ALCS Diary: The End
LIFE managing editor and longtime Red Sox fan Robert Sullivan spent the past 10 days following the ALCS from the press box and the stands. This, his final entry, covers the last three games of the series, starting with the eventful Game 5:
In preparing to bomb back up to Boston for what I will always remember as The Brutal Game, a.k.a. Game Five, I decide to change my look from ballfan to ranchhand. I have not only the will but the wherewithal to do so, as I spent most of 1992 on assignment in Australia, and returned from Down Under with Coogi sweaters and koala dolls for family and friends, and a good deal of outback garb for myself. The Stetson of Australia is called an Akubra, and while I was posted in Oz I bought a good, widebrimmed one. It has a small, stylish feather. I picked up a Driza-bone riding coat that Clint Eastwood might envy, and added to my collection of western-wear boots. Lucille rarely allows me to go about Westchester County in this stuff, but just now I am riding off to Beantown, where the rallying cry of the moment is Cowboy Up!
If the cabbie from Ernie's Taxi thinks me strange, he keeps it to himself, and for his discretion receives a handsome tip upon delivering me to LaGuardia. I struggle getting my boots off and then back on at the X-ray machine, but nevertheless make the 11:30 Shuttle after a sprint across the lobby. The fellow taking my ticket at the gate looks me over carefully, then thinks he gets the gag. "Well, you sure are ready for 'Saddle up!' " I hold my tongue. Yes, I could summarily humiliate this New York dolt with an indignant, "It's Cowboy Up!, fool." But the Sox have squared things at two games apiece, I am confident of our chances and I am full of feelings of well-being for my fellow man. "Yeah," I say to the buffoon. "Right."
The flight is smooth, and in a snap of the fingers I am back in the land of the Bosox — back in Xanadu, Shangri La, back where I belong. On the cab ride in from Logan to the Pru Center I notice that a sign redirecting traffic at one of the Big Dig work sites has been creatively altered. A graffiti artist with wit has taken his spray paint to the instruction REVERSE CURVE, modifying it to REVERSE THE CURSE.
How do I feel about all of this Curse of the Bambino nonsense? I reflect on the question as we make our way through downtown. I am happy that, as a book title, it helped the talented and friendly Globe sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy sell a few copies, but beyond that I figure I don't put much stock in it. I've felt all year that Theo Epstein and Bill James and their Rotisserie style of team-building is going to hit on the right combo one of these seasons — maybe this one? — and we will have deliverance from the Curse. I do hope the Yankees are in our way when that happens. John Henry, the team owner, says the World Championship is the only goal, though he admits that some of his club's fans care more about beating the Yanks. I'm in that camp, pretty much; it is, as I have often mentioned, very, very tough living here in the New York realm in October, if you're a Sox fan.
Have I mentioned the BLOHARDS? No, I don't think so. I am a BLOHARD. I am a card-carrying member of the Benevolent Loyal Order of Honorable and Ancient Red Sox Diehard Sufferers of New York. The club was started years and years ago by its forever president, Jim Powers, an ad exec from Fairfield, Conn., (but a real New Englander by birth, hailing from Duxbury, Mass.) We BLOHARDS lunch together in the city twice a year, when the Sox visit the Stadium in the spring, and again when they come in the fall. We have guest speakers; Fatass Clemens attended during his rookie year with Boston, and managers and GMs are regulars. Our lunches are fun and frolicsome, lots of gallows humor and "we'll get 'em next year."
There are hundreds of people on the BLOHARDS mailing list. Strangers in a strange land, enemies behind the lines, living day by day in a condition perhaps most acutely expressed by Aeschylus in Agamemnon when he wrote: "I have seen how men in exile feed on dreams of hope." I'd like to poll that membership right now (I think to myself as the cab pulls up to the curb), and ask the question, Would you rather win it all, or would you rather beat the Yanks? I would wager that, while the larger Red Sox Nation would choose the whole enchilada, the BLOHARDS precincts would vote for a Yankee killing. I know I would, I conclude as I hand over 30 and, still feeling beneficent, say, "Keep it. Cowboy Up!" The cabbie doesn't understand English very well, but nods energetically.
