86'ed

Now, the single biggest postseason flop in baseball history does not belong to some Red Sox team or Boston goat such as Bill Buckner. Instead, the new and uncontested champions of the October gag are the New York Yankees.

The Headlines

Great quotes

For all their money, the Yankees end the 2004 season like a Seventies-era gas guzzler - impressive for their size and sound, but not very practical. The Yankees stepped on the pedal and realized there was nothing under the hood.

This was not about losing. It was about who they lost to -- the Red Sox, of all teams -- and the way these Yankees lost. The total, historic, unprecedented collapse of one of the greatest dynasties in sports.

The Yankees answered with Kevin Brown. He was the wrong answer, unless the question was: How are the Red Sox going to score a lot of runs in a hurry?

To win this seventh game, the Yankees didn't need some fanciful ghost of Ruth but, rather, the real Ruth -- both pitching and hitting.

Poor Francona had unwittingly plugged Yankee Stadium back into its socket; I kept waiting for him to pull off the Paul Shaffer mask and reveal it was actually Grady Little again.

I couldn't stop glancing at the TV. It's official, right? We definitely beat them, right?
"What's wrong with you?" Sully asked.
"Honestly? I keep waiting for them to announce that there's a Game 8."

Schilling. The press conference where he listed off his teammates and their performances, left me with tears in my eyes. He's the teammate we all wanted, who'll go to the wall for you, and then make it seem like you did it all. He's a great man, exemplifying all that is great about sports. Team. Honor. Sticking together. Absolutely chilling.

9:35 a.m. Wednesday morning 10/20 I am driving to work and I see on the sign over the Mass Pike -- Red Sox 4 Yankees 2 -- then it flashes to the word BELIEVE. I start thinking of how great of a feeling this is and how much I don't want this day to end and I almost start crying.

There are 750 great things happening in the Nation right now. One of the best, though, has got to be the "Red Sox Fan" face on the Yankee fans. They're the ones watching through their fingers now, wondering what horrible thing will happen next.

There are MILLIONS of fans around the globe rooting for the Sox. I walk the streets of London and I see blue caps with the red B everywhere I go. This series is bigger than just New England. This IS the most exciting series in my life, if not all time.

That's $25 million on the mound for the New York Yankees.

And because of the shocking way in which the Yankees lost ("Hell Freezes Over," blared The Daily News), the result was not the usual disappointment that millions of sports fans feel every year, but something more disorienting - a kind of identity crisis, combined with a creeping sense of mortality, the realization that this was truly the end to the dynastic hopes that were planted in 1996 and that blossomed between 1998 and 2000.

Then again, the Yankees' spectacular collapse this week was the best display of teamwork the city has seen in a while. It was a solid group effort, and it gave new depth to the team's nickname: the Bronx Bombers.

As a lifelong Red Sox fan in a Yankees town, I'd like to extend an olive branch and some advice to those still reeling from the most colossal choke job in the history of organized athletics. First, let me say that just because the mighty Yankees were undone by an assortment of towel-snapping misfits whose grooming advice comes from Rupert on "Survivor," it doesn't mean the natural order is forever upended. Next year's Yankee payroll will no doubt be studded with new, even greedier free agents who will pursue total victory with all the joie de vivre of Microsoft e-mailing an updated virus patch.

Now that the Yankees have been stopped, I wonder what kind of prison terms will be handed out to George Steinbrenner, Brian Cashman and Joe Torre. Oops, sorry! I keep getting the Yankees mixed up with Enron.

Sure, it may take a while, but New England can start getting used to the idea of a winter totally bereft of discontent.

[10/21/04, on The Curse]
The drought will end when the Sox win the World Series. Maybe this year. Maybe not. The Curse was exorcised by an excruciating yet wholly cathartic 72-hour process 18 through 20 October 2004. Cursed teams do not rally two nights in a row off beatified closers, or get calls reversed against the home team twice in a game, or get a pair of homers each in the last two games from the guys who couldn't so much as get a bunt down the first five. If the Sox lose next week it will be to the Cardinals or Astros, not to any ghosts.

