871 days ago, as I was eagerly
awaiting spending some quality time with the other contributors of this website
in the days leading up to a certain wedding of the century, I watched Game 6 of
the NBA Finals between the Mavericks and the Heat. The Heat had led the series two games to one,
but Dallas had hung tough and somehow persevered through the next two games. Yes, it may have taken a LeBrick James collapse,
the likes of which have not been seen in . . . well, 872 days, but it was still
a great series. In Game Six, with Dirk
recovering from flu-like symptoms, Jason Terry, Jason Kidd, and Puerto Rican Danny DeVito stepped up huge, the team shot 50 percent, and the Mavericks
made this infamous moment
funny for one last time. Who would have
ever thought a team coached by Jim Carrey could have gotten so far?
I watched the game with my dad, went
home to my mom’s house, and celebrated like it was high school all over again –
geeking out in my room, watching postgame highlights, very happy but oh so
lonely. If someone had told me it would
be 871 days before the Red Sox won the World Series and I would be this happy
for a sports championship again . . . well, let’s just review the evidence.
2011 World Series, Game 6 (Cardinals defeat
Rangers): Here’s
the YouTube clip. No wait, I can’t. Can’t post this. Can’t watch this. So painful.
I hate God’s Team.
2012 Super Bowl (Giants defeat Patriots):
Can’t
watch clips of this one either, but Gisele’s rant sums it all
up. No, Tom can’t pass the ball and
catch it at the same time. His receivers
let him down. But fortunately, we got
rid of those idiots Welker, Hernandez, and Woodhead and replaced them with Hall
of Fame receivers Medula Amendola, some rookies, and Austin Collie. No worries there.
2012 NCAA Championship (Kentucky defeats
Kansas): Calipari
avenges his 2008 championship game loss to Bill Self, as Wildcat players score
more points than their combined SAT scores.
That is, the scores the reported.
Mass St. (and the Saltz household) is silent and everyone goes back to
school the next day.
2012 and 2013 NBA Finals (LeBrons defeat
Zombie Sonics and Spurs): Didn’t watch too much of either of these series. In fact, during Game Seven of the Spurs
series, I left midway through the game and went to go see Now You See Me. Why couldn’t
the magicians in that movie transport me away from this agony?
2012 World Series (??? defeats ???): Don’t remember
it, couldn’t have been worth watching. Truthfully,
baseball doesn’t really get watched when the Red Sox lose 93 games.
2012 and 2013 BCS Championships (Alabama
defeats teams not as good as Oregon): Like the NBA Finals, I didn’t watch much
of these games. It did give me time to
plow snow out of the driveway, scrape ice from the car windshield, read for
class, and catch some excellent January releases such as Ghost Rider:Spirit of Vengeance and Movie 43.
So, in other words, the time period
between June 12, 2011 and October 30, 2013 left plenty to be desired in the
area of my sports teams’ success in championships. This doesn’t even account for every freak New
England Patriot injury, every Jayhawk March Madness collapse, and every
freakish St. Louis Cardinals comeback victory. I don’t claim to be more cursed than all over
fans, but I’ve had my share of bad, rotten fortune. In fact, the only three things that gave me
any sort of happiness were, in order: (1) Discovering and plowing through the
entirety of Breaking Bad, (2) Seeing
Obama reelected, and (3) Going to Las Vegas with Todd and winning $100 at blackjack
in the Party Pit at the Excalibur. Yes, it’s been that kind of two-and-a-half
years.
That’s why seeing the Red Sox win
the World Series last night was so simultaneously thrilling, exciting,
unexpected, wonderful, and genuinely cathartic.
I needed a sports cleansing more than John Travolta needed a shower by
the end of Battlefield Earth. I needed a reason to restore my faith in
professional sports (and the world in general) again. I needed a reason to laugh and leap up from
my chair and lose my voice and get told repeatedly by my wife to stop talking
about the freaking World Series already.
Let’s review some of the reasons why
the Red Sox winning the World Series was so wonderful:
1. It was unexpected. Between the
final four weeks of the 2011 season and the beginning of this season, the Red Sox
were a combined 76-113. During that horrific
189 game stretch, Boston went through three managers; endured major,
potentially career-altering injuries to Papi, John Lackey, Jacoby Ellsbury,
Andrew Bailey, and Clay Bucholz; and saw some of its most instrumental 2007
heroes (Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kevin Youklis, Jonathan Papelbon)
leave the team under bitter circumstances.
The players and the fans revolted.
The beer and fried chicken were finally removed from the clubhouse. The payroll situation was a mess in 2012, and
many speculated that the 2013 contracts given to Mike Napoli, Shane Victorino,
and Johnny Gomes were wildly excessive. Papi
was 37, Lackey (recovering from Tommy John surgery, a messy public divorce, and
an ERA of 6.75 in the final two months of ’11) was 34, Napoli was 31, and Carl
Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, Kevin Youklis, and Cody Ross were gone forever. John Farrell had a .475 winning percentage as
manager of a talented Blue Jays team (a squad who some misguided observers
predicted to win the AL East). With
everyone talking about Toronto, Baltimore, Tampa, and the Yankees, no one
thought the aging, unhappy, injury-prone Red Sox could amount to a hill of
beans.
