December 26, 2002, Fenway Park. The Yankees sign Cuban pitcher José Contreras, and new Sox president Larry Lucchino, in a fit of petulance, calls the Yankees "the Evil Empire."
Oh, really? Putting aside the question of which team is actually more evil... The term "Evil Empire" had been used by President Ronald Reagan -- who knew more about baseball than he did about economics or foreign affairs -- to describe the Soviet Union. Excuse me, Larry, but how do you square the image of the heavily capitalist Yankees with Communism and its prohibition of private property?
Some Yankee Fans, however, connect the word "Empire" with the villains of the Star Wars film franchise, including one fan who made a T-shirt with Darth Vader's helmet, saying, "May the Curse be with you."
October 11, 2003, Fenway Park. Game 3 of the ALCS, and another Roger vs. Pedro matchup. Pedro hits Karim Garcia in the head, on purpose. Not the first time he's hit a Yankee on purpose, nor will it be the last, but it is easily the most notorious.
There is yelling back and forth. Jorge Posada, himself a former Pedro victim, yells in Spanish so that Pedro has no problem understanding. Pedro points at his head, then at Jorge. Message: "I'm going to hit you in the head." Making such a threat is a crime.
Later in the game, Clemens pitches to Manny Ramirez, and the pitch is head-high... but over the plate, and clearly not intended to hit Manny. (As we've seen, if Roger Clemens wanted to hit a batter, that batter got hit.) Manny points at Clemens and walks toward him, still holding the bat. The benches clear again, and Yankee coach Don Zimmer -- manager of the Sox in 1978, but also a former player who nearly died from a beaning in Triple-A ball in 1953 -- runs toward Pedro.
Pedro Martinez, age 32, grabs Don Zimmer, age 72, by the head, and throws him to the ground. Attempted murder, if the jurisdiction is New York City. In Boston, Zimmer ends up forced to apologize, with Pedro getting a $50,000 fine -- pocket change, with what the Sox are paying him.
Refresh my memory: Did we have to apologize to Japan for putting Pearl Harbor in the way of our Pacific Coast?
When things finally settle down, Clemens finishes his strikeout of Manny. The Yankees win, 4-3. The next day, Game 4 is rained out, giving everyone a 24-hour cooling-off period, which was really for the best.
English soccer fans like to refer to their rivals as "The Scum," and their rivals' fans as "Scummers." As far as I'm concerned, this was the day the Red Sox stopped being mere arch-rivals, and truly became The Scum. They can take their "Evil Empire" talk and shove it up their own evil asses.
October 16, 2003, Yankee Stadium. It comes down to a Game 7. David Ortiz hits 2 home runs (cough-steroids-cough), and the Sox lead 5-2 in the bottom of the 8th. By this point, Ortiz, a.k.a. "Big Papi," has been hitting the Yanks like crazy all year. His success against the Yankees will eventually beg the question, "How many times does a guy have to get big hits off you before you plunk him?"
Ah, but there's a double standard at work: A Sox pitcher can hit a Yankee batter, and get away with it every... single... time; a Yankee pitcher can hit a Sox batter, and he gets thrown out of the game, fined and suspended. Anyway, the Sox need 5 more outs.
Derek Jeter doubles. Bernie Williams singles, Jeter scores. It's 5-3. Sox manager Grady Little comes out, and he has to know that Pedro has thrown too many pitches, and that the next 2 batters are Hideki Matsui, a lefty; and Posada, a switch-hitter but much better from the left side than from the right; so the right thing to do is to bring in a lefthanded pitcher, probably Alan Embree (who usually pitched well against the Yankees), to pitch Matsui lefty-on-lefty and turn Posada to his weaker right side. The decision seems obvious to everyone: Sox fans, Yankee Fans, the Fox broadcast team, neutral TV viewers.
Obvious to everyone, that is, except for the man whose decision it was: Little. He leaves Pedro in. Matsui hits a ground-rule double, moving Bernie to 3rd base.
2nd & 3rd, only 1 out, and the dangerous (especially from the left side) Posada coming up. Now Little has got to take Pedro out, and bring in Embree.
But he stays in the dugout. Pedro remains on the mound, and Jorge dumps a looper into short center, scoring Bernie and Hideki. 5-5. Yet another legendary Sox choke, and The Stadium shakes with fans cheering and jumping. (And, considering Game 3, I find it very fitting that Posada got the hit that ended Pedro's night.)
