BMTG News and Commentary

October 21, 2004: Boston Red Sox Do the Impossible

Last night the Boston Red Sox finished their improbable four game comeback from a 3 game to none deficit against their bitter rival. While the Yanks were desperate and trotting out a guy named Bucky in a classless move to have him throw out the first pitch, the Red Sox were preparing for the biggest game of their franchise's history. The Yankees were still reeling after losing three intense, emotional marathon games, and the Red Sox came prepared and with all of the momentum. Words cannot do justice to what the Sox accomplished over the course of the last four days, but here is the coverage from everywhere in an attempt to do just that...

Previous BMTG Red Sox coverage:

September 7, 2004: Evil Empire Shows True Colors

August 29, 2004: Senior Council Holds Sit Down

August 3, 2004: Where Were You When They Sent Nomar Away?

October 27, 2003: Grady Little FIRED

Story is too good for words
By Bob Ryan, Boston Globe

NEW YORK -- Every once in a while an Oscar winner gets up there and wings an acceptance speech because "I never thought I'd win, so I didn't prepare anything."

That's me. Right now.

Excruciating Red Sox losses, I'm familiar with, as both a fan and a writer. Game 7, 1975? Oh, yeah, I was there. Bucky Dent's home run? Yup. Can't claim that I eyewitnessed the Buckner game. I watched the fateful 10th inning in a Houston bar. I had just befriended a couple of locals and promised that I'd be buying as soon as this inning was over. When the ball rolled through Buckner's legs, I just said, "Sorry, gotta go," and walked out the door.

And then there was Game 7 a year ago. When David Ortiz hit the homer, I said, "That's it. Can't lose now."

So that's why I sit here in journalistic shock. I am trying to digest the fact that I have just seen the greatest team feat in the 101-year history of postseason baseball as we know it. A team that fell behind, three games to none, has come back to win a postseason series. That team is the Boston Red Sox, and the team they have just victimized is the New York Yankees.

The New Yorkers will regard it as the most colossal collapse in baseball history. George Steinbrenner will look at this as a personal catastrophe. I am certain he has made a private vow that the Red Sox would never win a World Series on his watch, and, of course, they haven't done that yet.

But they have now taken a major step toward achieving that goal, and they have fulfilled the dreams and hopes of what I'm sure can only be described as a deliriously happy worldwide fandom -- Henrik Kyhle of Stockholm: I hope you stayed up to see it -- by outplaying and outclassing the mighty Yankees four straight nights, capping off this almost incomprehensible turnaround by destroying the Steinbrennerians last night in their own ballpark. It was 10-3, but it had the look, feel, and smell of 110-3.

Of all the conceivable outcomes in last night's game, the one nobody in New England dared fantasize about was the one we saw. And what we saw was a two-way display of dominance. Johnny Damon pretty much personally took care of the offensive end all by himself with his second-inning grand slam and his fourth-inning two-run shot off Javier Vazquez, while Derek Lowe threw perhaps the most efficient six innings of baseball any Red Sox pitcher has submitted all year, holding the Yankees to one hit and one run while dispatching the hated Yankees in a Tewksburyian 69 pitches.

Derek Lowe!

Derek Lowe is why sport is great. A Derek Lowe saga is what separates Sport from Entertainment. Sport is not scripted. There is no play list, no repetition. The great element in Sport is the unknown. We love these games because we do not know what to expect when they start. We also love them because we can never be sure where our heroes are coming from. Right now it's hard to imagine any more unlikely candidates for this kind of heroics than a guy who was bumped from the starting rotation prior to the Anaheim series and whose playoff role was fuzzy, at best.

Derek Lowe gets the win in Anaheim 3. Derek Lowe starts New York 4 and does a nice job. Derek Lowe starts New York 7 -- merely the most important task he's ever been given in his baseball life -- and he pitches as well as he possibly can. Go ahead, you explain it.

"He was so special tonight," said Terry Francona.

I can throw out the names who helped pull this thing off from now until Saturday night's first pitch. David Ortiz. Bill Mueller. Curt Schilling. Johnny Damon. Dave Roberts. Mark Bellhorn. Everyone in the bullpen. Jason Varitek, who truly is the rock of this team.

What they did as a group will now be toasted and recounted for decades to come, and it should be. What we just saw was a tribute to 25 athletes and a coaching staff that refused to acknowledge a 100-year history. Baseball teams don't come back from being down, 3-0, they were told. They didn't buy into it.

The week of baseball they gave us would have been phenomenal under any circumstances, but when you're the Red Sox playing the Yankees, it is never a normal circumstance. To come within three outs of being swept in Game 4, to persevere in that extraordinary 14-inning Game 5, to receive the kind of gritty pitching they got from Schilling in Game 6, and then to put everything together in spectacular fashion in Game 7, and to do it all against the Yankees, was an off-the-charts display of class and determination.

One year ago the Red Sox lost a traumatic Game 7 in this very park. It was talked about incessantly. Last Saturday night, the team lost a 19-8 game in Fenway. It was another frustrating chapter in the great Yankee-Red Sox drama. Elimination was imminent. The entire relationship between the Red Sox and their greatest rival seemed fated to remain an endlessly repetitious story in which the dynamics would never change. Call it Groundhog Day. Call it Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. Call it Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill. They all apply. Down, 3-0, and having been humiliated in their own park (19 and 22 hits), the Red Sox were regarded as toe-tag material -- again.

There was only one place on earth where there was any hope, and that was inside the Red Sox clubhouse.

The single most alternatingly stressful and exhilarating week in Boston sports history is over. Now Red Sox fans can turn on their TV sets tonight to see a couple of Boston discards named Clemens and Suppan pitch in the other Game 7 to see who gets to play the Red Sox in the World Series.

I need a beer.

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Victory was redemption for all
By Gordon Edes, Boston Globe

NEW YORK -- This is what Yankee Stadium looks and feels like after Steinbrenner has been humbled, Sinatra has been silenced, and the Yankee Stadium monuments avert their eyes in shock at what this Red Sox team, unlike any of its predecessors in almost a century's worth of trying, was able to accomplish at the expense of pinstriped pride that may never feel quite the same again.

The place is devoid of all but Red Sox fans, who are crowding a dozen rows deep behind the visitors' dugout and chanting "Who's your daddy?" as Johnny Damon, the man who stuck a dagger in the Yankees not once, but twice, with a grand slam and two-run home run, is bathing them with champagne before falling wearily into the embrace of his fiancee, Michelle.

One fan holds aloft this sign: "History Starts Now."

Inside the visitors' clubhouse, where the corks began popping shortly after substitute second baseman Pokey Reese flipped to sub first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz at 12:01 a.m. for the final out of this improbable odyssey, Sox radio man Jerry Trupiano collared Theo Epstein and asked if he had detected traces of tears in Epstein's eyes.

"No, not yet," said Epstein, in a baseball cap turned backward and a shirt saturated with a champion's nectar. "I'm saving those for the World Series. That's just good old-fashioned Budweiser."

It was a year ago, almost to the day, when the calendar read Oct., 16, 2003, and time seemed to stop, just five outs away. In the midst of last night's party celebrating the completion of the job that was left undone last season, Pedro Martinez paused for just a moment to reflect on how that memory may have been erased forever.

"That's the first thing Tim Wakefield said to me," said Martinez, who was a fallen hero in Game 7 a year ago and a bit player in last night's 10-3 win in which the Sox did not have to place all their faith on his narrow shoulders. "He said we were in this clubhouse last season crying, and now we come back to have the last laugh."

Epstein, who is only 30 but has an appreciation for history of a man twice his age, said this victory last night was not only for the names that appear on the 2004 roster. Not just for Derek Lowe, who is a bit of a rogue but last night pitched far better on two days' rest than Gentleman Jim Lonborg on another team of Impossible Dreamers, Lowe holding the Yankees to just one hit and a run in six innings.

"Derek wasn't feeling that great," said Curt Schilling, the man with the most famous foot in these parts since Super Bowl hero Adam Vinatieri. "He had some issues going on with his back. It was a little bit of a struggle for him, but I'm so proud of Derek. The last 10, 12 days what he's gone through emotionally, that had to be tough. But we wouldn't be going to the World Series without Derek Lowe."