Could this series have possibly been scripted any better for Red Sox nation? Is there anything else that could have happened to more blissfully ease the pain of seasons past? That marcaine in Schilling's ankle went right through to all of New England and beyond. I didn't get to sleep for a long time last night, but when I finally did I slept well.

Who's your daddy, Johnny "Jesus" Damon and Babe Ruth: the father, the Son, and the holy ghost. It's definitely a religious experience.

They are expecting hurricane-like fury from Steinbrenner. Maybe one of the overhauls will be all players have to wear Damon beards, Arroyo cornrows or Pedro shag.

I will never use the words unbelievable and the Red Sox again in the same sentence.

Top Ten secrets to the Boston Red Sox comeback presented by Curt Schilling

• 10. Unlike the first three games, we didn't leave early to beat the traffic.
• 9. We put flu virus in Jeter's gatorade.
• 8. Let's just say Pete Rose made some phone calls for us.
• 7. We asked Pokey Reese to be a little less pokey.
• 6. It's not like we haven't won a big game before -- it's just been 86 years.
• 5. Honestly, I think we were tired of hearing about the Patriots.
• 4. The messages of encouragement Martha sent on prison napkins.
• 3. We pretended the baseball was Letterman's head.
• 2. What'd you expect -- we have a guy who looks like Jesus!
• 1. We got Babe Ruth's ghost a hooker and now everything's cool.

Thomas Boswell's Columns

October's Great Boston Marathon

BOSTON - Mark down Oct. 18, 2004, in the baseball book of dates. Perhaps it will be a mere footnote. That's what the odds still say. But in 48 hours, it may be recalled as a date that is second to none in the game's postseason history for drama and impact.

If the Boston Red Sox become the first team in 101 years of postseason baseball to overcome a three-games-to-none deficit, and if they do it against the hated New York Yankees, then this one day, with its two wins in a span of 21 hours, a doubleheader sweep of a whole different species -- may go down as New England's own Independence Day. Forget the Fourth of July.

Twice on the same day -- once at 1:23 a.m., then again at 11:02 p.m. -- the Red Sox beat the Yankees in sudden-death, extra-inning games with game-ending hits that ignited lunatic home plate celebrations and jubilation in the ancient stands that reached 100-year-storm proportions. David Ortiz ended Game 4 of this American League Championship Series with an 12th inning homer. Then, about 21 hours later, Ortiz won the longest game in postseason history (5 hours 49 minutes) by singling home Johnny Damon from second base to secure a 5-4, 14-inning Game 5 win.

Twice on this same day, with the pennant sitting squarely on their plate, the Yankees handed the ball to their central heroic protagonist of the last nine seasons, reliever Mariano Rivera. Of all Manager Joe Torre's worthies, none -- not Derek Jeter or Bernie Williams -- has matched Rivera's October value. And twice the mighty and usually perfect Panamanian blew those saves. Both times his flaws were almost minuscule. The second squandered lead was barely his fault at all. But they were just enough.

Even one such blow to the Yankees' guts would do damage. But twice? Who knows? Perhaps it is a prelude to history. If not, we'll have plenty of time to shrug and say, "Well, it sure was fun to think about." If so, America may be a nation of insomniacs by Thursday morning.

Anyone who now doubts that there may be another ALCS Game 7 this season -- the rematch of rematches -- need only look at the starting pitchers for Game 6: New York's 14-game winner Jon Lieber against (yes, that's right) Curt Schilling. The same Schilling who, in his new high-top shoe, says his right ankle feels pretty decent, thanks. The same Schilling who has fanned 300 men three times and won 20 games in three of the last four years, including 21-6 this year. Ands, most of all, the same Schilling who, until his injury-marred loss in Game 1 had a dozen of the best postseason starts of any pitcher ever.

The team that has not truly atoned to its fans since 1918 now presents to its followers the pitcher who was acquired as a kind of multi-generational cosmic apology: see, we got you Schilling.