Bottom of the 11th, and Tim Wakefield, who had beaten the Yanks in Games 1 and 4 of the series, and had pitched a scoreless 10th, opens the inning by throwing a 69 miles-per-hour knuckleball to Aaron Boone. Boom. Yankees 6, Red Sox 5. Boone takes his place alongside Bucky Dent and Bill Buckner.
Was this the greatest game of all time? Or, at least, the greatest Yanks-Sox game? It might have been, if the Yankees had won the ensuing World Series. But they lost. I don't want to talk about it. Jeff Fucking Weaver.
So, to me, the Bucky Dent Game remains the greatest. We won the World Series after that one.
November 28, 2003, Fenway Park. Having failed to trade Nomar to the Texas Rangers for Alex Rodriguez, the Red Sox instead pull off a "reverse Tom Seaver": They trade 4 nobodies -- Casey Fossum, Brandon Lyon, Jorge De La Rosa, and Mike Goss (who never even made the major leagues) -- to the Arizona Diamondbacks for one of the top pitchers in the game, Curt Schilling, who had previously driven the Yankees nuts in the 2001 World Series.
Oh, really? Putting aside the question of which team is actually more evil... The term "Evil Empire" had been used by President Ronald Reagan -- who knew more about baseball than he did about economics or foreign affairs -- to describe the Soviet Union. Excuse me, Larry, but how do you square the image of the heavily capitalist Yankees with Communism and its prohibition of private property?
Some Yankee Fans, however, connect the word "Empire" with the villains of the Star Wars film franchise, including one fan who made a T-shirt with Darth Vader's helmet, saying, "May the Curse be with you."
October 11, 2003, Fenway Park. Game 3 of the ALCS, and another Roger vs. Pedro matchup. Pedro hits Karim Garcia in the head, on purpose. Not the first time he's hit a Yankee on purpose, nor will it be the last, but it is easily the most notorious.
There is yelling back and forth. Jorge Posada, himself a former Pedro victim, yells in Spanish so that Pedro has no problem understanding. Pedro points at his head, then at Jorge. Message: "I'm going to hit you in the head." Making such a threat is a crime.
Later in the game, Clemens pitches to Manny Ramirez, and the pitch is head-high... but over the plate, and clearly not intended to hit Manny. (As we've seen, if Roger Clemens wanted to hit a batter, that batter got hit.) Manny points at Clemens and walks toward him, still holding the bat. The benches clear again, and Yankee coach Don Zimmer -- manager of the Sox in 1978, but also a former player who nearly died from a beaning in Triple-A ball in 1953 -- runs toward Pedro.
Pedro Martinez, age 32, grabs Don Zimmer, age 72, by the head, and throws him to the ground. Attempted murder, if the jurisdiction is New York City. In Boston, Zimmer ends up forced to apologize, with Pedro getting a $50,000 fine -- pocket change, with what the Sox are paying him.
Refresh my memory: Did we have to apologize to Japan for putting Pearl Harbor in the way of our Pacific Coast?
English soccer fans like to refer to their rivals as "The Scum," and their rivals' fans as "Scummers." As far as I'm concerned, this was the day the Red Sox stopped being mere arch-rivals, and truly became The Scum. They can take their "Evil Empire" talk and shove it up their own evil asses.
October 16, 2003, Yankee Stadium. It comes down to a Game 7. David Ortiz hits 2 home runs (cough-steroids-cough), and the Sox lead 5-2 in the bottom of the 8th. By this point, Ortiz, a.k.a. "Big Papi," has been hitting the Yanks like crazy all year. His success against the Yankees will eventually beg the question, "How many times does a guy have to get big hits off you before you plunk him?"
Ah, but there's a double standard at work: A Sox pitcher can hit a Yankee batter, and get away with it every... single... time; a Yankee pitcher can hit a Sox batter, and he gets thrown out of the game, fined and suspended. Anyway, the Sox need 5 more outs.
Derek Jeter doubles. Bernie Williams singles, Jeter scores. It's 5-3. Sox manager Grady Little comes out, and he has to know that Pedro has thrown too many pitches, and that the next 2 batters are Hideki Matsui, a lefty; and Posada, a switch-hitter but much better from the left side than from the right; so the right thing to do is to bring in a lefthanded pitcher, probably Alan Embree (who usually pitched well against the Yankees), to pitch Matsui lefty-on-lefty and turn Posada to his weaker right side. The decision seems obvious to everyone: Sox fans, Yankee Fans, the Fox broadcast team, neutral TV viewers.