This win was not just for David Ortiz, the unanimous MVP of this series, who may soon have his own statue on the cobblestones outside Faneuil Hall after he hit his fourth home run of this series last night to jump-start the Sox, a two-run shot right after Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter had gunned down Damon at the plate in the kind of defensive play that can inspire a ball club.

This win wasn't just for all the names an ecstatic Schilling rattled off as he talked of all the mates for whom he felt so much pride: Bellhorn and Pokey, Trot and Tek, Millar and Mueller, and a little shortstop named Cabrera who so smoothly took over turf that had once belonged exclusively to Nomar.

"Two outs in the ninth, and I was still sweating," said Schilling, whose anxiety undoubtedly was shared by Sox owner John W. Henry, who after the Sox' pulsating 4-2 win in Game 6 said he'd never felt more stress in his life. And this is a hedge fund trader who can make and lose millions of dollars in the course of a single phone call.

No, Epstein said, there were other names that needed to be invoked on this night, one in which an entire region spent much of the evening calling loved ones and saying, `Can you believe this?"

Epstein spoke to the heart of the Nation.

"We did this for all the great Red Sox players who never found a way to beat the Yankees," he said. "The '49 team with Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky. The '78 team that should have won the playoff game. For our team last year, that should have won and gone to the World Series. I can't really put this in historical terms, but it's taken a long time to beat the Yankees. Our hats are off to them, a class organization, from [owner George] Steinbrenner to the 25th guy on their roster, and especially [to GM Brian] Cashman.

"But this was for all those great Red Sox teams of the past. This is for them. We talked about it last year, when we lost. We said we felt like we were going in the right direction and were going to win a World Series, but it's incredible that a year later, we have a chance to come back to Yankee Stadium for a chance we might not have again, and win a Game 7."

The couldas, wouldas, and shouldas have been silenced forever. Sox win, Yanks lose. You can look it up.

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Giving up was never in this group's nature
By Gordon Edes, Boston Globe

NEW YORK -- What manner of mettle separates these 2004 Red Sox from the 25 teams that preceded them in spotting adversaries a 3-0 series lead in the postseason, in refusing to go quietly into that good night?

Perhaps, it was suggested yesterday afternoon to Terry Francona before Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, that this series never really had the feel of one club being three games better than the other?

"Oh, no," Francona said, "It was 0-3, that's what it was, and if we didn't come back in the ninth [in Game 4], it was 0-4. The only thing I can think is we didn't stop playing. In that fourth game, our dugout from inning one was `Let's get it done,' -- and it was legit. Not talk, really legit. And it's been that way the whole way through."

It all feels like such a distant memory now, when the Yankees appeared on the way to inflicting the granddaddy of all postseason whuppings on the Sox. An 8-0 Yankee lead in the Bronx in Game 1, when Curt Schilling looked foolish for vowing to shut up 55,000 New Yorkers. Pedro Martinez left dangling from a mango tree in Game 2 by John Olerud's two-run home run. The shock of returning home and being subjected to the humiliation of a 19-8 defeat that had a Fenway Park playoff crowd leaving early for the first time in memory.

The Yankee lineup was hitting with impunity, scoring 32 runs in the first three games and batting .377 collectively. Yankee left fielder Hideki Matsui truly was Godzilla come to life, driving in five runs in two of the first three games and scoring five in Game 3. Sox pitching was worse than anything envisioned by horrormeister Stephen King, with Schilling down to one good ankle and the rest of the staff hobbled by an ERA of 11.52through the first three games.

"I don't know, maybe Game 1 sort of emotionally threw us off off," Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein said yesterday. "I think everyone here knew or expected that if Curt was healthy, he was going to be dominant, and get us off to a good start. But he had limitations, and put us behind the 8-ball early. That threw us off for a couple of days."

What turned it around?

"Maybe you guys asking all those questions about the offseason before Game 4," Epstein said with a smirk.

With Francona playing grab-bag with his rotation, because Schilling was hurt and penciled-in Game 4 starter Tim Wakefield had been pressed into bullpen duty in the Game 3 blowout, Derek Lowe was given the ball and the Yankees took a 2-0 lead when Alex Rodriguez cleared the Monster with a two-run home run in the third. But two innings later, David Ortiz resumed morphing into the greatest October player the Sox have ever had, hitting a two-run single in a three-run fifth that he would later trump with a walkoff home run in the 12th.

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Miracle workers - Resurgent Red Sox storm into World Series, leaving stunned Yankees behind
By Bob Hohler, Boston Globe

NEW YORK -- Just like that, they shocked the nation.

Just as they pictured it, they changed the course of baseball history.

And just like a dream, they dashed generations of heartache for New Englanders who longed to witness the one glorious triumph they staged last night in the October chill by the Harlem River.

In the greatest postseason comeback since the birth of the national pastime, the Red Sox completed a magical surge from a 3-0 deficit in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series by stomping the Yankees, 10-3, in a do-or-die seventh game to capture their first pennant since 1986.

"How many times can you honestly say you have a chance to shock the world?" Kevin Millar said in the frothy celebration after the sensational finish. "It might happen once in your life or it may never happen. But we had that chance, and we did it. It's an amazing storybook."

Forget the fall foliage romps this weekend. The 100th World Series opens Saturday night at Fenway Park as the Sox face the Astros or Cardinals in the quixotic quest for their first world championship since 1918.

"We still have another hill to climb," Sox president and CEO Larry Lucchino said. "We don't want to forget that in the euphoria of the moment."

Thanks to a magnificent start on two days' rest by Derek Lowe and a big-bang attack led by Johnny Damon, series MVP David Ortiz, and Mark Bellhorn, the Sox became the first team in baseball history to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series. Four straight nights the champagne chilled in the Yankee clubhouse, and four straight nights the Sox dodged elimination, marking the first time in 14 years a Boston team beat the Pinstripers four times in as many days.

"How can this not be one of the greatest comebacks in the history of sports?" Sox principal owner John W. Henry said. "This team loves each other so much. They want to win so badly for one another and they wanted to win so badly for these fans. There's no way you can do this unless you have incredible heart."

The Sox won the franchise's 11th AL pennant in a wondrous twist in a journey that began 243 days earlier when they gathered for spring training to avenge last year's heartbreaking loss in Game 7 of the ALCS to the Yankees. But they also scored sweet revenge for forebears such as Johnny Pesky and Bobby Doerr, who lost the final two games of the 1949 season to the Yankees with the pennant on the line, and Jim Rice and Dwight Evans, who watched Bucky "Bleeping" Dent's home run ruin their chances for a division title in a one-game division playoff in 1978.

"There have been so many great Red Sox teams and players who would have tasted World Series champagne if it wasn't for the Yankees," general manager Theo Epstein said. "Guys in '49, '78, and us last year. Now that we've won, this is for them. We can put that behind us and move on to the World Series and take care of that."

A preschooler in 1978, Lowe looked like an ace last night as he whipsawed the Yankees over six innings, allowing only one run on one hit (RBI single by Derek Jeter), a walk, and a hit batsman, completing his personal comeback from exiled starter when the playoffs opened to team savior.

"Games like this make or break your so-called career," Lowe said. "I know a lot of people in Boston have been talking about this whole free agency thing and keep saying this is going to be your last game. Luckily, it's not going to be."

While Lowe all but silenced a Yankee juggernaut that exploded for 19 runs in humiliating the Sox in Game 3, Damon staged his own remarkable reversal of fortune. He entered the game batting .103 with one RBI in the first six games of the series, still burdened by his role in the first three losses. But nearly four months after he took Yankees righthander Javier Vazquez deep twice in a game in the Bronx June 29, Damon struck again, launching a grand slam off Vazquez in the second inning and a two-run shot off him in the fourth.

He described his resiliency as similar to the team's.

"We're so loosey-goosey," Damon said. "After we were down, 3-0, we didn't panic. We were joking about packing up our things, kind of playing devil's advocate by thinking of the worst things possible and making sure the good things happened."

