TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Zombies Eat Flesh of Yankees

The Dead Rise and Walk the Earth!

There's a scene in the mini-series Band of Brothers (and a gazillion other similar war stories) where the ice-cool Lieutenant, Shifty Powers, tells a frightened Private how to get through the fear of death: just assume you're already dead. Across New England this week, millions in Red Sox nation, facing the inexorable pronunciations that no team had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in a 7-game series -- hadn't even forced a seventh game, not once in 25 times -- that the team was as good as done. Schilling's ankle needs surgery, Arroyo stank, Lowe's got a dead arm, the team was a day late and a dollar short on the offense in the first three games, accepted the death of the season. Yet they soldiered on, as did the Red Sox themselves.

The grueling games of the previous two nights kept the faithful up past the witching hour, and not even some sugary zombie dust on a sinker and a 32-ounce Dunkin' Donuts coffee (the kind with the carry handle) could keep the fans from dragging. Imagine how the players must feel! Imagine being Jason Varitek, having caught 26 innings in just over 25 hours, and then being entrusted tonight with calling a game for the man rising from the season's grave, Curt Schilling. To complete the horror story for the Yankees, Schilling was literally stitched together tonight. The red in his Sox was the color of blood, because it was blood oozing from the stitches, which had come apart during his warm-ups.

This is why, as a Red Sox fan, I am eerily calm at the prospect of Game 7. Having been content at being dead already, and come to terms with it, and having seen the dead walk the earth and throw seven incredible innings off the mound at Yankee Stadium, having seen an actual closer shut down the Yanks in the ninth with the winning run at the plate, it seems impossible the Red Sox could go on to win a game seven. I abandoned all hope a long time ago, and in doing so have entered a state of freedom. If they win tomorrow, they surely can't go all the way in the World Series, with Schilling just as likely out for the season as anything. He's practically pitching on a stump. The kind of game Schilling pitched on a Keri Strug ankle injury, to nail that 9.2 for the team medal, will be more than the stuff of legend on Boylston street. It's quite likely going to be remembered among the all-time great pitching performances, and may, like Fisk's homer in Game 6 in 1975, be the moment the lives forever -- remember, the Red Sox lost Game 7 the next day, but, much to Joe Morgan's consternation, nobody remembers his big blasts to win it, because when anybody outside of Hamilton County thinks of 1975, they conjure Fisk to mind as the epitome of the great game.

Whatever happens to the Red Sox, it's going to be hard to ever think of this 2004 team as losers. The moment was won tonight, regardless of the Championship. The Yankees under George Steinbrenner have this compulsive, wretched fixation with the literal fact of winning the title of world champion. Curt Schilling showed tonight what a true Champion is.

---

One odd coda to this game. Schilling was doing a stand-up interview in the locker room hallway after the game, during most of which I was screaming at the TV screen, "Curt, get off your )U#)@#(ing feet! Take the weight off that thing!" I noticed Schilling nervously chewing on something that didn't appear to be gum. Schilling, by my recollection, along with most of the '93 Phillies had a nasty chewing tobacco habit -- I shudder at the memory of the U-shaped chaw stain on the artificial turf that framed Lenny Dyskstra's spot in Centerfield at Veteran's staidum. He developed a pre-cancerous growth in his mouth, though, and got scared out of the habit, much to his credit. My wife speculated tonight maybe he was chewing nicorette, but the way his mouth was moving around, it looked more like he was chewing a few nicoderm patches stuffed in his mouth. It's possible -- I hope -- he hasn't fallen off the wagon and it was just gum. But in a reflective moment with Gammons, it was truly strange the way Schilling moved whatever the wad of stuff in his mouth was around like it was chaw, as if the muscle memory of the old relaxing habit had carried him through the pain.

All Curt could talk about in the end, though, was how proud he was to be a part of this team. This is a guy who was co-MVP of the 2001 championship Diamondbacks. He's been to the mountaintop before, and seen the view down into the valley, and yet he seems genuinely more fulfilled by this experience.

Even more telling about the make-up of both Schilling in the end days of his career and this Red Sox team, though, was to contrast Schilling's reaction in 2004 to watching Arroyo and Foulke risk losing his victory to his poor wretched state in 1993 when Mitch Williams was blowing Game Six of the World Series to the Blue Jays. In those agonizing steps leading up to Joe Carter's famous game-winning -- series-winning -- homer, that destroyed Schilling's victory and that marvelously messy Phillies' team its one shot at a ring -- the TV showed Schilling in the dugout, a towel completely over his head, his hands covering his eyes as an extra protective layer. He couldn't watch, and I can't say as I blamed him at the time. In 2004, Schilling watches calmly, his gaze steady, no visible signs of nerves. He's alert, but he can handle it. Arroyo gets out of the jam, Foulke gets out of the jam, Curt gets the win. And later, he sticks his tongue into the side of his mouth, like he's got the world's biggest hunk of Mail Pouch there.

posted by The Crank 10:26 PM

Play-off Playoffs

Not to add to the hyperbolic paeans to the great rivalry, but it's hard to find a comparable 48 hours in the history of playoff baseball if one considers both series. Two tight games in two days for both LCS. Extra innings on back to back days. And yesterday, we finally get a post-season pitching duel, but from the unlikely sources of Woody Williams and Brandon Backe. I can't say that the Red Sox-Yankees game was the most crisp game I've ever seen play, but it's among the very best for tension and the ebb and flow of inside baseball.