For those who love and understand baseball, it would be impossible to overstate the impact on any team of losing back-to-back extra-inning games after saves were blown in regulation time. To do it twice with the pennant in your hands is unprecedented. Statisticians, and heaven knows this region is crawling with them, know that one particular play has the most impact within a game: ending an inning by having a runner thrown out at the plate. Thereafter, normal stats are distorted and the team that has defended its "home" has an inordinate probability of winning. In baseball, the psychology is real.

However, the event in baseball that has the most impact from one game to the next, which leads to streaks and slumps more often than should be statistically predictable, is the blown save. Back-to-back blown pennant saves have never happened before. So how can we know how the odds of this series have just been skewed? But in baseball, some psychological events have real statistical implications.

In other words, if a team were going to do something that hasn't happened in 101 years, then winning two games in one day after a pair of blown Rivera saves would be the kind of almost unimaginable event that might ignite it.

Of course, there will be more than 55,000 people at Yankee Stadium with a contrary opinion and an 80-year history of rattling nerves, invoking curses and producing midnight magic of their own in October.

The Red Sox have enough late-inning heroes to stock a decade of "Survivor" episodes. In Game 4, Bill Mueller's ninth-inning RBI single back through the box of Rivera after he had allowed a leadoff walk and stolen base provided the vital game-saving run that forced extra innings.

In Game 5, Tom Gordon inherited a 4-2 lead in the eighth but allowed a solo homer to Ortiz, then issued a walk and single to Trot Nixon. So poor Rivera inherited a 4-3 lead with runners at the corners and nobody out. He escaped after permitting only a game-tying sacrifice fly to Jason Varitek. A good job, right? Not according to baseball scoring rules: blown save.

That was fitting in a game in which absolutely nothing was remotely close to normal. The height of the absurd may have arrived in the 13th inning when the Yankees' Gary Sheffield almost scored what would have been a pennant-winning run as a result of what would have been four passed balls by catcher Varitek -- the first on a Sheffield strike out.

However, with Sheffield at third base, Varitek barely blocked what would have been a fourth passed ball on a Tim Wakefield knuckleball. Wakefield escaped as Varitek finally caught a pitch -- a third strike to Ruben Sierra. Thus was Boston spared what surely would have been the ultimate way to lose a pennant to the Yankees -- one on four passed balls.

On Oct. 18, 2004, however, no such thing was destined to happen. This was the day -- almost all 24 hours of it -- for Red Sox reprieves. However, if they don't make the most of it, after a pair of games that both took more than five hours, many who agonized with them here may be tempted to invoke the Bambino's Curse on them -- forever.

Boston Cashes In On Half-a-Schilling

NEW YORK -- We wanted drama to equal any Red Sox-Yankees series ever played. We wanted history, something that had never happened before in the annals of baseball. We wanted to be amazed, mesmerized, exhausted and, heading into Game 7 of the American League Championship Series with a trip to the World Series at stake, we also wanted to have absolutely no idea who would win.

Of course, no sane person actually thought that any such combination of events could possibly happen after last year's seven-game extravaganza of brawls, suicidal managerial decisions and, finally, a walk-off homer by Aaron Boone to end the whole battle.

But now we've got it all after a 4-2 Boston win in Game 6, plus extra plot threads and improbabilities that no one could possibly have guessed. Even though Game 7 won't arrive until Wednesday at Yankee Stadium, the Red Sox have become the first team in 101 years of postseason baseball to come back from a three-games-to-none deficit to force a Game 7. And at the Yankees' expense.

What are the stakes now? If the Red Sox, the team synonymous with collapses, misfortune and despair, win Game 7, then, in a blink, the blackest mark in Yankees history will actually be darker than any disgrace in all Boston annals.

If the Red Sox somehow win one more game, it won't make up for the last 86 years without a world title, while the Yanks have amassed 26 of them. It won't bring back Babe Ruth or help Johnny Pesky and Bill Buckner sleep better at night.

But it will, for at least the next decade, and perhaps the next century, allow every Red Sox fan anywhere to face any New York fan and say, without fear of contradiction, "How does it feel to root for a team with the biggest payroll ever that has the biggest choke in the history of the game?"

