OT Congrats from Chicago

It's rare that a sports story makes the front page of the
Chicago Tribune, rarer still when it's about the Red Sox.

Reprinted here, without permission, for your enjoyment.


Red Sox turn world, fans upside down
Rick Morrissey

October 21, 2004

NEW YORK -- Compared with the Cubs' painful history, the Red Sox' painful
history is amateur hour.

But it was always nice to have Boston around for commiseration purposes, to know
there was someone else out there who understood. After what happened Wednesday
night, though, the Cubs might be all by their lonesome in the lonesome-loser
category.

Johnny Damon, the man whose barber apparently hails from Nazareth, hit two home
runs, including a grand slam, to help the Red Sox overcome the Yankees 10-3 in
Game 7 of a wild American League Championship Series that was murder on
pacemakers everywhere.

You figured the Red Sox would blow it somehow Wednesday night, and you figure
they will blow it some way in the World Series.

But that type of thinking, a virulent strain of thinking—a cynic's thinking—is
for another day. What happened here, on a hallowed, shocked patch of earth in
the Bronx, is almost unthinkable.

Although the Red Sox's victory doesn't end the Curse of the Bambino (which
involves World Series title aridity), something changed here, something deep and
elemental.

If you can't count on the Yankees yanking the rug from underneath the Red Sox,
then what else is open for debate now? Death? Taxes? The Cubs in a World Series
someday? OK, let's not get carried away.

A group of mostly bearded, creatively coifed free spirits with nothing to lose
except an 85-year reputation for gagging under pressure charged back from a 3-0
deficit in the ALCS against their hated and extremely successful nemeses. In the
process, they pulled off one of the biggest surprises in American sports history.

You don't come back from a 3-0 deficit. You just don't. You don't come back from
a 3-0 deficit against the vaunted New York Yankees in the ALCS. You don't come
back from a 3-0 deficit against a team with a long history of crimes against
your people.

But this team did.

This band of self-described idiots, this ship of fools, ignored all the history
stacked against them. There's a good chance this group of assorted goofballs,
cowboys and dreamers didn't do particularly well in history class as kids. So
whenever they were told about the fact no team in the annals of major-league
history had won a playoff series after trailing 3-0, they shrugged, they
laughed, they spit some more tobacco. And they played some more ball their way.

"They're a little nutsy" is how Red Sox manager Terry Francona put it.

Boston has not won a World Series since 1918, which is a long time in everything
except Cub years. That the Red Sox are going to the World Series is the main
thing here, but the complete collapse of the Yankees doesn't hurt one bit.

Long-suffering Red Sox fans—the only kind of Red Sox fans—were partying long and
hard into the good night Wednesday, knowing the world somehow had been knocked
off its axis.

"The reason we're here is to win, not to dream about winning," Francona had said
before Game 7.

Damon came into the game hitting .103 in the ALCS and left with the stage he had
stolen. One moment he was reported missing, the next he might as well have been
wearing a spangled uniform.

His second-inning grand slam off reliever Javier Vazquez gave the Red Sox a 6-0
lead at Yankee Stadium. All you need to know about Wednesday night was that
Yankees starter Kevin Brown already was gone by the time Damon stepped to the plate.

The Yankees' fried pitching staff was more charred than the Red Sox's fried
pitching staff. Derek Lowe, forgotten as a starter earlier in this series,
elbowed his way into Boston lore by giving up one hit and one run in six
innings. An amazing end to an amazing ALCS.

Think about what happened in this series, a series that feels as if started
three weeks ago.

The Red Sox lost 19-8 to the Yankees in Game 3. That seemed to be the
punctuation at the end of the sentence. Nineteen to eight.

Not only had the Red Sox lost, they had lost in a spectacular fashion in Boston.
Here, in front of our eyes, was an entire town being wiped out by a mud slide.

But something happened. Something happened slowwwwwwwly, like sap oozing from a
maple tree.

The Red Sox outlasted the Yankees in a 5-hour-2-minute miniseries entitled "Game
4." Everything that came later flowed from that game.

Momentum shifted, glacially, but it shifted.

The Red Sox won after 14 innings and 5:49 of baseball in Game 5. David Ortiz,
who had the game-winning hits in both Games 4 and 5, became a national
celebrity. The bullpens for both teams were as worn down as a bald tire.
Boston's Curt Schilling won Game 6 on one heart and one good ankle.

And Game 7 loomed with all its possibilities for glory or heartbreak.

Now come all the questions about whether the Red Sox can reverse the curse,
which supposedly began in 1920 when Boston owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to
the Yankees for $100,000 and a loan to fund the Broadway show "No, No, Nanette."
The Red Sox never won a World Series after that, and the Yankees won 26 titles.

Better questions about a curse than about why you can't seem to get past the
Yankees.

Put in its most stark terms, this was Darth Vader against Charlie Brown, if
Charlie Brown had a $125 million player budget instead of a dumb, old rock from
Halloween.

This is a franchise forever defined by a ball rolling through first baseman Bill
Buckner's splayed legs in 1986, the last time the franchise played in a World
Series.

Everybody's going to need a week of sleep after this thing, the only problem
being there's no time for it.

Copyright © 2004, The Chicago Tribune

Ken Fortenberry wrote:
It's rare that a sports story makes the front page of the
Chicago Tribune, rarer still when it's about the Red Sox.


Snip article

Thanks for sharing that Ken.

Russell

Die hard Red Sox fan since 1964.

Ken Fortenberry wrote:
It's rare that a sports story makes the front page of the
Chicago Tribune, rarer still when it's about the Red Sox.


Snip article

Thanks for sharing that Ken.

Russell

Die hard Red Sox fan since 1964.