The Yankees, who were 0-12 in postseason series after losing three straight games, pulled out all the stops trying to reverse the futility, even enlisting Dent to toss a ceremonial first pitch in the rematch of last year's historic showdown. But Dent was no Ortiz, who smashed a two-run homer off Yankees starter Kevin Brown in the first inning. And he was no Bellhorn, who added a solo shot off Tom Gordon in the eighth.

The Sox built such a whopping lead that they hardly blinked when Pedro Martinez, making his first relief appearance since his memorable performance in Game 5 of the 1999 Division Series against the Indians, surrendered two runs on three hits in the seventh inning.

With the ownership troika of Henry, Lucchino, and Tom Werner watching the winner-take-all finale from a box next to the team's dugout, the Sox became the first team to beat the Yankees in the final two games of a best-of-seven series in the Bronx since the Cardinals in 1926. (The Sox opened the '26 season with a lineup led by center fielder Ira Flagstead, third baseman Fred Haney, right fielder Si Rosenthal, and first baseman Phil Todt).

Heck, why not dedicate the victory to the '26 Sox as well? Every Sox team for a century has wanted a piece of the Yankees.

Long before the champagne corks popped last night in the visiting clubhouse in the bowels of The House That Ruth Built, the game appeared to take a bleak turn for the Sox within minutes of the first pitch. After Damon singled leading off the first inning and stole second, third base coach Dale Sveum waved him home on a single to left by Manny Ramirez, only for the Yankees to erase Damon on Jeter's relay from Hideki Matsui to Jorge Posada.

But no sooner did Damon dust himself off than Ortiz picked up Sveum by belting the next pitch from Brown (an 88-mile-per-hour fastball) into the right-field stands for a two-run shot, his third homer of the series and fourth of the postseason.

Lowe took the 2-0 lead and ran with it, retiring the Yankees in order quickly in the first to give the Sox another shot at Brown. And, boy, did they make the most of it.

Millar started a big rally for the second straight night, this time by lining a one-out single up the middle. Brown then did the Yankees no favors by issuing consecutive walks to Bill Mueller and Orlando Cabrera to load the bases for Damon, who was homerless in the postseason.

No longer. With Brown gone after his brief run of ineffectiveness, the Yankees summoned Vazquez, the former Expo the Sox had coveted in recent years. They liked Vazquez even more after Damon helped destroy the Empire by drilling Vazquez's first pitch into the right-field seats for the grand slam.

Damon's slam, which put the Sox up, 6-0, was only the second in postseason history for the Sox. Troy O'Leary hit the first in Game 5 of the 1999 Division Series in Cleveland.

The Yankees mustered their only run off Lowe after the sinkerballer grazed Miguel Cairo's arm with a pitch with one out in the third inning. After Cairo stole second, Jeter grounded a single to left to knock him in.

No problem. Damon followed a walk to Cabrera leading off the fourth inning by homering into the upper deck in right for two more runs, more than enough for the Sox to become the first time in 26 tries in postseason history to come all the way back from a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series.

But Bellhorn chipped in anyway with his solo homer in the eighth, stealing some momentum after the Yankees picked up their two runs against Martinez in the seventh.

With Martinez gone, Mike Timlin retired the Yankees in order in the eighth, and by the time Cabrera knocked in the final Sox run with a sacrifice fly in the ninth, the loudest noise in the park was a contingent of Boston partisans chanting, "Let's go, Red Sox."

Then Timlin and Alan Embree finished off the Yankees in the bottom of the inning, touching off a celebration for the ages on the storied lawn in the Bronx -- and across New England.

"It was a very close memory," Henry said of last year's loss in Game 7. "I think everyone who was here at that moment wanted to get back to the very same spot and do it again and do it right."

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A World Series ticket - Sox complete comeback, oust Yankees for AL title
By Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe

NEW YORK -- Forevermore, the date goes into the New England calendar as an official no-school/no-work/no-mail-delivery holiday in Red Sox Nation.

Mark it down. Oct. 20. It will always be the day that Sox citizens were liberated from 8 decades of torment and torture at the hands of the New York Yankees and their fans. Boston Baseball's Bastille Day.

The 2004 Red Sox won the American League pennant in the heart of the Evil Empire last night. In the heretofore haunted Bronx house, raggedy men wearing red socks embarrassed and eliminated the $182 million payroll Yankees, 10-3, in the seventh and deciding game of their American League Championship Series. On the very soil where the Sox were so cruelly foiled in this same game one year ago, the Sons of Tito Francona completed the greatest postseason comeback in baseball history. No major league team had ever recovered from a 3-0 series deficit.

Red Sox fans now have a stock answer for those clever chants of ''1918." They'll always be able to cite the fall of 2004 when the Big Apple was finally and firmly lodged in the throats of men wearing pinstripes. This time, it was the gluttonous Yankees who choked.

''It's very amazing," said manager Francona. ''To do what we did you have to have people chip in and do some special things . . . When we were down, 0-3, there's just no room for error, and we didn't make any errors."

The Sox won the much-hyped finale on the strength of two home runs (including a grand slam) by team mascot Johnny Damon and a stunning six innings of one-hit pitching from Derek Lowe, who lost his job in the starting rotation before the start of the playoffs.

Pedro Martinez came on for a curious (two-run) relief stint in the seventh, followed by Mike Timlin and Alan Embree. Embree retired Ruben Sierra on a grounder to second for the final out at 12:01 this morning.

Sox players and officials celebrated on the Yankee Stadium infield and the area in front of the third base dugout a half-hour after the final out. Thousands of Boston fans gathered behind the dugout and players tossed equipment and sprayed champagne into the stands, while the throng chanted, "Let's Go, Red Sox!"

"You know how long this team and the fans have been waiting to win a World Series," said series MVP David Ortiz. "Last year we had a bad memory and I saw a lot of my teammates destroyed. It was a big-time opportunity to get to the World Series."

Now this. The 2004 World Series begins Saturday night at Fenway Park when the Sox play the St. Louis Cardinals or Houston Astros, who play a seventh game tonight to determine the National League champion.

At this giddy, soaking, sleepless moment in time (Warren Zevon's "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" should be a new theme for the Fenway fandom), Boston baseball fans need to remind themselves that the job is not yet done. Sweet as it was to beat the Yankees, the Sox still have to win a World Series before they throw off the dreaded pox in the home of Hub hardball. The Red Sox have been in four World Series since last winning in 1918, and each time Boston lost the seventh game.

Just four days ago, the Franconamen were three outs away from going home for another long winter of discontent. They had dropped the first three games of the Yankee series, losing Game 3 at Fenway by the hideous score of 19-8. Sunday night in Game 4, they rallied against Mariano Rivera in the ninth, then won in dramatic fashion on Ortiz's walkoff homer in the 12th. Less than 23 hours later, they won again, this time on a 14th-inning single by Ortiz. The exhausted clubs returned to New York, and Tuesday Curt Schilling willed Boston to victory with seven innings of mastery despite a dislocated tendon in his right ankle.

The rivals had already played a record 25 hours 36 minutes of baseball (over six games) when they arrived at Yankee Stadium yesterday afternoon. Despite the fact that both managers were hindered by depleted pitching staffs, the pregame anticipation was unlike anything in the rich history of Boston sports.

Red Sox-Yankees Game 7 had the requisite classic themes of history, revenge, passion, and redemption (Lowe, for one, comes to mind). It had the two most storied baseball teams meeting in a winner-take-all game for the second time in 12 months. It had a long-suffering Red Sox Nation convinced that this really is the year.

Ever-entitled, but suddenly desperate to turn things around, the Yankees wheeled out the big guns for the finale. Bucky Dent, the man who drove a stake through the heart of New England with his pop fly division playoff homer in 1978, was summoned to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. Not satisfied with that little bit of history, the Yankees offered the Red Sox owners an opportunity to watch the game from the comfort of the Babe Ruth Suite at Yankee Stadium. John W. Henry, Tom Werner, and Larry Lucchino opted for box seats near the Sox dugout.