Granted, this may not prove a physically safe decision. But for the first time in many generations at least it will be an option.

Who do we have to thank for this sublime Game 7 theater? Why, Curt Schilling, the man who said last week that he couldn't imagine anything sweeter than "to shut up 55,000 New Yorkers." Then, he couldn't back up his boast because of a bum ankle. But Tuesday night, Yankee Stadium was quieter than Kenmore Square after Grady Little left Pedro Martinez on the mound in last October's Game 7. In his seven innings, Schilling kept the joint almost soundless except for a Bernie Williams solo homer. In all, he allowed only four hits and no walks, while fanning four on just 99 pitches.

"I had had enough [after seven innings]," Schilling said. "What an incredible game." Like all the others in this series.

In the end, this Game 6 was a perfect blend of the unbelievably sweet and quixotically bitter for the Red Sox. Schilling, the man around whom Boston's "This (Really) Is the Year" quest was constructed, finally found the shoe that fit. Boston's medical staff performed a minor procedure on Schilling's ankle Monday to suture the skin tighter over the torn tendon, in hopes of preventing it from flapping over the bone as it had in Game 1. Whatever the docs did, they helped Schilling finally discover the proper combination of numbing medication, shoe shape and bandages. Make no mistake, however, the tendon-sheath injury will require surgery after the season.

Throwing 94-mph fastballs and diving splitters, Schilling pitched just like the postseason stud and certified October Yankee Killer that he's always been. For the 12th time in 13 postseason starts, Schilling was dominant, retiring the first eight Yanks.

All of which raises another of those perfect Red Sox questions: Why didn't they do that procedure before Game 1, when Schilling was clubbed for six runs in three innings only to see the Red Sox rally from an 8-0 deficit to 8-7 (before losing 10-7)? "If anybody else had been pitching except me, we would have won this game," said a disgusted Schilling after Game 1.

That's a slight exaggeration. Those Red Sox runs didn't start arriving until the seventh inning. But he might well be correct. If Schilling and his docs had simply found this Tuesday's ankle solution a week ago, this ALCS might well have ended Tuesday and the Red Sox would be on their way to the World Series instead of a Game 7.

But, come on, it's better this way, right?

Now we can spend all day Wednesday figuring out who on earth either team should use as its starting pitcher. And, after those bums get lit up, what sequence of subsequent exhausted relievers will produce the least carnage. What's the over-under on Game 7 -- 15 runs?

Red Sox Manager Terry Francona seemed to be leaning toward either Derek Lowe or knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, who pitched three shutout innings in Game 5, on one day of rest. Granted, soft-tossing knuckleballers don't need much rest. But at least a couple of days would be nice.

Before Game 6, Yankees Manager Joe Torre accidentally showed just how much the prospect of a monumental Red Sox upset was playing with his mind. Normally, no reasonable question is rebuffed brusquely.

When asked who might start on Wednesday, Torre said, so firmly that no one dared bring the subject up again, "We are not talking about Game 7."

Well, they are now. If the Yankees lose Game 7, somebody may have to talk George Steinbrenner down from the top of the facade.

The Yankees' logical Game 7 choice would be Kevin Brown, who started Game 3. Except that he was knocked out in two awful innings. He's the yo-yo who broke his own hand a month ago in a temper tantrum, alienating those few teammates who didn't like his supercilious attitude already. Torre disliked him even before that. Now, Torre has already used up the only two starting pitchers he currently trusts -- Mike Mussina and Jon Lieber -- in Games 5 and 6. That didn't work out too well.

Perhaps this game, despite its enormous importance, was actually decided very quickly. Never have so many people, including every player on both teams, paid so much attention to the reading of a radar gun on the first pitch thrown by a pitcher -- in this case Schilling. In Game 1, using "The Custom-Braced Shoe That Failed," Schilling was only able to throw his fastball in the high 80s, while normally he's frequently over 95 mph and always close to it.

Since then, in hopes of allowing Schilling to drive off the rubber with normal power, the Red Sox have tried pain-killing shots, different styles of shoe and pads to keep the tendon on one side of the bone or the other and, now, stitches. Just so that darned things stopped snapping back and forth. One pitch would tell the tale.