Where would you meet to divvy up the ducats but at Legal Seafoods? My sister Gail, who works at Gillette, comes down from the 47th floor of the Pru Tower to join us, bearing the pair of Game Five tickets that she has scored. Her friend Millie arrives, and she will sit alongside Gail in Section 8. I have my press pass plus four excellent seats in Section 13, several rows up but right behind first. In the Spirit of '78, which you might have read about in Part I of this diary, I have called my friend Bag, who is coming with his wife, Annie (to whom I had introduced him, lo those years ago). The other two seats will go to my lifelong friends from Chelmsford, Bruce and Mike. When it comes to valuable Bosox tickets, you call the usual suspects. And those suspects show up.Mike and Bruce order Guinness; I have a bowl of the world's finest (and realest) clam chowder, plus a Sam Adams, because this is a day about Boston, not Ireland.
"Cowboy Up!" we toast, as I hand out the tickets.
"Slainte!"
"Reverse the Curse!" someone adds.
"Yeah, " I say. "I read where David Wells actually believes in it. He said it was one man's opinion, but he believes the Babe has cursed us and he's going to do his part to keep the Curse alive even though he hasn't pitched well in Fenway. He believes the Curse is real."
"You don't?"
"Well . . . no. Do you?"
There is a good deal of equivocation among these several college-educated, non-institutionalized adults. Finally I change the subject. "What's with Gerry Callahan, anyway?" (see Part II here)
"A shame upon Chelmsford," Mike answers.
"He made a mistake," says Bruce, who also has great sympathy for Rush Limbaugh as he heads in for treatment.
We have two rounds and then head for John Updike's bandbox. Walking up Comm Ave, we lament the (long ago, now) demise of the Eliot Lounge, and talk about how spiffed up and luxe the brick townhouses look. "When I was here in '76, college kids lived in them."
"Couldn't touch 'em now."
The river of Bosox fans that streams through the Kenmore confluence on Game Day is a shimmering, sublime organism. On Game Day Against the Yankees, ALCS tied 2-2, it is biblical in its gloriousness and, by way of contrast, in its solemnity. It has in its flow the wide-eyed child, the rambunctious youth, the hopeful parent, the dreadfilled pensioner, the helped-along grandmother. And, in this instance, at least one suburban cowboy from Westchester County. "Can I borrow your hat?" asks an (obviously) B.U. coed who has recently (and very obviously) been in proximity of a keg. Not today, sister. But by the way: Where were you 30 years ago?
There's no question: As we settle into our seats, we think we're going to win today. When Derek cruises the first on the swell of only eight pitches, we're sure of it. He's on, we're on, the future is afoot. Old Dom (You're Better Than Your Brother Joe) DiMaggio threw a perfect strike to start things off with his ceremonial pitch, and everything has carried on from there. Tonight, Manny goes yard (as they say), Nomar breaks out, Trot and Walker continue to do the things they've been doing this autumn, and then we hand it over the Williamson, who's got as much mo as Mo. So what if Wells got us in the first, too, now we're going to . . .
Issue a walk.
Another walk.
Oh, good, Boone.
0-2. Great.
Good, a grounder.
Jeezus, No!
So Derek's in the dugout holding his head in his hands, and we're down — somehow — 3-0. This was The Brutal Game, one of the most brutal I've ever experienced. It stayed 3-0 for so long, as Fenway sat with teeth clenched. Two men on and two outs and Nomar, who has batted .170 since Labor Day and has stunk — I mean, like bad cheese — gives us one of the worst at-bats in baseball history, fanning on a belt high fastball that the-Nomar-we-once-knew takes to the Monster seats. Nomar courageously walks a few innings later to load 'em up, and Manny immediately trickles one to . . . Boone! (After the game, the batting coach of the Sox will applaud — applaud — Nomar's two bases-on-balls.) Manny does go yard, once, but with the bases clear, rather than filled. And Nomar gets his first RBI in the postseason in the 8th. But here's how: Mo comes in and the recently Great Todd Walker gives us all hope by belting one down right that nearly goes out, and winds up being a triple. Nomar grounds out — way to go! — and Walker scores. My friend Chaz Scoggins of the Lowell Sun, who officially scores the games for the Sox, sounds desultory when he announces Nomar's RBI. And he should sound desultory. And, frankly, Nomar should go to California if, as he says, he doesn't like playing in front of all these people, with all this pressure and attention — and sainthood — being put upon him. He should go there with Mia (who's here tonight; Annie saw her; she's short) and J. Lo (who's also here, curiously, for we thought there were problems with her and the Boston guy). But we are not in California, where all of those folks can and no doubt will go, we are in Boston, and here we are, late in game five, losing, the Yanks batting under .200 for the series and about to go up 3-2, and I'm sick of Nomar, Pedro and Manny. Give me Todd and Trot and Tim and a teamful of guys like that. I'll take Derek, too, who Cowboyed Up after that mess in the second, and got us deep into this game. To scant avail.