Last year's combined League Championship Series may be hard to top, with both series stretching to seven and having all sorts of twists and comebacks by the eventual winners. Four of the seven post-season series in 2003 went the maximum number of games, and the other three went to one less than the maximum.

I still think the 1986 post-season is the one by which all post-1968 post-seasons should be measured (the regular play-offs were, of course, first started in 1969). In the ALCS, the Red Sox came back from the brink of elimination twice with dramatic homers against the Angels to slip into the World Series. The Mets and Astros duked it out through "only" six, but a memorable six they were. The Astros had the dominant Mike Scott, who won games 1 and 4 (won 1-0 and 3-1, respectively) and was slated to go out in a potential Game 7. The Mets had won Game 2 easily, 5-1, but just squeaked by in game 3, 6-5, scoring two runs in the bottom of the ninth. In Game 6, they entered the ninth down 3-0 but rallied to tie the game, sending it to extra innings at Houston. The teams battled until the fourteenth, when the Mets finally pushed a run across, but Houston answered with one in the bottom of the inning and the game went on. The Mets busted out for three in the top of the 16th, seeming to end it, but Houston in turn put on a rally in the bottom of the inning, scored two, but ended just short of sending the game to what would have been a Game 7 where they had a decided advantage. And the 1986 World Series between the Red Sox and Mets -- I don't think we need to open that wound here.

What would have to happen for this post-season to match-up, of course, would be for the Red Sox to complete what's never been done before -- come back from an 0-3 deficit to win it -- and have the Astros-Cards go seven, and then have a dramatic World Series. In April, I predicted a Red Sox-Astros World Series based on two factors. First, I thought the two teams shaped up at having the best post-season pitching (back when the Astros had Andy Pettite and Octavio Dotel and when it looked like Derek Lowe was a force). Second, whimsy -- I just liked the prospect of a Texas-Massachusetts showdown right before the Presidential election. Now I'm hoping for it because I think it would be a great series.

---

Pity the poor manager in post-season, wherein no matter what his philosophy that got the team there, he suddenly has the urge to become John McGraw and play little ball at every concievable opportunity. Both games yesterday bring to mind the often fatal flaw of overmanagement in the post-season. The Red Sox are the great case in point. All of a sudden, Terry Francona feels the need to become a mid-1980s NL-style manager, using the stolen base and the sacrifice when his team needs a run and changing pitchers often enough to make Tony LaRussa's head spin. While much was made about Bellhorn and Damon butchering sacrifice attempts back to back, I was wondering why the heck Damon was sacrificing after the Yanks had just given up back to back hits. Damon can draw a walk even in the middle of a slump, and Cabrera, who promptly struck out behind him, wasn't going to do the club any extra favors the way he's over swinging. The Sox also ran into two outs attempting to steal (evn though the umps blew both calls, it was a ver Unsox-like maneuver.) I firmly believe that with the exception of pitching management in potential elimination games, the successful teams in the post-season are the ones that (A) stick to the type of game that got them there, and (B) stick to less-is-more. Cito Gaston should be the poster child for this movement. And frankly, it's why Joe Torre wins so much. He unflappably stays true to his team's success. This doesn't work, of course, at times, but does over the long run. That's why I'm second-guessing Franco now, after a win, and not (like the rest of Red Sox Nation) after a 19-8 blowout. He got lucky.

posted by The Crank 8:32 AM

Monday, October 18, 2004

East-Coast-Centric Informational Fox Graphic of the Year

Seen this evening as the Yankees-Red Sox game stretched past the scheduled start time of Astros-Cardinals: a graphic informing Houston and St. Louis viewers that they could watch the conclusion of the Sox-Yanks game on FX, and their game would be broadcast on Fox, starting at 8:42 PM ET.
Last I checked, both Houston and St. Louis were in the Central time zone. Couldn't'a customized the crawl a bit...?

posted by The Crank 5:54 PM

Sunday, October 17, 2004

Was That a Deke?

I'm thinking that Bill Mueller's show of a bunt on 1-0 after Dave Roberts's first-pitch steal was nothing more than a ploy to try to get Rivera to throw one of his cutters over the middle of the plate, to take the "offered" out. Very clever move if true, and I wonder if Francona actually called it, or did Mueller do it on his own, or was it just one of those things that looked like a brilliant plan by accident. Let's see if the Sox can actually capitalize on the play, now that they've most likely seen the last of Rivera tonight.

posted by Tom Renbarger 9:20 PM

#1s and #2s
Last year we saw Ichiro and Bonds redefine the leaderboards for hits and walks. (We also saw Bonds drop off the top slot in one category - Bobby that is, Adam Dunn's 195 whiffs topped Bobby's old record of 189).

However, I'm not sure how much press Ichiro and Bonds got for a pair of charts where they ended up just shy of #1. For Ichiro, it was the At Bats leaderboard:

Willie Wilson	705	1980
Ichiro Suzuki	704	2004
Juan Samuel	701	1984
Dave Cash	699	1975
Matty Alou	698	1969

And for Bonds, total times on base:

Babe Ruth	379	1923
Barry Bonds	376	2004
Ted Williams	358	1949
Barry Bonds	356	2002
Babe Ruth	353	1921

Both make sense, Ichiro's run at Sisler happened because he put the ball into play so many times, and if you walk Mr Bonds 232 times, well, progress up the Times on Base chart is a given...

posted by David 8:29 PM