I’ve spent the last few days hyping my TiVo for how it improves the playoff-watching experience. Monday was the dark side of that. Because of a dinner commitment, we had planned to start the deciding game of the A’s-Red Sox series late. As we were leaving dinner, our host — who had a definite rooting agenda, and who had gotten up to check the score — playfully hinted that something had just happened. Grrrrr.
Reconstructing by the time-slider on the recording, my pal had to have just seen Jason Varitek’s game-tying home run to lead off the sixth inning. Up to that point, A’s starter Barry Zito had cruised. Perfect through the first three innings, he allowed only two hits and a walk over the next two, with one of those hits being erased stretching for an extra base. Meanwhile the A’s had scratched out a run off of Pedro Martinez in the fourth on a Scott Hatteberg walk and a Jose Guillen double. But Guillen was thrown out trying for third to end the inning, the second time in as many days he’d made a critical out at third.
Had Varitek’s homer been the only damage in the sixth, the A’s would have still counted themselves lucky. But it got worse. Two of the next three batters reached base, and Zito was left to face Manny Ramirez, who had yet to drive in a run all series. I braced myself, muttering to my girlfriend that this seemed like the right time for him to crush one — it fit the storyline. I’ve been right about lots of things this week, but few of them have pissed me off as much as seeing Ramirez smoke that ball over the leftfield wall. That is, unless it was the sight of that airhead standing and admiring his handiwork, then pointing to the Red Sox dugout. Ramirez deserved a fastball in his earhole for his showboating.
My girlfriend and I had started watching the game on a 90-minute delay, and by the middle of the eighth we’d cut the margin in half. At that point, I decided to make a beer run while unwittingly wearing my Yankees cap. The game must have just ended, and a tall man in a sweater preparing t to take his two dogs for a walk saw my cap and called out, “Yanks-Sox in the Championship Series!” Trying to ignore him, I avoided eye contact, so he said it again, by which time I was shaking my head and rolling my eyes. I threw a mini-tantrum when I came into the apartment, much to the dismay of my gal, who already suspected the result because our awkward efforts to add time to the recording beyond its three-hour slot resulted in a brief snippet of live TV. The rest of the game was a fait accompli, any sense of the fever pitch the accursed teams’ fan bases must have felt as the A’s loaded the bases in the ninth against Derek Lowe completely dissipated into an angry fatigue. Ah, shitfuck.
Those moves A’s manager Ken Macha made in the 9th were beyond questionable. Pinch-running using the guy who can’t find home plate with a roadmap, the guy whose whimpering cost you the tying run in Game Three (Eric Byrnes), is a bad omen. Pinch-hitting for the guy who hit your only home run in the series (Jermaine Dye) is a bad omen. Wasting an out with a sacrifice bunt is irresponsible. Pinch-hitting a guy with a .317 career On Base Percentage (Terrence Long) for a guy with a .354 career OBP (Frank Menechino) with two outs and the bases loaded is aggressively stupid.
Still, the A’s really lost this series on Saturday night, their baserunning gaffes entering the lore of the damned: Merkle’s boner, Snodgrass’s muff, Owen’s dropped third strike, Pesky holding the ball, Buckner letting one through the legs, Byrnes and Miguel Tejada whining midplay as they failed to touch home plate. Everything in the series which happened after that fateful inning only served to give it more weight, becoming part of Oakland’s elimination-game futility. Ladies and gentlemen, the Chokeland A’s.
So now the AL’s best rivalry will determine its league champion. While that sounds great on paper, I’ve got mixed emotions about the matchup. Those emotions have less to do with the 26 titles the Yanks have won since a certain Ruth fella got sold, the prospect (gasp) that the Yanks might finally find themselves on the short end of the stick in a rivarly they have historically dominated, or even how the two teams currently stack up.
No, my emotions are mixed because this series will bring out the worst in everybody. From the owners to the media to the fans, this will make the California recall election seem like Romper Room. Sox prez Larry Lucchino and Yank owner George Steinbrenner will continue their history of trading barbs, the tabloid mentality of the various papers in both cities will blow every noseblow out of proportion, and the two fan bases loathing each other in close enough proximity might spill some real blood. Both ballparks will sound like the annual Tourette’s Syndrome Convention, with the opposing teams superstars implicated in all manners of sexual congress (“Hey Nomar, your wife does it soccer-style!”). Any parent brazen enough to take their kid to one of these games had better teach them the concept of earmuffs beforehand.
The Sox are an interesting mix. On the one hand is an old guard of fragile diva superstars who need no last names: Pedro, Nomar, and Manny. They bear the Red Sox frustrated history of late-season collapses and playoff failures, and they’ve developed hostile relationships with the press. On the other hand is a new breed of dirt dogs such as Kevin Millar, Johnny Damon, and Bill Mueller, guys who’d run through a wall and then delight in telling reporters about it. Workaday mainstays Jason Varitek and Trot Nixon have more in common with the latter, and it’s this infectious swagger which has brought a new attitude to the Red Sox. “Cowboy up!” is their rallying cry. “…[A]s if any of those Olde Towners had even been near a rodeo in their lives,” writes one loyal reader.
While the dirt dogs of the Red Sox cowboy up with their trash talk, the Yanks won’t say boo to a caterpillar. Derek Jeter will tell us that he’s going to put his pants on one leg at a time, Bernie Williams will say that the Yanks just have to play their game, and Joe Torre will remind us that it’s the starting pitchzzzzzzzzz. The guys in pinstripes won’t give the Sox a shred of bulletin-board material to rally around.
Realistically, one has to like the Yankees’ chances. Well-rested by clinching on Sunday, they’ll be facing a team who criss-crossed the country in the previous 48 hours. The Yankee rotation appears to be firing on all cylinders, while the Sox one is a bit patchy, and Pedro Martinez won’t be available until Game Three. The Yankee bullpen is well-rested, the Sox one dinged up, though whether Byung-Hyun Kim’s missing the series is a bad thing for Boston is a debatable topic. Sox manager Grady Little won’t have such an easy time shuttling Derek Lowe and Tim Wakefield down to the bullpen as he did in the first round. The heart of the Yankee lineup is en fuego, while that of the Sox got exactly enough big hits — one from Manny, one from David Ortiz — to survivve their series, and they’ll be missing their leadoff man, Johnny Damon, for at least the first game.
That said, these two teams played 19 times this season, and while the Yanks hold a bare 10-9 edge, they were outscored 109-94 — almost a run per game. Though the Yanks (101-61) finished six games ahead of the Sox (95-67) in the AL East, their Pythagorean records are much closer, with the Yanks about two games ahead. Their run differentials are almost the same, 159 for the Yanks, 154 for the Sox, which is a shorthand way of saying that the Yanks’ edge pitching matches up about evenly with the Sox edge in hitting. This is basically an even matchup, a toe-to-toe slugfest of a heavyweight championship battle in the making. Bring it on.
I’ll be at Yankee Stadium for Game One Wednesday night, finding creative ways to tell the world about Manny Ramirez and those barnyard animals, hoping the Yanks can wipe the smiles off of those grungy Sox faces. Cowboy up yours, Boston.