It was 54 degrees in the Bronx when slumping Damon (.103 in the series coming into the game) stepped in to face the first pitch from Yankees righthander Kevin Brown at 8:30 p.m. Yankees fans took comfort in the knowledge that the game was played on the birthday of the late Mickey Mantle. It ended on Whitey Ford's birthday. Didn't matter. This time the cosmic forces were aligned with Boston.

Ortiz -- a.k.a. "Senor October" -- crushed a first-pitch, two-run homer to right to give the Red Sox a 2-0 lead in the first inning. In the second, after Brown was pulled with the bases loaded and one out, Damon hit Javier Vazquez's first pitch over the wall in right to make it 6-0. There was bedlam in the Boston dugout as Damon circled the bases.

The Yankees staged their only rally off Lowe in the third. Miguel Cairo was hit by a pitch, stole second, and scored on Derek Jeter's single to left. The RBI single was New York's lone hit off Lowe.

Damon launched his second homer, this one into the upper deck, with one man aboard in the fourth to make it 8-1.

As the game lurched into the middle frames, anxious Sox fans waited patiently for more outs and more innings that could deliver the Sox back into the World Series. Lowe did the job. He was the one who stopped the bleeding in Game 4 after New York scored 19 runs in Game 3, and he stuffed them again in the clincher. New York scored only 13 runs in the final four games of the series.

Lowe had retired 11 consecutive batters when he was pulled at the end of six innings. The odd relief appearance by Martinez got the Yankee crowd back into the game as the place came to life with chants of "Who's your daddy?" The Yankees rocked Martinez for three hits and a pair of runs in his shaky inning of work.

A homer by Mark Bellhorn in the eighth made it 9-3. Orlando Cabrera's sacrifice fly in the ninth completed the scoring, and Timlin, then Embree, finished off the Yankees in the bottom of the ninth.

In the end, there was the strangest sight of them all: Boston Red Sox players jumping up and down and hugging one another in the Yankee Stadium infield, laughing and goofing like little boys, celebrating their hard-earned American League pennant while "New York, New York" boomed over the public address system.

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Newest Yankees fail to deliver
By Peter May, Boston Globe

NEW YORK -- They had just been on the bottom side of the greatest el foldo in major league baseball playoff history. Maybe at some point down the road, that will irk the Yankees.

But after losing, 10-3, last night, to lose a best-of-seven series they led, 3-0, the operative word in the Yankee clubhouse was "frustration." They were frustrated at blowing the 3-0 lead. They were frustrated at being crushed at home in the winner-take-all game. They were frustrated at being so close and not being able to close the deal.

"We had our chances," said Alex Rodriguez after an 0-for-4 night in which he admitted he played "like [expletive]."

He was right. "We just could not deliver the knockout punch," Rodriguez said. "I wish I knew why. It's crushing. We were up, 3-0. We lost twice at home."

A-Rod's performance over the final four games, along with that of Gary Sheffield, mirrored the Yankees' play in the series. Over the first three games, they, along with Hideki Matsui, were unstoppable. Over the last four games, A-Rod had two hits, Sheffield one, and the Yankees' big bats were silent.

It was a weird series for Rodriguez, a matchup of the teams that tried to trade for him last winter. The Red Sox didn't get him. The Yankees did.

Rodriguez was a terror in the first three games. But his bat disappeared after that (save for a Game 4 homer). He made a silly hand gesture in Boston after being robbed by Trot Nixon and then came the ridiculous play in Game 6, when he tomahawked the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's glove in the eighth inning.

The Red Sox players ripped him for being unprofessional. He was charged with interference, which not only meant he was out, but that base runner Derek Jeter had to return to his original base. Rodriguez merely said he'd have run over Arroyo if he had to replay the play. Yankees manager Joe Torre and general manager Brian Cashman both defended A-Rod's intentions, although Torre admitted before Game 7 last night that he still had not seen a replay of the play.

Then, in the critical Game 7, A-Rod did the following: He bounced to third, he bounced to the mound, he bounced to short and, in his last at-bat of the season, he fanned. He was a certifiable non-factor. He heard the boos.

"I'm embarrassed right now," Rodriguez said. "I do feel that in the long run, this is going to make us better, that we'll be a better team for it. But, right now, it's tough. It's frustrating as hell."

Rodriguez said, "We felt coming into this game that whoever won this game would win the World Series."

Asked if that meant he felt Boston would win, the always diplomatic A-Rod deferred, and said, "I don't think I'm even going to watch another baseball game until spring training."

Derek Jeter talked throughout the playoffs of never tiring of the winning feeling, "because every year, it's a different group of guys doing it in a different way."

Rodriguez was one of those different guys. So, too, was Sheffield, whose only hit in the last four games was in Game 6, a roller down the third-base line that hit the bag. Kevin Brown was another one. He was given the ball for the biggest game of his career and he was brutal, not getting out of the second inning.

"It was my job and I didn't get it done," Brown said. "Short of trading the health of my family, I'd do anything to be able to go back out there and give the team a chance to win."

Knowing George Steinbrenner, there will be a few more "different guys" here next year. Cashman admitted in the Yankee clubhouse after the game that the reconfiguring project probably will commence today. He saw a flawed Yankee team win 103 games and come from behind 61 times during the season to win.

"All season long, we found a way to get it done," Cashman said. "But so did the Red Sox. Every time they got close to us, or threatened us, we always responded. Unfortunately, at the most important time of the season, we didn't respond."

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Morgan magic - Team doctor works wonders for Schilling
By Bob Hohler and Raja Mishra, Boston Globe

It may go down as one of the most innovative, quick-fix medical procedures in the history of postseason baseball, and it may have been possible only because the doctor who brainstormed the breakthrough first tested his technique on human cadaver legs.

Welcome to the intriguing story behind the Red Sox medical team temporarily repairing a dislocated tendon in Curt Schilling's right ankle so well that he dominated the Yankees Tuesday in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series and helped to force last night's monumental do-or-die finale.

General manager Theo Epstein wasn't kidding after Schilling's injury-shortened start in a Game 1 loss when he said the Sox would explore "every medical technique under the sun to try to get his tendon stabilized."

The sheath surrounding one of Schilling's peroneal tendons, which run across the back of the ankle, had ruptured, allowing the tendon to slip out of its groove and drift above the ankle. When Schilling pitched, the tendon snapped painfully against the bone, badly limiting his effectiveness.

The only permanent fix was reconstructive surgery, which would require three months of rest and rehabilitation. But with their season slipping away after one loss led to another and yet another, sinking them in a 3-0 hole in the best-of-seven ALCS, the Sox needed Schilling more than ever.

In rushed Reebok, Schilling's shoemaker, which designed a high-top cleat it hoped would stabilize the tendon. Schilling tested the cleat in the bullpen at Fenway Park Friday and Sunday, but the Sox remained skeptical about their season rising or falling on the shoe alone and scrambled to find alternatives.

Epstein said, "Everybody was thinking, `Well, is there some way to strap [the tendon] down? Can we just screw that freakin' tendon to bone? What can we do here?' "

Enter Sox medical director Bill Morgan, who recommended a novel approach in concert with the team's training staff. Why not suture the skin around the dislocated tendon down to the deep tissue and effectively create an artificial sheath that would seal the tendon in place?

"We were going to do it as a last-ditch scenario," Epstein said. "Although it seems extreme -- we couldn't find a case of it ever having been done before -- we thought it was almost a conservative approach in that it would be the best way for Curt to have his normal mechanics."

The only problem was, Morgan had never performed such a procedure and was unaware of anyone who had conducted one whom he could consult. So he did what many doctors do to test new medical techniques: He experimented on human cadaver legs.

By the time Morgan finished his test run, Schilling had considered all the available alternatives and agreed to undergo the procedure.

So on Monday, team doctors, laboring in a Fenway Park back room, jury-rigged the stunning and counterintuitive solution. Instead of fixing Schilling's injury, they, in effect, exacerbated it, using a few simple sutures to keep his loose tendon out of place but immobile, thus ending the snapping so bothersome to the pitcher. The makeshift procedure worked. On Tuesday night, Schilling pitched seven innings, giving up only one run, to lead the Sox to victory in Game 6.

