8 (too complicated to explain) They
won in 5 in 1915 and 1916 and in six 1918. So winning Game 7 was not something
Red Sox hadn't really done in the 20th century.
And I'm not saying that to shame the
Red Sox fans, just telling you that just made you like basically every other
team when they get to the postseason. Baseball is like that. Grover Cleveland
Alexander can strike out Tony Lazzeri in 1926 and the Yankees can come back to
sweep the Pirates in four in 1927. The Mets can complete a miracle over the
Orioles in 1969 in five games and the Orioles can come back to beat the Reds in
five in 1970. Kirk Gibson can hit a home run to stun the A's leading the
Dodgers to a five game sweep and in 1989 the A's can sweep the Giants. That's
how baseball works.
And I would still believe that…had I
not watched the 2003 Championship Series for both the National League and
American League that year. Because I'm convinced both those series might cause
the most die-hard atheist to think to themselves: "This can't be chance!
God is playing dice with the universe and every time he rolls for the
Sox and Cubs it comes up snake eyes!"
During the early weeks of October of
2003 much of America seemed seized by the potential of something that even
non-baseball fans would have realized the significance of: a Red Sox-Cub Fall
Classic. I remember that the Times, which even then was notorious for not
covering sports of any level with the detail most papers did, were running the
scores of Red Sox and Cubs postseason games next to the masthead on the
daily issues.
And by the second week of October it
seemed increasingly probable. In the ALCS the Red Sox were, for the first time
in franchise history, facing the Yankees
in a postseason series while in the NLCS the Cubs were facing off against the
Florida Marlins.
Now even though my home was a Yankee
home I was paying more attention to the Cubs during that nine day period. Why
wouldn't you? That the Red Sox were
facing their all-time rivals in a postseason series was a secondary story to
the fact that this was the first time the Cubs had gotten even this far in the
postseason. Winning their first pennant alone would have been a bigger story
then anything else, considering it had become a punch line for every comedian.
The games overlapped quite a bit
during that period. And when the Cubs took a three game to one lead it seemed
inevitable. Even their losing Game 5 in Miami actually seemed fitting. They
would clinch the first pennant in 58 years at Wrigley Field.
I was alone at home on October 14th
2003 – my parents were at the opera that night.
Mark Prior, who seemed like he was going to be a future Hall of Famer
started and the Cubs took a 1-0 lead in the first. They held it and added a run
in the sixth and the seventh. As the top of the eighth began the Cubs were just
six outs away from the World Series.
Now Game 6 has of course gone down in
history because of Steve Bartman's catching a foul ball that if Moises Alou had
caught it would have put the Cubs four outs away. He became such a figure of
abuse in the aftermath of what happened and the scapegoat. But as someone who
saw the entire inning unfold everyone knows none of that was on him.
Yes it was an eight pitch at bat to
Mark Pierre and yes Alou might have been able to retire the side and yes the
Cubs got angry about it. But that alone can't be blamed on what happened
next. I remember watching the entire
disaster unfold and the idea of blaming Bartman for what it happens is as much
a straw man argument as blaming Bill Buckner for the Red Sox losing the World
Series in 1986.
I saw everything go wrong. The double
play that Gonzalez messed up, the hitting that Derek Lee did, the fact that
Prior was kept in far too long, that the relief pitching went up in smoke and
that the Marlins then proceeded to bat around. It was a complete and utter
shitshow but trying to blame Bartman for the Cubs mistakes is beyond the point.
And again as with Buckner it was
only Game 6. The Cubs could have rectified the whole thing by winning Game
7. And it looked like that might happen when Kerry Wood hit a three run homer
in the second to tie the game. The Cubs took the lead 5 to 3 and held it for
two more innings. Again the Cub Manager kept his starting pitcher into long and
that ended up destroying Chicago's hopes.
Now I wasn't even a Cubs fan but
watching that eighth inning unfold I felt the wreckage as deeply as anyone
who'd spent their entire life on the West Side of Chicago. I'm pretty sure I
was shouting thins like "No!, How Could You?" and "How the Hell
Could This Happen?!" in some variation for that horrible twenty minutes. I
was, however, more tolerant then those at Wrigley Field for a clear reason: at
no point did I blame Bartman. In fact I wouldn't even learn Bartman's name
until several months after the fact when he became the most notorious sports
fan in history. (Law and Order
actually did an episode where a Bartman-like character was the victim of a
bar brawl and Briscoe couldn't work up sympathy for his death.)
Bartman's name has since been cleared
by history, most recently in a monologue by Oliver Platt in The Bear during
the Season 2 finale. But when Game 7 ended I felt the ashes so much more deeply
than I had. So imagine less then twenty four hours later I had to watch
Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS.
It was clear just how bad the blood
was from the start. The two teams split the first four games pretty much
evenly. It was clear just how much bad blood there was a bench clearing brawl
that was lowlighted by Don Zimmer charging Pedro Martinez in Game 3 and the
game ended with a Fenway groundskeeper scuffling with two Yankees. The Yankees
left Boston up three games to two, needed just one win to clinch their sixth
American League Pennant in eight years.