Obvious to everyone, that is, except for the man whose decision it was: Little. He leaves Pedro in. Matsui hits a ground-rule double, moving Bernie to 3rd base.
2nd & 3rd, only 1 out, and the dangerous (especially from the left side) Posada coming up. Now Little has got to take Pedro out, and bring in Embree.
But he stays in the dugout. Pedro remains on the mound, and Jorge dumps a looper into short center, scoring Bernie and Hideki. 5-5. Yet another legendary Sox choke, and The Stadium shakes with fans cheering and jumping. (And, considering Game 3, I find it very fitting that Posada got the hit that ended Pedro's night.)
Bottom of the 11th, and Tim Wakefield, who had beaten the Yanks in Games 1 and 4 of the series, and had pitched a scoreless 10th, opens the inning by throwing a 69 miles-per-hour knuckleball to Aaron Boone. Boom. Yankees 6, Red Sox 5. Boone takes his place alongside Bucky Dent and Bill Buckner.
So, to me, the Bucky Dent Game remains the greatest. We won the World Series after that one.
November 28, 2003, Fenway Park. Having failed to trade Nomar to the Texas Rangers for Alex Rodriguez, the Red Sox instead pull off a "reverse Tom Seaver": They trade 4 nobodies -- Casey Fossum, Brandon Lyon, Jorge De La Rosa, and Mike Goss (who never even made the major leagues) -- to the Arizona Diamondbacks for one of the top pitchers in the game, Curt Schilling, who had previously driven the Yankees nuts in the 2001 World Series.
As a Philadelphia Phillie, Schilling had been described by general manager Lee Thomas as follows: "One day out of five, he's a horse; the other four, he's a horse's ass." Schilling lives up to that reputation at his introductory press conference in Boston, by saying, "I guess I hate the Yankees now."
February 15, 2004, Yankee Stadium. With the Sox having failed to trade for A-Rod, making a very public mess of the negotiations with the Texas Rangers, the Yankees succeed, sending Alfonso Soriano to Texas for the biggest name (if not the best player) in baseball. With Jeter still at shortstop, A-Rod moves over to 3rd base.
July 1, 2004, Yankee Stadium. As wild a regular-season game as you'll ever see. The Yankees end up using everyone on their roster. The Sox use everyone on theirs, except for 2. One is backup catcher Doug Mirabelli, who had to be held back in case of emergency. The other is Nomar, apparently injured but not on the Disabled List -- and the fact that Nomar is not sent into what is very much a key game, calendar be damned, is telling.
Once, Nomar, Jeter and A-Rod were the subjects of a debate as to who was the best shortstop in baseball. Now, Jeter is making a diving play that saves the game, A-Rod is playing 3rd base and moving to shortstop after Jeter got hurt on that play, and Nomar is sitting on the bench, leading to his being traded by the Sox within a few days.
Manny homers in the top of the 13th, but Miguel Cairo and John Flaherty double in the bottom of the 13th to win it. Yankees 6, Red Sox 5. A stunning game whose re-airing on the YES Network the next morning gets relabeled from Yankees Recap to the newest episode of Yankees Classics.
It also allowed "Flash" Flaherty to turn his one big hit in the major leagues into a broadcasting career on YES. Then again, one big hit is more than Fran Healy, a backup catcher for the Yankees who broadcast for both New York teams, ever got.
July 24, 2004, Fenway Park. Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo -- except for Bo Derek, white people should never wear cornrows -- purposely hits A-Rod in the back. A-Rod curses Captain Cornrows out. Sox catcher and Captain Jason Varitek leaves on his mask, like the coward that he is, and pushes his catcher's mitt into A-Rod's pretty face, instigating a full-scale brawl.
July 24, 2004, Fenway Park. Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo -- except for Bo Derek, white people should never wear cornrows -- purposely hits A-Rod in the back. A-Rod curses Captain Cornrows out. Sox catcher and Captain Jason Varitek leaves on his mask, like the coward that he is, and pushes his catcher's mitt into A-Rod's pretty face, instigating a full-scale brawl.
Bill Mueller takes Mariano Rivera deep in the bottom of the 9th. Red Sox 9, Yankees 8. Mueller has often been suspected of steroid use, but has thus far been protected from such revelations.
September 19, 2004, Yankee Stadium. Yankees 11, Red Sox 1. The Yankees, the one team that seems to give Pedro trouble, beat him yet again, pounding him. In a postgame press conference, he says, "I just tip my cap, and call the Yankees my daddy."