And it did. Yankee captain Derek Jeter swung late at the first pitch and flied out to right. The gun said, "93 mph." The first two pitches to Alex Rodriguez "94." Not Schilling at his very best, but certainly good enough to compete effectively, especially on a 49-degree night with a wind knocking down any ball hit to right field.

Gradually, once Schilling found reasonable command of his fastball, he tried to find a second and third pitch to use as complements. To end the first inning, he popped up Gary Sheffield with a slider. To open the third, he started and finished Ruben Sierra with an excellent knee-high splitter for his first strikeout. In retiring the first eight Yankees, Schilling was not overpowering. Sometimes his fastball caught the center of the plate. However, Schilling is one of the game's great battlers. And he had enough.

Besides, and this may have implications for Game 7, the Yankees are in a clutch-hitting slump. In Games 5 and 6, the Yanks ended 22 of 26 innings with a man stranded and 14 of those innings ended with a man in scoring position. Teams sense such trends in their bellies. In postseason series, it is rare to see a team's clutch-hitting pattern change more than once.

If you start hot and go cold, then you seldom get hot again in such a small number of games. This Game 6 ended on just that note with two more runners stranded as 6-foot-8 Tony Clark struck out against Keith Foulke.

If anybody can reverse its gagging, it's the Yankees, the team that usually has the past on its side.

This time, however, the weight of baseball history may finally be reversed. After all, it is the Yankees, not the "cursed" Red Sox, who have a chance for the worst October collapse in history.

New England Rejoices In Boston Uncommon

NEW YORK -- My father-in-law, Irving "Sheik" Karelis, was born in 1920 in New England, the very year the Red Sox sent Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. By the time Karelis was 6, he was a devoted Red Sox fan. In his twenties, he pitched his way to the top of the Red Sox farm system, but never quite got to Fenway Park. Since then, like millions of others, he has spent an entire lifetime hoping, dreaming, moaning and waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium, that's what.

The pennant that the Red Sox won here with a 10-3 victory, becoming the first team in 101 years of postseason play to come back from a three-games-to-none deficit, was a victory for Sheik and the millions of fans like him who have trekked to Fenway, listened to thousands of games on radio and watched thousands more on TV, then spent the next day analyzing every managerial move or trade. And always hoping. This one is for every fan in every New England town, such as Sheik's -- Haverhill, Mass., where the Red Sox are an integral part of daily life, an equal measure of passion, frustration and tormenting pleasure.

Now, their generations-old inferiority complex to the Yankees is over. Now, the single biggest postseason flop in baseball history does not belong to some Red Sox team or Boston goat such as Bill Buckner. Instead, the new and uncontested champions of the October gag are the New York Yankees. And the greatest, gutsiest, most nearly impossible comeback to steal a pennant in all the annals of baseball now belongs to the self-proclaimed "idiots" of the '04 Red Sox.

The hero of the night, even more than ALCS MVP David Ortiz and winning pitcher Derek Lowe, was Johnny Damon, the hair-down-the-back free spirit who symbolizes the wacky Red Sox clubhouse. Damon, the epitome of all the Boston anti-Yankees, had the game of a lifetime in this game for the ages: two homers and six RBI.

His first homer, a grand slam, left the park at 9:11 p.m. for a 6-0 lead. However, as Damon's second blast flew directly over my head into the upper deck of Yankee Stadium, a.k.a. headquarters of the Evil Empire, it was time to call Sheik on the cell phone.

"The Red Sox have exploded," said Sheik, relishing the word as the Boston lead stood at 8-1 in the fifth inning. "All of New England is going crazy."

Then he paused, because it has been so, so ridiculously unjustly long -- literally a lifetime in his case without a single Red Sox championship or even one truly glorious humiliation of the Yankees franchise that has lorded over the Red Sox with all their babbling about "curses" as they've bought 26 titles since 1920.

"Let's just hope we can hold the lead," said Sheik.