Down in Section 8, the cotton-candy guy is giving cotton candy away for free. Millie says to Gail, "Well, no more games till April."
Gail reflects upon several facts: that it's not over till it's over, that there will be another game tomorrow in New York no matter the outcome of this one and that the shelf life of cotton candy must be at least a month. She says: "We could still play here Saturday night. The World Series. He's giving up!"
Later she says to me, forlornly, "I just don't know why they can never win. You just sit there in the stands, watching, wondering."
We are back at her place at this point. She has put out cheese and crackers and Sam Adams for Millie, Annie and the guys. Not everyone gets back out to Wellesley — some don't feel like socializing, perhaps, but some do, and we munch and sip as Gail and Scott's kids, along with Millie's daughter, run amok till way past their bedtimes.
We schmooze for about a half hour, Bag and I recounting yet again how we had scored tickets to the Bucky Dent playoff game almost precisely a quarter-century ago, telling other sad jokes that gradually build context for The Brutal Game. Then Bag bids us adieu, and I repair to the couch to nurse my wounds and my nightcap. Slowly, I get into the Cubs-Marlins game that is on the tube. The camera keeps scanning the smiling, happy, giddy people in Wrigley Field, and I have conflicting emotions.
Good for them!
Why them, and not us?
I had been so deep into Sox-Yanks for a week now, I had barely realized that the Cubs had gotten themselves to the verge. And here they were. My sister goes upstairs, and I am alone with the final ballgame of a long day. Over the next several minutes, as I slouch, holding my glass on my stomach, lifting it occasionally to my lips, I watch a fan catch a ball in the left-field stands, a shortstop boot a grounder, Prior turn into a pumpkin, the Marlins score eight runs and the collective visage of the Wrigleyites turn into one which has just witnessed something concocted by Stephen King (who, by the way, failed in his efforts to de-hex Fenway only hours earlier; it has been a very spooky day all 'round). Now my emotions are even more conflicted than before:
Good God.
Poor kid; not his fault.
Well, they're at home and they've got flamethrowing Kerry Wood going tomorrow, and we'll be back in Yankee Stadium and we've got . . .
John Burkett, who I understand is a fine bowler in his spare time.
I am unhappy with myself, my miserableness and my meanness. It seems that if we can't win it all — or at least beat the Yankees — I don't want the Cubbies to win, either. I don't understand that Curse of the Billy Goat thing, but if we can't shake the Bambino, why should they be able to shed their goat? Let the world get Yanks-Marlins, and I hope the ratings crash through the floor. Hey, best of all: Let the Marlins win.
I am at this point, it does not need to be said, in a thoroughly foul mood. I go to bed after the carnage in Chicago has ended, and awake the next morning to a torrential downpour that reflects the state of all baseball affairs (as I am seeing them). My sister drives me to Logan, and I suffer a suitably bumpy plane flight down to New York. This stiff wind is probably blowing straight out at the Stadium, and will no doubt lift a couple of Bernie or Nick or Derek dingers later in the day.
Work is slow, and then at 3:30 I hop the D Train for the Bronx along with Bob, the friend and colleague who was briefly mentioned in Part II of this diary. I have those two seats in the bleachers again, and I figure if I didn't offer Bob one today — his pinstripe loyalty notwithstanding — then he wouldn't get to see a game. What a sport I am.
So, Game Six: We begin it in a bar, and are still there, since the bleacher line across the street is extensive, when Giambi hits a first-inning homer off our semipro bowler. The bar explodes in excitement. Bob is truly sympathetic: "This must be hard for you."
"Brutal," I admit. "Just brutal." We finish our beers and head for the Stadium. Bob seems to have a spring in his step.
In Section 57, I'm still keeping my Red Sox affiliation under wraps. I'm not into the games-playing with my neighbors that enlivened Game One for me here, though I am still cordial with my beefy friend in the Row M. When the Sox go meekly in the second, I offer to Bob, "I'm miserable. You know, the only thing this club did all year was hit. And the only thing they haven't done a bit of in this series is hit."