"Who's Your Daddy?" chants will dog Pedro for the rest of his career. One fan -- was it Vinny Milano, a.k.a. Bald Vinny the River Avenue T-shirt vendor? -- made up a T-shirt showing Darth Vader wearing a Yankee jersey, and saying, as if to Luke Skywalker, "Pedro, I am your father!"
October 17, 2004, Fenway Park. Game 4 of the American League Championship Series. The Yankees had won the 1st 3, including 19-8 last night. The Sox were looking pitiful. Still, their resident wisenheimer, Kevin Millar, told the media, "Don't let us win tonight."
It seemed like a ridiculous thing to say, for 8 1/2 innings. It was 4-3 Yankees going to the bottom of the 9th. All the Yankees needed to complete a sweep was 3 more outs without a run, and Mariano Rivera was on the mound.
But, Cliché Alert: Walks can kill you, especially the leadoff variety. Rivera issued a leadoff walk to Millar himself. Manager Terry Francona took Millar out, replacing him with pinch-runner Dave Roberts. Everybody watching this game, in Fenway or on TV, knew that Roberts would try to steal 2nd base. Joe Torre could have called a pitchout. He didn't, and Roberts had what is now the most famous stolen base in baseball history. Bill Mueller singled up the middle to bring Roberts home with the tying run.
In the bottom of the 12th, Paul Quantrill allowed a single to Manny Ramirez, and gave up a walkoff home run to Ortiz. Red Sox 6, Yankees 4.
October 18, 2004, Fenway Park. Okay, it was 1 game. The Yankees just had to win tonight to close it out in Boston. And Mike Mussina had taken a perfect game into the 7th inning of Game 1. This shouldn't be too hard.
Is it sounding like the 1978 Boston Massacre yet, with the cleat on the other foot?
The Yankees trailed 2-1 in the top of the 6th, but took a 4-2 lead. That lead held into the bottom of the 8th. But former Sox pitcher Tom Gordon gave up a leadoff homer to Ortiz. Again, Millar drew a walk; again, he was replaced by Roberts. No steal necessary this time: Trot Nixon singled, Gabe Kapler ran for Nixon, Mariano was brought in, and Varitek hit a sacrifice fly to score Roberts and tie the game. For the 2nd night in a row, Rivera had blown a postseason save. The entire rest of his career, he did that only twice.
The game went to the bottom of the 14th. At 5 hours and 49 minutes, it was, at the time, the longest postseason game by time. Esteban Loiaza, a former Chicago White Sox ace who'd been shaky for the Yanks that season, had pitched valiantly since the 11th, and struck Mark Bellhorn out to start the inning. But he was out of gas. Again, it was walks that made the difference: He walked Damon and Ramirez, bracketing a strikeout of Orlando Cabrera. Then Ortiz hit not a home run, but a looping single that was enough to bring Damon home. Red Sox 5, Yankees 4.
October 19, 2004, Yankee Stadium. Game 6. The series had come back to Yankee Stadium, home of Mystique and Aura and 39 American League Pennants and 26 World Championships. All the Yanks had to do was win tonight, and all those brand-new Sox memories would have been as wasted as Carlton Fisk’s home run that won Game 6 of the 1975 World Series.
Except Curt Schilling (who had said before the series, "I'm not sure I can think of any scenario more enjoyable than making 55,000 Yankee Fans shut up") was pitching for the Sox. So badly hurt that he couldn't pitch well in Game 1, he’d had a special surgery on his ankle that allowed him to pitch tonight. Who pitches 6 days after surgery? Curt Schilling did, and has been called "courageous" ever since. If a Yankee had done it, what would the media have called him?
And the Yankees refused to test that ankle by bunting on him. John McGraw would have done it. Casey Stengel would have done it. Earl Weaver (not a New York manager but a crafty one) would have done it. You can be damn sure that Billy Martin would have done it. Joe Torre didn't do it. What good is "class" if you lose? Especially to The Scum?
Schilling pitched 7 solid innings, and Bellhorn (cough-steroids-cough) hit a home run. It was a reverse of the Jeffrey Maier play in 1996: The ball hit a front-row fan in the chest and bounced back onto the field. It was an obvious home run, but the umpires ruled it went off the wall. Sox managermanager Terry Francona appealed, and the ruling was (sadly, but correctly) changed to a homer.
The Sox still led 4-2 in the bottom of the 8th, but the Yankees got Jeter on 1st. With 1 out, Alex Rodriguez came to the plate. And the pitcher was Bronson Arroyo, the same matchup as on July 24.