And so another chapter in the storied history of the Red Sox was written, with comeback heroics on the diamond -- and a brilliant flash of medical improvisation behind the scenes that made it possible.

Orthopedic experts said no similar cases had ever been recorded in medical literature. In fact, they said, they could not think of another situation where they would recommend such a procedure. However, they agreed that treating a big-time pitcher before a big-time game was that rarest of circumstances warranting it.

Morgan admitted he was treading new ground in devising the idea during the Division Series against the Anaheim Angels two weeks ago, when the extent of Schilling's ankle woes became apparent.

"It was totally unprecedented," said Morgan before last night's Game 7. "It was a reasonable alternative when all else failed. And all else failed."

While improvisation is common in surgery, Morgan had an uncommon goal: simply to get Schilling out on the mound for as many innings as possible.

"Brilliant . . . it worked," said Dr. Tammy Martin, orthopedics chief for the Boston Veterans Affairs health care system and doctor for numerous college athletic teams. "If it hadn't worked, I'd be saying, `He tried what?' " A week ago, Martin and other orthopedics experts interviewed by the Globe were skeptical that Schilling could perform at anywhere near his usual level without season-ending surgery.

The medical drama began in earnest Oct. 5, when Schilling painfully stumbled while fielding a grounder against the Angels in the first game of that series. Morgan said yesterday he quickly suspected a serious tendon injury, though in public Sox officials said Schilling suffered only from an inflammed tendon.

In actuality, his peroneus brevis tendon, in the back of his right foot, had been dislocated, as became clear in Game 1 against the Yankees, when Schilling pitched poorly and blamed a "popping" sensation in his ankle for distracting him.

The popping was his tendon flapping around. The tendon anchors the ankle's muscle and bone, crucial to movement. The tendon is held snug in a groove on the fibula bone by a thin, yet strong sheath. That sheath had ruptured, and the tendon was loose like a limp rubber band. In that state, it was tough for Schilling to fully use his right leg muscles to pitch -- not to mention the pain he experienced every time he pushed off the pitching rubber.

During Game 1 against the Yankees, Morgan's medical team tried the usual approach: using tape and an ankle brace to keep the tendon snug. It failed.

"It was impossible," Morgan said. "We tried splints, high-top shoes, taping, everything possible to keep it in."

Morgan had already devised an alternate plan, and floated it with Schilling after the game.

"Curt understood the concept. He wanted to try it," said Morgan.

On Monday, Morgan and three assistants, working in a sterile back room at Fenway Park, applied a local anesthetic to Schilling's ankle. Then they stitched. A "few" sutures, threaded through skin and the tissue beneath the skin, were placed in between the groove and the loose tendon, according to Morgan. This created a tiny wall of flesh that kept the tendon in place -- about 2 centimeters outside its groove.

"We forced it to stay out of the groove so it wouldn't move around," said Morgan. "It's going to stay out until his [postseason] surgery."

Boston University's Dr. Timothy Foster said: "I've been associate editor of the American Journal of Sports Medicine, the major journal in the field, for 12 years, and this is the first time I've seen this or heard of this.

"There is a lot of improvisation in sports medicine. However, most of the surgery and treatment is based on scientific studies. But this was such an uncommon situation."

The sutures did the job, but the Sox kept the procedure a secret. "It's always nice to have some secrets in October," Epstein said. "Maybe if the Yankees knew there were sutures in there and they saw it start to bleed it would give them some confidence that things were falling apart for Curt."

Epstein said the Sox also "didn't want to cause unnecessary distraction before the game, as if there weren't enough already."

Despite the favorable results in practice Monday, it remained a mystery how well the sutures would hold up under game conditions. Schilling needed to field his position as well as pitch, which meant scrambling to cover first on grounders, including one by Bernie Williams in the fourth inning. There was blood visible near Schilling's ankle during the game.

"After the first pitch, I was pretty happy with his delivery," Epstein said. "But after that, I was pretty nervous through the whole thing, especially when he had to cover first because you never know what kind of force might impact the sutures and the tendon. But it went really well."

It went so well that manager Terry Francona was asked after the game why Schilling only went seven innings (he surrendered only one run on four hits without walking a batter).

"We were actually keeping an eye on him from the fourth inning in case he was starting not to feel real great," Francona said. "He went inning to inning and kept pumping outs, so when if he said he was ready to come out, we weren't going to leave him in."

After the victory, the sutures were removed to prevent infection. In order to pitch again prior to surgery, Schilling would likely have to be sutured again before each game.

The procedure did not heal Schilling: "It probably weakens his ankle . . . he doesn't have the normal fulcrum there, but not in a way that impairs him," said Morgan, explaining that even with the quick fix that enabled Schilling to pitch, he will require surgery. Morgan said the suture fix would not jeopordize Schilling's prospects for full recovery or make the injury worse; other orthopedic experts interviewed agreed.

But on Tuesday, Schilling didn't pitch like a man hobbled. Instead, he threw perhaps the most memorable game of his career, one for Red Sox annals.

"We were sort of on a battlefield with our best warrior," said Morgan. "We were just trying to get him out there."

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Ace's gritty performance won't soon be forgotten
By Jackie MacMullan, Boston Globe

NEW YORK -- Sixteen hours later, it seemed even more remarkable than when it was actually unfolding. Curt Schilling's gritty performance in Tuesday's 4-2 win in Game 6 over the Yankees, pitching with a dislocated tendon that was sutured to his skin, is already being spoken in the same breath as some of the historic postseason feats involving injured stars. It's Willis Reed, Kirk Gibson, and Schilling, whose bloodied, but unbowed right ankle has given a whole new meaning to the term Red Sox.

"I'm convinced that 10 years from now people are going to say Willis Reed pulled a Curt Schilling, instead of the other way around," declared Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein. "With all due respect to Willis Reed, he only had two baskets that day [in May 1970]. Curt was a dominant pitcher for six innings."

Schilling's ability to go deep into the game was critical, with Boston's overworked bullpen logging an ungodly number of innings through the first five games. He was gassed by the time he left with a 4-1 lead, his only miscue a home run ball to Bernie Williams in the seventh. His final line: seven innings, four hits, one run, no walks, four strikeouts.

Last night, just 1 1/2 hours before game time, Schilling threw lightly in the outfield under the watchful eye of assistant trainer Chris Correnti. Schilling was not testing his ankle for potential future World Series endeavors; he was trying to make a case for himself as an available weapon last night, even if it was to pitch to only one or two batters. Schilling lobbied both manager Terry Francona and Epstein to consider him, but his entreaties fell on deaf ears.

"There's no game tomorrow," said Schilling. "It's all about right now. It can be done. I could do it."

Epstein said while he admired Schilling's resolve, he was the only pitcher that had been declared unavailable by his coaching staff last night. Schilling, after all, threw 99 pitches Tuesday night, and was showing signs of fatigue as early as the fourth inning.

"There were times his velocity was wavering," Francona said. "It was a little inconsistent, but it seemed like every time he started to get a little worrisome, he would pump it back up to 94 [miles per hour] and hit his spots pretty good. Some people said they were surprised he came out after the seventh, but we were actually keeping an eye on him from the fourth in case he was starting not to feel great."

As more details continued to come out yesterday, the medical lengths to which Schilling went to be able to pitch made his performance even more remarkable. Even so, as he took the mound Tuesday night and began scraping the dirt to dig out a comfort zone, the Boston front office collectively held its breath.

"With the first pitch, I was looking for the soundness of his delivery," Epstein said. "When he showed that he had good mechanics, it look one lump out of my throat. The other lump was taken out when I watched our guys cover first base for him. That was a big concern for us."

Was Boston's GM surprised the Yankees didn't attempt to drop a couple of bunts on Schilling and force him to make some plays that would require mobility?

"Mildly," Epstein admitted, "but the Yankees are a walk-and-home-run offense, and I think [Yankees manager] Joe [Torre] felt that he didn't want to get out of his regular offense."

Torre was asked about his team's unwillingness to bunt, and his answer revealed some skepticism on the part of his team about the extent of Schilling's ailment.