They held it, 10-3. Just this once, a huge lead was actually enough. Between innings, the Yankees boomed their center field scoreboard with every conceivable highlight from their glorious past, trying to incite their fans and intimidate their guests. But this time it didn't work. And there is a reason why this season was different.

Finally, Red Sox familiarity with the Yankees has bred a healthy contempt.

That process of demythologizing the Yankees, and all their pretentious baggage of tradition and mystique, was at the core of an historic game on Wednesday at Yankee Stadium that not only won a pennant for the Red Sox but drove a permanent stake through the notion that the Yankees have some eternal mastery of the Red Sox, based in magic, money or moxie.

The two ancient enemies have now played each other 52 times in the last two seasons, including 14 times in two incendiary championship series. Each game has been treated by fanatic partisans on both sides as tantamount to a World Series game. No punches have been pulled or strategies held back. Every gift that every player has to offer has been laid on the table countless times. Teams have been able to study opposing stars in nearly 250 at-bats. No secret, tendency or flaw remains hidden.

As a result, the Red Sox now know to the bone that Derek Jeter does not get a hit in the clutch every time and that some silly Ghost of Ruth doesn't really haunt Yankee Stadium as soon as midnight tolls. Like small children suddenly discovering adolescence and their parents' human flaws, the Red Sox have, at last, opened their eyes and seen the Yankees for what they are -- a very good baseball team. But nothing more. And this season, not as good a team as the Red Sox, not even with Boston's ace Curt Schilling hobbled with an ankle injury.

Not only is the so-called "curse" now reversed, but its real roots have been revealed, like the curtain being drawn to expose the frail Wizard of Oz. For generations, the Yankees have assiduously cultivated a quasi-religious form of self-worship that leaves its pinstripe players with a conviction of their superiority and all other teams with vague issues surrounding their own inadequacies. Every banner, pregame tribute to past stars and endless celebration of Yankeeness is the brilliant and conscious work of a franchise that knows the power of its hegemony since 1920. Now, at least one team sees through it. And they play in the same AL East.

"Stick with us," said Damon. "Never count us out."

One local tabloid here had a huge front-page picture on Wednesday of Ruth with the headline, "Put me in." In the past, that might have spooked the Red Sox. But in the last two years, they hold a 27-25 lead in games over New York, including 15-11 this year. So they know the true meaning of that front page. To win this seventh game, the Yankees didn't need some fanciful ghost of Ruth but, rather, the real Ruth -- both pitching and hitting. The Bambino would have done a lot better than Kevin Brown, the wall-puncher, who allowed five runs in 1 1/3 innings. And he'd have hit better than the comatose Yankees who managed just one single in the first six innings off right-hander Derek Lowe -- a desperation Red Sox starter -- who was working on only two days' rest.

The moment when this ALCS turned, and an 84-year Yankees-Red Sox saga began an entirely new phase, was precisely midnight on Monday. Yankees superstar reliever Mariano Rivera needed three ninth-inning outs to clinch another pennant and add another ignominious chapter to defeatist Red Sox lore. But Rivera blew that save. And another one 22 hours later.

From the moment of that first squandered save, the Yankees became a different team. After that, New York has gone into a complete clutch-hitting coma. Excluding Jeter, all the rest of the Yankees are 4 for 41 (.098) with men on base without any RBI. That constitutes a monumental team-wide clutch-hitting choke. Only Jeter, with a three-run double and two RBI singles, has driven in any base runners since Rivera's failure. The other two Yankees runs through the first seven innings of Game 7 -- a span of 33 innings -- were on solo homers by Bernie Williams.

So, the old Hall of Fame-bound Yankees who helped win four World Series -- Jeter and Williams -- have hit under pressure. But the newer Yankees, about whom Jeter has asked skeptical questions for the last four years, haven't earned their stripes.

In fact, those pinstripes may never look quite the same, quite so special and fearsome again -- at least to one team who now has their number.

Who would have dreamed just four days ago that the team in question would be the Boston Red Sox.

Go on, New England, explode. You're entitled. But don't forget. The World Series starts on Saturday. While you're at it, why not get all these ancient Red Sox issues resolved at once.