Schilling pitched 7 solid innings, and Bellhorn (cough-steroids-cough) hit a home run. It was a reverse of the Jeffrey Maier play in 1996: The ball hit a front-row fan in the chest and bounced back onto the field. It was an obvious home run, but the umpires ruled it went off the wall. Sox manager
The Sox still led 4-2 in the bottom of the 8th, but the Yankees got Jeter on 1st. With 1 out, Alex Rodriguez came to the plate. And the pitcher was Bronson Arroyo, the same matchup as on July 24.
Alex hit a weak grounder back to the mound, and as Arroyo tried to make the tag just before 1st base, he (or so it first appeared) dropped the ball. It had been 18 years (minus 6 days) since the Bill Buckner Game. Now, at another New York ballpark in October, a ball rolled away from 1st base down the right-field line, and a run scored against the Red Sox! It was 4-3 Boston, and A-Rod was on 2nd with the tying run! The Stadium was going bananas! Red Sox fans were in full "Oh, noooo, not again! It can't be happening again!" mode.
Except this call was reversed as well. It was The Slap Play. A-Rod slapped the ball out of Arroyo's glove. It met baseball's legal definition of interference, and he was called out. What's more, Jeter was sent back to 1st.
That's the part that bothers me, ruling-wise: Jeter had nothing to do with the interference, and he would have had 2nd legitimately even if A-Rod had done nothing out of the ordinary, and Arroyo had been allowed to properly tag him out. It wasn't Jeter's fault: 2nd base was rightfully his, interference or no, even if 3rd and home were not.
This killed the rally, but, as mad as I was at the umpires, A-Rod was rightfully the real target of Yankee Fans' wrath, including my own. This was the beginning of A-Rod's image as "a player who screws the Yankees over in the clutch," and he did not shake it until October 2009. Though he did his damnedest to restore it in the next 3 Octobers, and again in 2015. (So how many bad Octobers does one good October excuse? Apparently, at least 8.)
The Sox held on to win by that same 4-2 score, and the series was tied, the 1st time a Major League Baseball team had ever come back from 3-games-to-none down to force a Game 7.
For the first time since I became aware of the Curse of the Bambino, I believed it was not going to work. As the man who popularized the Curse, Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, pointed out, the kinds of things that usually went against the Red Sox and/or in the Yankees favor were now working the other way around.
As bad as the next night was, Game 6 was really the day that any curse, jinx, hex, hoodoo, hammer, whammy, whommy, whatever you want to call it, that the Yankees had over the Red Sox came to an end.
And those of us who are old enough to remember could feel it coming. I had no confidence at all that the Yankees would win Game 7, not even at home, especially with their starting pitching options so messed-up. As the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Brooklyn Dodger fan as a kid but a Red Sox fan since going to Harvard, likes to say, "There's always these omens in baseball." This was an omen to rival Damien Thorn.
Had the Yankees won Game 6, there would have been no Game 7. David Ortiz's "heroics" of Game 4 and Game 5 would have been meaningless, as they were the year before. The Yankees would have prepared for the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, and probably won it.
If that had happened, you can be damn sure that the outcry from Red Sox fans (and fans of other teams that hate the Yankees) that, due to the steroid use of A-Rod, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield, "The Yankees cheated" and should be stripped of their Pennant and title. And their willing accomplices in the media would have gone along with it. There would have been a cloud over the Yankees, the way there never has been over the Red Sox, who, through Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, were far more reliant on performance-enhancing drugs, and, from 2003 to 2016, the Big Papi Years, probably wouldn't even have made the Playoffs, much less won 3 World Series.
The Yankees wouldn't have gotten away with it, as the Red Sox always have.
Still, having that cloud over us -- which we essentially had put over us anyway -- would have been preferable to the insufferable unearned arrogance of the Boston fans of 2004 onward, especially the bandwagoners.
And I still want the blood on Schilling's sock tested! I think he was using steroids, too! And somebody else must think so. It can't be only his rotten personality, his politics, and his post-retirement business shenanigans that's keeping him out of the Hall of Fame. If anything, those things, as bad as they are, should be irrelevant as to whether he belongs in Cooperstown.
October 20, 2004, Yankee Stadium. Game 7 is a disaster from the outset, as proven steroid user Ortiz homers again. Red Sox 10, Yankees 3.