The game took place the same day as
Game 7 of the Cubs-Marlins series and I'll be honest I don't think I gave the
Red Sox a chance. These were still the
Red Sox. Now there had been signs that they were no longer the losers of old.
In the ALDS of 2003 they were trailing two games to zero against the Oakland
A's. Then they came from behind to win three straight, winning the last two
games by one run. This went against what I was used to from the Red Sox over
the years and I may very well have given them a credit for being a good team.
But these were The Yankees. Sure
in 2002 they had lost a postseason series for the first time in four years to
Anaheim (which was on their way to their first ever World Championship) but
they'd won 101 games that year, tied with the Braves for the best record in
baseball. They run through the Twins in the ALDS (even back then Minnesota had
a habit of being a punching bag for the Yankees) and having seen most of their
season on YES (which was a relatively new network back then) I had no reason to
believe history would be any kinder to the Red Sox now.
And I'll be honest I was still focused
on Game 7 of the Cubs-Marlins game. I honestly can't remember if I was even
really listening as it played on the radio that afternoon. But when the Red Sox
ended up winning 9-6 I do remember telling my parents that the Red Sox had a
bad history when it came to winning Game 7.
Again in the first century of their
existence the Red Sox had won a Game 7 twice. The first time was in the 1903
World Series when the series was Best of 9. The second was when they'd clinched
the American League Pennant against the Angels in 1986. I knew their history in
Game 7. To overcome that seemed too much to believe.
Still I did watch because it seemed to
feature an all-time match up Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens. Clemens said he
was planning to retire in 2003 (he'd turned 41 that year) and everyone thought
this might me the last game he'd ever pitch. Pedro was starting to slow down
but he was still the best pitcher in the game, having lead the American League
that year in ERA, strikeouts and winning percentage.
As we all know the Red Sox started the
game out on hot. Trot Nixon hit a two run homer in the second and the Sox put
up one more run. They would be ahead 4-0
before Clemens was removed and Mike Mussina came in to relieve. But it didn't
seem to make a difference against Martinez. By the 7th inning the
Red Sox were ahead 4-2. After they got an insurance run, the natural move would
have been to take Martinez out.
So I was stunned to see Martinez
pitching the bottom of the eighth. This move has deservedly become the stuff of
backroom talk even after the curse was reversed the following year. The Red Sox had capable relievers and
Martinez had experienced problems pitching into the late innings. He'd already
thrown over 100 pitches.
Martinez got the first out. Then he
gave up a double to Jeter and a single to Williams. Then Little went to the
mound, everyone assuming he would take Martinez out.
The moment that Little left the mound
and kept Martinez in, that maybe the first time in history I believed in a
curse. Not so much of fate but the fact that the managers of the Red Sox
historically had made these kinds of bad moves before to the teams detriment,
particularly with pitching.
In 1948 with a one-game playoff
against Cleveland, Joe McCarthy chose as his starter Denny Galehouse, who was
8-7 and hadn't started in three months. Galehouse didn't last three innings and
the Indians won 8-3. Galehouse would never pitch in the majors again.
In 1949 with the Yankees and Red Sox
tied on the final day of the season McCarthy had taken out Ellis Kinder for a
pinch hitter with the Red Sox down 1-0. The Yankees would score four more runs,
3 of them on a bloop pinch hit by Jerry Coleman off Tex Hughson who hadn't
pitched in three months. Hughson never pitched in the majors again either.
In the one game playoff in 1978 after
Bucky F---Ing Dent homer Zimmer took Torrez out when Thurman Munson came to the
plate. Torrez had already struck Munson out three times that game. Munson hit a
double of Mike Stanley to drive in Mickey Rivers to make the game 4-2. He then
kept Stanley in during the eighth when Reggie Jackson hit another home run.,
the insurance run that made sure the Sox would lose 5-4.
So the fact that Little had this time
blundered by leaving his pitcher in didn't make me any less certain that
he had just signed Boston's death warrant for 2003. And that's what
happened Matsui would hit a double and
then Posada hit a bloop that drove in 2 runs. At that moment I knew the Sox had
lost. The rest was just waiting for them to be buried.
That Aaron Boone was the one to do it
in the eleventh is part of Yankee lore and their long history. Like every Red
Sox fan I suspect they all knew the game was over the moment Little kept
Martinez in the game. The rest was just details.
Like any baseball fan I've had some
postseasons that have left me emotionally spent but few have left me in such devastation
as the aftermath of that week in October 2003. I have no memory of watching the
World Series that following between the Yankees and Florida which the Marlins
would win in six games and if I did, it left no emotional impression on me. Oh
I was fine by Thanksgiving – the TV season had begun in earnest and I was
watching 24 and Gilmore Girls and all the other shows that kept
be going – but it was a bitter pill to take.
And honestly like any sports fan I had
no idea this was the bitter waters we had to go through before we reached the
sweet – an era of competitiveness in baseball unlike any in the sports history
and one in which the Red Sox would lead the way.
In the next article I will go in depth
with the 2004 postseason which everyone knows about but nevertheless can never
be forgotten.
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