In the third inning, they start to hit — even against Andy Pettite, who's pure money, they start to hit. Varitek hits it a mile; Nomar gets a hit, even though it's not much of a hit. "He's on his one-base-at-a-time recovery program." But finally, just as suddenly as the Yanks were up 3-0 against Lowe, the Sox are ahead here 4-1. Then Grady gives it back, sticking with the bowler way too long in the fourth. Five-four Yanks, then 6-4 when they add a run in the fifth. We're using young Arroyo and barely-on-the-roster Jones, and they're getting nicked but not nailed.
Nomar, who earlier booted the ball that led to the four runs, thus prompting his goat horns to grow longer at a Pinnochioian pace, is in the dugout figuring he likes the look of that Contreras split about as much as I do. So he says to himself, whatever he throws me first, I go after. I can't let him get to his out pitch. What Jose throws is a slider, and his next pitch to Manny is a fastball. Two pitches into the seventh inning and the Red Sox have sent spheroids a cumulative 820 feet, the wind helping them accelerate as they zoom over Bernie's head in center. Ortiz's hot shot hits the first base bag — we're hitting, and we're getting lucky, too — and suddenly we're tied. Mr. Torre elects to walk Varitek intentionally to load the bases, and his reliever Heredia elects to walk Damon on four more straight pitches, handing the Red Sox a 7-6 lead. "This," I say to Bob, "is the great game this series has been waiting for."
It's madness at the Stadium, 56,000 disbelieving fans watching plastic bags whipped around in the whirlwind — make that maelstrom — screaming, desperately, for their boys to come back. I paid 200 bucks to be here and I want to see the celebration! But Embree, Timlin and Williamson are doing a fair impression of the Nelson, Stanton, Rivera act of old — eerily familiar, in these confines — and the Yankees will be denied this night. Trot adds two with a mighty blow in the ninth — third deck, way up, deep rightfield — and there it is. Nine to six, but just as important: 16 hits by our side. We are hitting again.
Will we hit Clemens tomorrow?
Yes, I reflect on the train ride home, everything is in place: Game Seven, Roger's last game, Pedro's redemption . . . Too bad, I reflect as I watch the Marlins prevail on the tube, the Cubs won't be joining us. Weren't those fans smiling, ever so recently? Ah, the vicissitudes of fate.
Thursday dawns lover-ly; it is a crisp and clear and somewhat calmer day, a perfect day for baseball or anything at all. Ernie Banks, were he still swinging the bat, would choose to play two today. But Mr. Cub and all things Cubby are yesterday's news, and today is about Sox-Yanks, a historic 26th meeting in a single season (Yanks ahead 13-12; about two-thirds of the contests thrillers). It's about Pedro-Roger redux, probably with a chin-music soundtrack. "It's every kid's dream," according to the Sox Embree, who slew the arogonautic Jason so heroically last night. "You sit in your backyard growing up and you dream up these kind of matchups in your head, a showdown between two Hall-of-Fame-caliber guys." According to Theo, the wunderkinder GM of the Bosox, it is fate and destiny: "We've been on a collision course for 100 years. It's definitely appropriate, definitely meant to be and certainly poetic. It's special for both franchises, regardless of the result." The sage Mr. Torre, who doesn't strike me as the mystical type, allows merely: "I guess it was supposed to come down to this." No fewer than five different folks involved with the ongoing fracas that is this series, including a manager, a GM and a few players, are quoted in the morning sports pages in echo: "It doesn't get any better than this."
At the schoolbus-stop, young Reed and I share a handshake and a pledge, that our friendship will endure whatever might transpire at the Stadium tonight. I hand over the ticket stub from last night's game, and he thanks me for this third souvenir. Then he and Caroline, who finally told me this morning that she is officially a Red Sox fan (she has been taunting her dad, as six-year-olds do), board the bus. Reed in that Yankee shirt of his goes west, and I in my Bosox cap turn east and hoof it down to the train station. What will the day bring for both of us? For Stan, too, who lives right over there, and for the folks up in Massachusetts — Gail, Scott, Millie, Bag, Annie, Mike, Bruce — and the fellow exiles down here like Jane, the traitors like New Hampshire-native Mike, for anxious Thomas of Toledo, who never forsook his Nomar . . . What will it bring, for all of us?
