They finished up a baseball miracle last night, a Boston miracle at Yankee Stadium, a miracle that will be talked about with all curses back in Boston from now on. The Red Sox finished off their miracle and finished off the Yankees and officially became one of the best stories of all time, in any sport, in any ballpark or arena where a team is told that you are never supposed to give up, not even if that team is the Red Sox. Not even if it's the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees have owned them as long as they have owned baseball.
Just not last night. And not this week, one of the most amazing weeks in the history of the game. And maybe not ever again. The Yankees still have all the numbers on the Red Sox, will always have the numbers. The Red Sox now have this: They have now handed the 2004 Yankees the worst loss in the history of their franchise. The Yankees had the Red Sox three games to none. The Red Sox came all the way back and knocked Steinbrenner's Yankees all the way to pitchers and catchers at Legends Field in Tampa.
David Ortiz hit one out in the first inning of Game 7 and Johnny Damon hit a grand slam in the second and then Damon tried to take Javier Vazquez to Gerard Ave. in the fourth. It was 8-0 and 8-1 and 8-3 and 9-3 and finally 10-3 in the ninth. Finally it was Alan Embree, who never got the proper chance to shut down the Yankees in Game 7 last year, against Ruben Sierra, two outs in the bottom of the ninth. And at the stroke of midnight for the 2004, $194 million New York Yankees, Embree got Sierra to ground to Pokey Reese and the Red Sox were the first team in the history of baseball to come all the way back from where they were after the Yankees beat them 19-8 Saturday night.
And maybe, just maybe, back in Boston, Red Sox fans were free at last, whatever happens next week. Because their team had done this to Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, who sure had his chances in Boston last weekend to put the Yankees in the World Series. Because they came back and won in 12 innings in Game 4 and 14 innings in Game 5, and when they got the Yankees down in New York for the last two games, they walked all over them and never let them up.
"How many times have we walked out of this place with our heads down?" Mike Timlin said on the field afterward. "Finally we walk off this field with our heads high."
They were three outs away from next season in Game 4, and Mariano Rivera had the ball. Rivera came out for the bottom of the ninth and was wild with Kevin Millar and walked him. And no one knew it at the time, not even the truest of true believers in the Red Sox clubhouse, but the Yankees were the ones stumbling now, stumbling down a slippery slope toward next season, falling all over themselves with their $194 million payroll and the notion that the Red Sox could never beat them when the money was on the table.
Then Ortiz hit that Game 4 home run in the 12th, made the kind of swing with everything on the line that A-Rod, who was supposed to go to the Red Sox before he came to the Yankees, never made. Or Gary Sheffield. Or anybody. Then Ortiz knocked in the winning run in Game 5, and Curt Schilling limped out like a baseball Willis Reed, and last night, Derek Lowe, who wasn't even supposed to be in Boston's postseason rotation, gave the richest batting order in the history of baseball one hit over the first six innings. By then it was 8-1.
It went to 8-3 when Terry Francona seemed to have some sort of Grady Little episode and brought Pedro Martinez in for the seventh. But Mark Bellhorn came right back in the eighth and hit another Red Sox home run to make it 9-3 and the Red Sox got an add-on run after that. Then it was counting down toward midnight for the Yankees, with beaten All-Stars everywhere you looked.
At the end last night, Red Sox fans began to appear from everywhere near the Red Sox dugout, coming from all corners of the Stadium, as if they were coming around from Kenmore Square onto Yawkey Way. They chanted for the Red Sox and sang one of Boston's crazy baseball anthems, "Sweet Caroline." They held up Johnny Damon T-shirts and Red Sox home uniforms and even chanted, real loud, "Who's Your Daddy?" while their team celebrated and sprayed champagne on the field at Yankee Stadium the way the Marlins did last October.
All this money spent, three times more than most teams. And at the end, Torre couldn't buy the one hit he needed. Couldn't get the outs he needed. Did not trust Tom Gordon and Paul Quantrill, who both had pitched a million innings during the regular season. He had to throw a $15 million shot case like Kevin Brown in the biggest game of the year. Brown had nothing. Javier Vazquez, whom the Yankees wanted more than Schilling, had nothing, and the Yankees were never in the game, not for a New York minute. Now Steinbrenner has spent - what? - about three-quarters of a billion since 2000 on teams that couldn't deliver a World Series.
Somehow the Red Sox end up in the World Series, end up better off with Manny Ramirez on their team instead of Alex Rodriguez. Somehow the Red Sox came from 0-3 down and finally beat the Yankees at Yankee Stadium, which sounded like downtown Boston at the end. Sounded like Fenway Park.
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