The game was over in a hurry, as emergency starter Kevin Brown gave up a 2-run homer to Ortiz in the 1st inning, and Javier Vázquez gave up a grand slam to Damon in the 2nd. In a manner of speaking, it was the longest game in Yankee history. We had to endure 9 innings' worth, 3 1/2 hours' worth of Sox fans' celebrating and taunting, before it ended.
Or so they thought. Now we know the truth.
Except this call was reversed as well. It was The Slap Play. A-Rod slapped the ball out of Arroyo's glove. It met baseball's legal definition of interference, and he was called out. What's more, Jeter was sent back to 1st.
That's the part that bothers me, ruling-wise: Jeter had nothing to do with the interference, and he would have had 2nd legitimately even if A-Rod had done nothing out of the ordinary, and Arroyo had been allowed to properly tag him out. It wasn't Jeter's fault: 2nd base was rightfully his, interference or no, even if 3rd and home were not.
This killed the rally, but, as mad as I was at the umpires, A-Rod was rightfully the real target of Yankee Fans' wrath, including my own. This was the beginning of A-Rod's image as "a player who screws the Yankees over in the clutch," and he did not shake it until October 2009. Though he did his damnedest to restore it in the next 3 Octobers, and again in 2015. (So how many bad Octobers does one good October excuse? Apparently, at least 8.)
The Sox held on to win by that same 4-2 score, and the series was tied, the 1st time a Major League Baseball team had ever come back from 3-games-to-none down to force a Game 7.
For the first time since I became aware of the Curse of the Bambino, I believed it was not going to work. As the man who popularized the Curse, Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, pointed out, the kinds of things that usually went against the Red Sox and/or in the Yankees favor were now working the other way around.
As bad as the next night was, Game 6 was really the day that any curse, jinx, hex, hoodoo, hammer, whammy, whommy, whatever you want to call it, that the Yankees had over the Red Sox came to an end.
And those of us who are old enough to remember could feel it coming. I had no confidence at all that the Yankees would win Game 7, not even at home, especially with their starting pitching options so messed-up. As the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Brooklyn Dodger fan as a kid but a Red Sox fan since going to Harvard, likes to say, "There's always these omens in baseball." This was an omen to rival Damien Thorn.
Had the Yankees won Game 6, there would have been no Game 7. David Ortiz's "heroics" of Game 4 and Game 5 would have been meaningless, as they were the year before. The Yankees would have prepared for the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, and probably won it.
If that had happened, you can be damn sure that the outcry from Red Sox fans (and fans of other teams that hate the Yankees) that, due to the steroid use of A-Rod, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield, "The Yankees cheated" and should be stripped of their Pennant and title. And their willing accomplices in the media would have gone along with it. There would have been a cloud over the Yankees, the way there never has been over the Red Sox, who, through Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, were far more reliant on performance-enhancing drugs, and, from 2003 to 2016, the Big Papi Years, probably wouldn't even have made the Playoffs, much less won 3 World Series.
The Yankees wouldn't have gotten away with it, as the Red Sox always have.
Still, having that cloud over us -- which we essentially had put over us anyway -- would have been preferable to the insufferable unearned arrogance of the Boston fans of 2004 onward, especially the bandwagoners.
And I still want the blood on Schilling's sock tested! I think he was using steroids, too! And somebody else must think so. It can't be only his rotten personality, his politics, and his post-retirement business shenanigans that's keeping him out of the Hall of Fame. If anything, those things, as bad as they are, should be irrelevant as to whether he belongs in Cooperstown.
October 20, 2004, Yankee Stadium. Game 7 is a disaster from the outset, as proven steroid user Ortiz homers again. Red Sox 10, Yankees 3.
What a difference 4 days can make.
The game was over in a hurry, as emergency starter Kevin Brown gave up a 2-run homer to Ortiz in the 1st inning, and Javier Vázquez gave up a grand slam to Damon in the 2nd. In a manner of speaking, it was the longest game in Yankee history. We had to endure 9 innings' worth, 3 1/2 hours' worth of Sox fans' celebrating and taunting, before it ended.
To paraphrase New York gangster Henry Hill: "It was revenge for Bucky Dent, and a lot of other things. And there was nothing that we could do about it. Papi was a made man, and A-Rod wasn't. And we had to sit still and take it. It was among the New Englanders. It was real Chowdahead shit."
The Red Sox became the 1st Major League Baseball team to come back from a 3-games-to-0 postseason deficit, and win the Pennant, clinching at Yankee Stadium, a house of pain for them for so long. They went on to beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, killing the Curse of the Bambino after 86 years.
Or so they thought. Now we know the truth.
Part VI, the finale, is ahead.
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