At the office, work has little to do with work today. I begin by fielding the many emails and voicemails left last night by other citizens of Red Sox Nation. (A representative excerpt, this from Bruce: "Gentlemen, In Latin, the translated phrase is 'the thing speaks for itself.' A day ago, we were in mourning. Tonight, a different tale. Anyone wonder about the strength of the winds, and the demeanor of the sky all day? I looked at it as a cleansing of all that had taken place in the past. I say New England is due. Anything can and will happen in Game Seven. I say, bring it on. It's the middle of October and the Yankee fans are still worried — how about that? If security allows the game to take place, Pedro will rule, Wake will save and destiny will be fulfilled. God Bless America! Red Sox Nation, sleep well. Battle looms. Be courageous and unafraid. The Yankees do not suck, in fact, but they are beatable! Go SOX!" And this from Bag: "I can see and hear it now at the victory celebration at City Hall Plaza a week from next Monday. After first trooping out for the crowd's adulation — to the tune of "When the Saints Come Marching In" — Pesky and DiMaggio from '46, Yaz, Scottie and Lonborg from '67, Carlton, Rice, Evans, Lynn and Luis from '75, Bruce and (again) Dewey and Jimbo from '86, and after a moment of silence for all who could and should have lived long enough to see this day, but especially Ted, Ned Martin and Ken Coleman, each of whom would have been there if the same event had happened in '99, when it should have, the crowd welcomes this year's heroes as Bing sings, "Fairy Tales Can Come True...")
Obviously I agree with all sentiments, in these missives and the many others.
My bleachermate for the ultimate game will finally be my ultimate partner and beloved wife, Lucille, who was briefly described way back at the beginning of this ramble as "a seventh-game kind of fan." So she is, and here she is at last: Having lost an earlier chance to the rainout, she now enjoys a second opportunity. Just like Pedro.
Lucille and I ride the subway up to the Bronx. I'm still in my Cowboy Up duds, still minus the hat. As mentioned above, I don't necessarily believe in jinxes, but I'll dance with what brung me.
Section 57 is a tense place tonight, and juiced to a degree it hasn't been during the three previous games in the Bronx. My pal arrives and I introduce him to my wife, learning finally that his name is Billy.
There's no sense in recapping the game; you know how it unfolds. As for us, our evening is, for the longest time, not only tolerable but enjoyable. As opposed to The Brutal Game, this one is a delight — our guys on top, Pedro cruising, not an exciting game but moving toward a thrilling denouement, for perhaps we are indeed going to . . .
I don't believe in Curses, but is it interesting that the last time Lucille was by my side at a post-season baseball game was Game Six of the 1986 World Series in Shea, as we both gazed in awe as a ball went directly through our first baseman, Bill Buckner, and wound up in right field?
In any event: Yes, sure, Grady left Pedro in much, much too long, and I told Lucille that Grady was doing so even as he was doing it. But then, someone had to leave him in too long, or make some other equally egregious mistake.
In the ninth, Lucille and I aren't feeling too good, and we know pretty much how it will end. Billy still doesn't know I'm a Red Sox fan, and genuinely commiserates when I tell him that, hey, when you bring the wife, you've got to free up the nanny by 1 a.m. What can you do? We shake hands; he asks if I'll be there for the series. He means the World Series. The Yanks are there already, the way he sees it — and the way I see it, too. I tell Billy, my friend, that I just don't know.
We're heading up the Saw Mill Parkway, maybe about White Plains, when Boone hits the homer. Perhaps the car slows a bit, but there's not even enough energy in this fan to issue an expletive. And besides, this had already happened, hasn't it? Didn't this happen five minutes or an hour ago?
On the radio they're talking about the game as the most dramatic post-season win in the history of the Yankee franchise, because of all that attended it: the Sox, Pedro, the comeback, the finish. Maybe it is that. Who knows?
My five-year-old daughter Caroline, a newly committed Sox fan, asked me this morning to open her door and tell her who won, no matter how late I got home. I walk upstairs at 1:20 a.m., still feeling numb, beat up, tired but hopelessly unable to seek sleep. I'm trying to remember just now what I told her when she asked. Did I tell her, oh, Sweetie, I'll fill you in tomorrow? Or did I promise to open her door and whisper in her ear? Did I commit myself to committing her to this fanship? To this fate?
I'm typing because the longer I type, the longer I have before I decide what to do.