"[The bunting] is an individual choice," Torre said last night. "And we are not necessarily of a mind to believe that there's a lot wrong with him. It's not that we're saying that he wasn't telling the truth [about being hurt], but we have to deal with him, the pitcher we know, instead of seeing that there's something drastically wrong with him physically.

"We don't want to take away from ourselves. I hate to think, `A-Rod, here, drop one down so you don't hit one out of the ballpark.' I'd rather take my chances at him swinging the bat."

In truth, the Yankees were already sick of hearing about the "courageous" and "heroic" Schilling. As his legendary status grew, the frequency with which the New York players rolled their eyes also increased proportionately.

Schilling is a student of baseball, but he was in no mood yesterday to put his performance in any kind of historical context. Gibson? Reed? He scoffed at it all.

"You know, that's all nice and well and good, but we need another win, or it won't mean much of anything," Schilling said.

But that's where Schilling is mistaken. Bostonians have long memories (just ask Bill Buckner), and when someone straps on his shoes and submits a gutty performance, he will be remembered forever, even if it isn't during a year in which the ultimate prize is won. Consider Carlton Fisk's dramatic home run in the 1975 World Series. No rings were handed out to Sox players that year, either, but Fisk's heroics are eternally etched into the minds of Sox fans.

Schilling's masterpiece seems to have secured a place in Boston's scrapbook of tremendous feats, as well. Last night's Game 7 win makes sure it will remain there.

"I thought it was a pretty amazing performance when I saw it happen, and I still do," Francona said.

Only time will tell where Schilling's outing will fall in the all-time great moments of sports. Last night, he didn't much care. Schilling wanted the ball once more, only this time no special shoes, sutures, or splints were going to get him his wish.

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Family ties - Roller-coaster ride ends in glory for Red Sox fans
By Peter King, Sports Illustrated

MONTCLAIR, N.J. -- The earliest e-mail came Wednesday morning at 1:23 a.m. That's 6:23 a.m. where my brother Ken, the Yankee fan, lives and works. In England. It was four words long, with no greeting or salutation.

"I can't stand it.''

My brother-in-law Bob Whiteley, the dentist from northern Connecticut, checked in by cell phone around 10 in the morning. He spoke, I think, for him and my sister, Pam, both Red Soxaholics.

"I can't take any more of this.''

I called my brother Bob, another Yankee fan, just before the first pitch, and even though he has his life in glorious perspective, he too was a frazzled mess.

"I can't take it anymore. Too much. It's madness. Madness.''

I was no different. We'd all grown up in Enfield, Conn., 90 miles from Boston and 105 from New York, in a split baseball family and area. My father (Sox) took my mother (Sox), brother (Yanks), sister (Sox), brother (Yanks) and me (Sox) to our first family game at Fenway in 1963. I was 6. Bob Tillman homered. Sox lost 5-3. I got Mel Allen's autograph after the game on Lansdowne Street. An addiction was born. Transistor under the pillow for West Coast games in 1967, not falling asleep till 1. Worshiping Yaz. Buying Yaz Bread. (There really was such a thing. Arnold made it.)

Taking the love to Ohio University, to the freshman-dorm basement TV (kids, there was no such thing as TVs in dorm rooms in 1975), being vastly outnumbered for seven games against the Reds, crushed after Game 7. They lost. So crushed after the '78 playoff game that I Black-Velvetted my way to my only "F'' in a journalism class ever for not turning in a paper due the day after Bucky Dent made me violent; can't write if you can't see. They lost. Hugging my wife in the upper deck at Shea Stadium late in Game 6 of '86, sure we'd finally won a Series; got Bucknered. They lost. Lost my voice in 1999 ALCS Game 3 at Fenway, Clemens-Pedro. Won the game, but the series? They lost. Last year, I barely saw the Aaron Boone homer clear the fence from seats way up the third-base line before I turned and got away from the stadium as fast as I could. They lost. Last Saturday, I did the unthinkable: I left a Fenway Park playoff game in the sixth inning. Couldn't take it anymore. The season was going down in flames, and watching the end from the Fairfield Inn TV had to be better than suffering in person. They lost. Down 3-0.

Just end it, I thought. Euthanize the season. Can't hit, can't pitch. On the way back to the hotel, I'm playing Theo Epstein with the same intensity and fantasy I used to play Yastrzemski, trying to hit Stottlemyre on the Mark Twain School diamond in pickup games. Sign Jason Varitek, at any cost. Try to convince Orlando Cabrera to do what David Ortiz did -- sign short-term, cheap. Let Pedro and Derek Lowe go. Get Barry Zito, whose market value is down. Or compete for Carl Pavano. For God's sake, get one more middle-reliever. See if anyone out there will give a little bit of value for Manny Ramirez, who, and I don't care what he hits, isn't worth $20 million a year.

Then baseball intruded. Dave Roberts, who showed twice in this series just how smart Epstein is, extended two games with his legs, and the best value player in sports, Ortiz, won them both. I had to drive to Foxboro at 5:30 Tuesday morning to interview Corey Dillon, and on the way, Chris Russo, the anti-Yankee WFAN Mad Dog, reached me by cell at the Mystic Starbucks to say: "The Red Sox are winning the World Series, baby.'' (An omen? The Mystic Starbucks?) He had the best reasoning of all: It had to be this way. The Red Sox had to do it this way -- the incredibly hard way -- to put the Yankee ghosts to bed forever. It had to be something cataclysmic, like being the only team in baseball history to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a series 4-3.

Then Curt Schilling pitches the game of his life, and fearless Keith Foulke fans Tony Clark to win. The unthinkable is happening. The unspeakable. The impossible. Wednesday morning. My HBO Inside the NFL' producer, Brian Hyland, has his Yankees ski cap on throughout our taping. Cris Carter wears a Yankees cap. He took the Lexington Line up to Game 1 last week and was stunned at the intensity of the rivalry. Almost turned off. Which happens to me sometimes when fans act like first-graders. At the end of the day, Hyland gave me an extended fist to knock. "Show's over,'' he said. "Now we're enemies.''

I am not a good person to watch the game with. My poor wife. I pace, I walk outside, I go to the computer to check pitch counts, I marvel loudly at what in the world happened to A-Rod and Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui, who have gone from trained killers to invisible in a matter of days, I take notes, I say things to TV you can't say in public or around children when Terry Francona brings Pedro in the game, I rock back and forth Mazzone-like. At one point, for some reason, I recall stopping my Volkswagen Rabbit for 35 minutes on a hill in Cincinnati, where we lived for five years after getting married, on the way home from work because WTIC was coming in so good from Hartford, and I could hear the last two innings of a Yankees-Red Sox game. Pre-MLB Extra Innings, obviously. Where did that come from? Who knows? I just knew not to be overconfident. Up 9-3 in the bottom of the eighth, with Derek Jeter, A-Rod, Sheffield, Matsui and Bernie Williams on the horizon, it is not over. But Mike Timlin makes it be over, with a final assist from Alan Embree, and all I can do is hug my wife and be thankful.

I'm sure most of you out there in Red Sox Nation were overcome with glee and jumping up and down and pouring drinks on heads, but I was just ... happy. And relieved. I hate the concept of the Yankees, but I can't hate this team because of the people they have. And to beat such a great team, such a class team, with such a class manager and class shortstop and clutch lineup, on the hallowed ground, hitting four homers into the same stands Babe Ruth hit so many ... happy. That's what I was.

I flipped the channels on TV to see every interview, and the one that hit home was John Henry, whose emotions he could barely keep in check. He's a zillionaire, and he said to some mini-cam, "It's so wonderful. There's a World Series in Fenway Park this weekend,'' and he sort of shied away from the camera, barely shaking his head. Like he was going to cry. I thought: That's me right now. That's me. Just marveling.

My cell phone rang. It was Laura, my daughter. She's a senior at Tufts, on the outskirts of Boston, and she goes through some intensely devotional spurts to the Sox. She'd watched the game down the street from Fenway, and now, I could barely hear her because of the background noise.

"Dad!'' she yelled. Horns blaring. People shrieking. Laura shrieking. "I'm at Fenway! I'm out on the street! Biggest mass of humanity I've ever seen!''

Line went dead. She called back. She went on like she hadn't ever gotten off.