2. It was
unpredictable and sometimes tumultuous. No one remembers this, but most of the Red Sox
buzz going into the 2013 season surrounded rookie phenom Jackie Bradley Jr. and
Joel Hanrahan (that gives you a good indication of how little Boston fans really
expected). A 20-8 start was overlooked
in Boston due to the tragedy of the Boston Marathon bombings. Then the roof began to fall in and doubters
began to strut their fatalistic forecasts.
They went 8-12 during a three week span in May which included Tito
Francona’s return to Fenway (a 12-3 shellacking
by the Indians). Then, disaster struck:
On June 9, Bucholz (who led the league with 9-0 record and 1.71 ERA) reported a
strain in his neck, and he was put on the disabled list until September. The rest of the pitching staff played well,
but not exceptional. Bucholz’s nine wins
were, incredibly, the best on the team until Lester got his 10th
victory on July 28. Ryan Dempster won
one game between June 25 and August 30, Lackey went through a stretch where he
was 2-7, and Jake Peavy’s acquisition did not exactly give Red Sox fans confidence
(especially after they had to give up the defensive excellence of Jose Iglesias
to AL rival Detroit). It was the offense
that excelled, however, and a rejuvenated Ortiz had his best season statistically
since 2007, according to WAR.
3. Their postseason play was thrilling. Boston first
dismantled the frisky Rays, a perennially strong division rival that had their
eye on the Red Sox ever since they erased the Sox’s five-game division lead in
July over a span of only two weeks. Boston
throttled Tampa aces David Price and Matt Moore, giving them both losses and
ERAs above 9.00. Then, in the ALCS, the
Red Sox faced the defending AL Champs Tigers – a team with the league’s best starting
pitchers (Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer) and best hitters (Miguel Cabrera,
Prince Fielder). After managing one run
and only a handful of hits in the first 16 innings of the series, the Sox
grabbed victory from the hands of defeat with Papi’s series-saving Game Two
grand slam (it’s hard to see them taking four of the next five from Detroit
without that home run). Victorino’s
grand slam in Game Six was as improbable as it was thrilling. And then, there was the World Series, where
the bats of both teams seemed indeterminately stunted. When St. Louis took a 2-1 lead after the
controversial Game Three finish, it seemed like the series might not even go
back to Boston. But Papi, Lester, and opportunistic hitting once again saved the
day, and last night, when the series returned to Fenway, true fans knew that
the outcome was never in doubt.
Maybe this sounds overly
reactionary, but I can’t really think of many better recent stories in sports
than the 2013 Red Sox. How many times
does a team go from worst-to-first with a majority of new players and a new
manager? How many times has a team had
to win back fans after scandal and controversy tore that team apart? How many times has a team defeated the league’s
two best teams (according to SRS),
including four road wins, en route to its third championship in ten years? How many times has a team gone 95 years
between clinching a title at home?
I will always remember three things from
this season’s 2013 Red Sox and their incredible postseason run. The first thing (whether I like it or not)
will be that insane play
that ended Game Three. Let’s touch on that for a second. When I first saw the play, I was
understandably furious as a Red Sox fan.
How could a judgment call like that end a critical World Series game? How could obstruction be called when Craig
initiated contact with Middlebrooks by putting his hands on him? Wasn’t Middlebrooks about two feet off the
baseline, creating a clear path for the runner?
And (the question that everyone asked), what is Middlebrooks supposed to
do? Now (and I understand this is 100%
convenient and with the luxury of hindsight), I look back on the play as
another element that makes baseball great.
How insane was that? Could any
other sport really offer an ending that unique, controversial, memorable, and
just plain weird? Plus, had obstruction not
been invoked and Boston had won Game Three, the series would not have gone back
to Boston.
The second thing I will always
remember is Ortiz’s insane postseason batting (.668 BA, 1.188 SLG vs. the
Cardinals). I never thought a player
could eclipse Barry Bonds’ numbers in the 2002 World Series (.471 BA, 1.294 SLG
vs. the Angels), but Ortiz proved me wrong.
Papi left the most indelible image of the 2013 MLB postseason, made a celebrity out of Officer Horgan, and won a truck that proved He’s Strong. Let’s pray to Jesus he’s not taking
steroids. The final thing I will
remember is Stephen Drew’s home run in the fourth inning. Why? Drew had a fantastic World Series defensively,
making incredible throw after incredible throw.
He’s never been an All-Star or Golden Glove winner (he’s mostly been
AWOL since he left the Diamondbacks), is the brother of the most hated Red Sox player of the last decade, and was in the midst of a historically awful offensive
postseason performance (going into Game Six, he was in the middle of a 4 for 50
slump in October. Yes, you read that stat
correctly: 4 for 50).
If you know baseball well enough,
you know it’s a zero-sum game. You know
that historically bad slumps like Drew’s are just as freakish and ephemeral as
historically great streaks like Ortiz (who struck out and had three walks last
night). You know that at some point,
those slumps have to end (it’s the same logic that was used to understand the
logic behind Aaron Boone’s
home run). The game is karmic and
circular and mysterious. Therefore, Drew
had to end his slump at some point, and he did so at the most opportune moment
possible. The Red Sox led 4-0, Michael
Wacha’s improbable postseason success was over, and fans began to count down
the remaining innings. I was so happy
for Drew, and I was happy that I had known that it had to happen at some
point. Just like this Red Sox teams and
sports in general, I suppose. At some
point, losing and heartbreak has to come to an end. The 2013 Red Sox reminded all of us of that.
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