"This is the greatest moment of my life!''

Congratulations, Red Sox Nation. You've baptized another one. For life.

TEN RED SOX THINGS I THINK
1. I think I can't kill Dale Sveum for sending Johnny Damon into an out at home in the first inning. Put pressure on them right away. I liked that. Make them make two perfect relay throws to get a fast guy. They made the throws. Eight times out of 10, one of those throws is a little off and he's safe.

2. I think the absolutely mystery of baseball is how Sheffield can start a series 9-for-13, absolutely impossible to get out, and finish the series 1-for-17.

3. I think, though, that's what's so compelling about baseball. Lowe can't tie his shoes right in September, and now, against the Murderer's Row of the American League, ARod-Sheffield-Matsui, he goes 8-for-8. Eight at-bats, eight outs. It is the real American drama. It is the perfect reality show. Be honest. You wouldn't have been surprised if Lowe gave up six runs in an inning and a third. Instead he pitches six innings of one-hit ball.

4. I think it is 11:12 Thursday morning, and I've already had six email requests for tickets. Uh, I'd check Stub Hub, folks.

5. I think the Yankees did exactly what'd I'd have done last off-season: trade some flotsam for Javier Vasquez and some jetsam for Kevin Brown. Sometimes trades just don't work. Sometimes guys like that just don't work out in New York. "That's $25 million on the mound for the New York Yankees,'' Joe Buck said on Fox after Brown and Vasquez had been incinerated and the Yanks were down 8-1. I get the feeling that when Yankees people want to hire big stars in the future, they're going to try to find out not only about talent but about whether they can succeed in the cauldron of Yankee Stadium.

6. I think Brown mystifies me, and I'm sure he does to everyone watching right now. Last three outings against Boston: 0-2, 27.00 ERA. Four innings pitched, 19 baserunners. I mean, pitching underhanded you'd do better.

7. I think I wondered during the game: Is Nomar watching? Where? And could Nomar, not Miguel Cairo, be the Yanks' $8-million-a-year second baseman next year?

8. I think Pedro has a mystical hold on Red Sox managers.

9. I think either way it goes tonight, the World Series will be great. If Houston wins, it'll be fun to see the Hall of Famer who got traded for Larry Andersen, Jeff Bagwell, play at Fenway, and it'll be fun to see Clemens back, lined up to pitch Game 7, by the way. If it's St. Louis, how about Albert Pujols and Larry Walker at the Fens? Cool.

10. I think I don't believe in the Curse. Never have. Never will. I believe 90 percent of the time that the better team wins, or at least the team playing the best wins. Other teams have been better in 1975, 1978 and 1986, and Grady Little made an asinine decision that allowed the better team to lose in 2003. And if the Red Sox lose the World Series, I won't blame it on anything mystical. I will blame it on the rotation (which I think should be Schilling-Tim Wakefield-Pedro-Lowe) not being good enough, or the hitters (Ramirez's longest streak of no RBIs during the season was five; it's now at seven) not hitting enough. Ghosts make for good stories. Players make for deciding games.

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How'd they do that?
In retrospect, ALCS turned with Red Sox's Game 4 rally off Rivera
By John Donovan, Sports Illustrated

NEW YORK -- For years to come, the tired, the poor, the down-and-out and the backs-to-the-wall will look to the American League Championship Series of 2004 for inspiration. And these words will be spoken:

"If the Red Sox could do it ..."

It's amazing what a little comeback can do for a club's reputation. Before the 2004 ALCS, the Red Sox were cursed. They were chokers. They were inept bumblers, lumped in with the pathetic Cubs as charter members of baseball's Loser's Club.

Now, after their rising in the ALCS, the Sox are going to their first World Series since 1986 with a chance to win their first title since 1918. They are examples. The Red Sox are -- get this -- baseball role models.

On Oct. 16, the hated Yankees beat the Sox in Game 3 of the ALCS, 19-8, in the longest nine-inning game in postseason history. It went four hours and 20 minutes, and it couldn't have been more painful. The loss was the third in three games for the Sox. No team had ever rebounded from there to win a best-of-seven postseason series.

How the Sox managed it is a lesson for the down-and-out everywhere ...

Game 4
After that Game 3 marathon, everyone was tired. Many bleary-eyed fans in Boston expected the Sox to roll over. On Yawkey Way, outside of Fenway Park, a Yankee fan with a broom went practically unaccosted just hours before the game.

But Boston manager Terry Francona had a plan that he started formulating during the Game 3 debacle. While the Red Sox were getting their brains beaten in, Francona offered up 40-year-old veteran knuckleballer Tim Wakefield as sacrificial fodder, having him go 3 1/3 innings and 64 pitches against the free-swinging Yanks. That kept at least a couple of pitchers fresh for the games to come. It would prove to be one of Francona's smartest moves of the series.

The Yankees jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the pivotal Game 4 on Alex Rodriguez's home run off Derek Lowe in the third inning. That seemed to wake up the moribund Sox, who jumped ahead with three runs in the fifth. The big blow was a clutch two-out, two-run single by designated hitter David Ortiz.

Boston reliever Mike Timlin gave it back on three infield hits in the sixth, and the Yanks led 4-3. But that would be the last run the Yankees would score. The Boston bullpen held them in check for the next 6 1/3 innings of what turned out to be a 12-inning classic, as taut as a game can be when it goes on for five hours and two minutes.

The Red Sox tied the score in the ninth off closer Mariano Rivera in large part because of their depth. When Kevin Millar walked on five pitches, speedster Dave Roberts came in to run, and everyone knew what was going to happen.

Roberts had been warming up during Millar's at bat -- Rivera had to have seen him, which may have contributed to him walking Millar -- and on a 1-0 count to the next batter, Bill Mueller, Roberts did his thing, easily stealing second base.

The Red Sox had the tying run in scoring position with no one out, and they wasted no time in bringing it home. Mueller showed bunt on the next pitch, taking a strike, and then stroked a hard grounder up the middle to knock in Roberts.

Each team had chances in innings to come. But it wasn't until the bottom of the 12th, with the Sox facing the fifth Yankees pitcher of the night, righty Paul Quantrill, that someone came through. It was Ortiz -- he had popped out with the bases loaded and two outs in the ninth -- who hammered a two-run homer to right for the 6-4 win.

The Sox had life.

Game 5
Boston jumped out in this one, against Yankees ace Mike Mussina, with a run-scoring single from Ortiz and a bases loaded walk to catcher Jason Varitek in the first inning. The Yankees came back, though, and led 4-2 in the eighth before the Sox answered.

Again, pinch runner Roberts was instrumental. After Yankees reliever Tom Gordon gave up a leadoff homer to Ortiz to make it 4-3 -- the ball hit the Volvo advertisement in left field, right next to the carmaker's catch phrase on the bottom, "for life" -- Gordon got ahead of Millar 0-2. And then he walked him on four straight pitches. All the time, Roberts was warming up.

Gordon got the first strike to the next batter, Trot Nixon, but then threw over to first base twice to keep Roberts close. He faked another throw and held the ball another time long enough that Roberts backed off. Yankees catcher Jorge Posada made a visit to the mound. There was another throw to first.

Gordon threw three straight balls. "There's no question that Roberts is in Gordon's head," FOX analyst Tim McCarver said. Rodriguez came over to talk to Gordon. And then Roberts took off. Nixon ripped a single to center and Roberts easily made it to third. The Sox had the tying run at third with no one out.

Rivera, who had blown a save a game earlier, came in to relieve Gordon, to face Varitek. Three pitches later, Varitek lifted a fastball to center that drove in Roberts.

And the game went on. And on. And on. Game 5 lasted a record five hours and 49 minutes. It didn't end until the bottom of the 14th, when the Sox scored a run against the seventh Yankees pitcher of the night, the banished Esteban Loaiza, who threw a very good 3 1/3 innings before allowing the game-winner.

Again, incredibly, it was Ortiz, who fought off an inside cutter and flared it to center field for a bloop single to drive in Johnny Damon.

Ortiz was later named the MVP of the series.

Game 6
Back in New York, things were starting to get desperate for the Yankees. They were throwing Jon Lieber, who beat the Sox with seven strong innings in Game 2. But the Sox had momentum, and they had an X-factor -- Curt Schilling.

In Game 1, Schilling had lasted only three innings in getting pounded by the Yanks. The 21-game winner couldn't pitch effectively because of a painful injury to his right ankle. A tendon had broken loose from its protective sheath and was bouncing back and forth over the right-hander's anklebone.

In between Games 2-6, team doctors and specialists tried all sorts of techniques to keep the tendon from moving. They experimented with different braces, they tried a modified high-top shoe, they tried drugs to numb the area.

And then, on Monday, the day before Game 6, the doctors went radical. They stitched the skin around the ankle to keep the tendon in place. They had been talking about the possibility, and had strongly considered it, and Schilling finally OK'd it. He wanted it done the day before, though, so he could get used to the feeling.

It worked. The Sox won, 4-2.

Bleeding slightly through his sock, Schilling went seven innings, gave up only four hits, struck out four, didn't walk anyone and allowed only a home run to Bernie Williams in the seventh. His ability to go deep into the game saved the exhausted bullpen even more, enabling the Sox to go into Game 7 with the most-rested 'pen they'd had in days.

"You can talk all you want to about that area," Francona said of the most famous ankle in the game, "but his heart is so big ... his heart and his wanting to compete made this happen."

Slumping second baseman Mark Bellhorn struck the deciding blow in the game, a two-out, three-run homer to left field off Lieber.

"Just watching [Schilling] go about it out there was awesome," Bellhorn said. "It kept us in the series."

The win enabled the Sox to become the first team in history to force a seventh game after losing the first three.

Game 7
By this time, the Yanks were stunned. Three outs away from sweeping the Sox, they had let them push their way back into the series. "This Sox," blared one New York tabloid earlier in the week. "Put Him In," said another, next to a picture of Babe Ruth.

Still, the Yankees had won a Game 7 against the Sox just a year earlier at the Stadium. They had history, they had curses, they had enough talent, they figured, to put down the pesky Sox.

But Kevin Brown, their Game 7 starter, was a question. Bothered by all sorts of ailments all season long, Brown had been the starting pitcher in Game 3, but lasted only two innings in that win.

Because of a rainout in Boston, the two teams were playing for a fifth straight day, and three of those days were marathons -- the Game 3 nine-inning job that lasted more than four hours, and the extra-innings of Games 4 and 5, both of which lasted more than five hours. Both teams were exhausted.

The difference turned out to be the hapless Brown, who last month broke his left hand in a moment of anger swinging at a wall, sidelining him for several starts. Brown, a surly right-hander who had come to the Yanks in a trade for Jeff Weaver, lasted only 1 1/3 innings in Game 7, giving up five runs on five hits.

"I won't look in the mirror and say I didn't try," said a sad-looking Brown. "My regrets can only be that I didn't do well enough to give my teammates a chance."

Brown left in the second after walking No. 9 hitter Orlando Cabrera to load the bases. Reliever Javier Vazquez -- another of the big-name free agents that the Yankees had signed in the offseason to become part of the biggest-moneyed team in the majors -- stepped in to face leadoff man Damon, who was hitting .103 in the series.

Damon turned on the first pitch, hitting it into the right-field stands for a grand slam. The Sox romped, 10-3, completing the biggest comeback in postseason history.

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Sox accomplish the unthinkable
By Jim Caple, ESPN

NEW YORK -- Someday, we may appreciate what just happened over the past four days. Right now, however, "I'm finding myself just wondering what day of the week this is,'' Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said.

Whatever day this is, it's probably not going to be very pleasant for Cashman. It won't be easy explaining to George Steinbrenner how the Yankees just became the first team in baseball history to blow a 3-0 lead in a postseason series -- and worse, to blow it to the Red Sox. Heck, it's difficult enough explaining it without having a maniacal owner yelling in your face and threatening that you'll never work in this business again.

Forget about the Red Sox long tale of woe. Forget the Boston-New York rivalry. Forget the decades of emotions and history that went into this series. Simply focus on the incredible fact that a baseball team just rallied from an 3-0 deficit to reach the World Series.

People always said that some year, a team would come back from being down three games to none. But they said it the same way they say there may be life on other planets, that Bigfoot exists and that the Cubs may get to the World Series. You leave it out there as a possibility, but you never really believe it.

Why would you? Baseball had played 100 previous postseasons heading into this October. In those, there had been 136 best-of-seven (or longer) series. And not only had no team ever come back to win the series after losing the first three games, none had even forced a seventh game. Only the 1999 Mets forced a sixth game. Only five teams before the Red Sox even forced a fifth game.

And then the Red Sox beat the Yankees four consecutive games.

"I know the city of Boston appreciates how hard this was,'' Game 7 winner Derek Lowe said, "because this was the best team in baseball for a lot of years and we had just lost by 11 runs to come back.''

The Red Sox did it despite suffering one of the worst defeats in postseason history when they allowed 19 runs in Game 3. They did it despite having to rally from a two-run deficit in Game 4 and a one-run deficit in Game 5. They did it despite having to face the greatest closer in postseason history, Mariano Rivera. They did it despite having to win the final two games on the road in Yankee Stadium. They did it despite not getting a single RBI from Manny Ramirez the entire series.

"We knew we had to win Game 4, not because it was an elimination game but because winning it would put the ball in Pedro's hand for Game 5,'' first baseman Kevin Millar said. "And that would get the ball to Curt for Game 6. And then it would be Game 7 and anything can happen.''

Well, that makes it sound simple but it wasn't. In fact, the way the Red Sox rallied helps explain why we had never seen a team do it before. To do so requires you to pull out all stops and play every game as if it is the last, burning through so many pitchers that each victory almost makes the next one even more difficult.

Forget about Curt Schilling's Game 6 start with the sutured tendons; the rest of the staff was also supremely challenged. The Red Sox had to use three of their starters in relief in Game 5 and two in Games 6 and 7. They had to start Lowe on two days' rest in Game 7. They had to use Pedro Martinez on one day rest in Game 7. They had to use Bronson Arroyo on one day rest in Game 5 and on no days rest in Game 6. They had to use closer Keith Foulke for 2 2/3 innings in Game 4, then use him for 1 1/3 innings the next day and for one inning the next day in Game 6 (he threw 100 pitches combined in the three games).

"They weren't only willing to go out there on fumes, they were able to get people out,'' manager Terry Francona said. "We're not here celebrating if they don't get some people out.''

They did. After the Red Sox bullpen allowed 17 runs in seven innings in Game 4, the relievers allowed two runs the next 18.

And while the pitchers were doing their job, the batters had to remain focused on theirs, not giving in to the incredible odds they faced, instead being patient with each at-bat, working the count, settling for singles, going the opposite way, never trying to do end the game with one swing. In short, they had to do everything the Yankees hitters did not once Boston's comeback began.

Millar, for instance, started the key ninth inning rally in Game 4 by leading off the ninth with a humble walk off Rivera. Then pinch-runner Dave Roberts stole second (after nearly getting picked off) to put the tying run in scoring position for Bill Mueller, who singled him home.

"I think that was the biggest play of the series, Roberts' stolen base,'' Lowe said. "It got us an opportunity to get to Rivera.''

By pushing Games 4 and 5 into nine extra innings, the Red Sox also were able to wear out the Yankees' pitching staff, setting up a seventh game when New York was forced to use several pitchers who simply weren't up to the task of shutting down Boston's lineup. Kevin Brown didn't make it through the second inning, Javier Vasquez gave up a grand slam on his first pitch and the Red Sox broke to a comfortable 6-0 lead that made things easier for Lowe.

After that, the only thing Boston needed was David Ortiz swinging the bat so well that Wilford Brimley should have been his manager, Mark Bellhorn slipping a three-run homer just over the right-field fence, Johnny Damon finally breaking out of his slump to become the first player other than Yogi Berra to homer twice in a seventh game and ... well, you get the point.

The Red Sox just became the first team in baseball history to rally from a 3-0 deficit in the postseason. And after watching how difficult it was, don't expect it to happen again for another century.

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