by Seth Mnookin
On this night, however, Williamson’s always shaky command seemed to have deserted him, and he walked the first two batters he faced. Little next called on Derek Lowe, who had thrown seven innings as Game 3’s starter two nights earlier.
Lowe was one of the most intriguing personalities on the Red Sox. A lanky, 6-foot-6-inch right-hander, Lowe had arrived in Boston via one of the best trades in Red Sox history: In 1997, Dan Duquette sent closer Heathcliff Slocumb to the Seattle Mariners for Lowe and Jason Varitek. Lowe had achieved considerable success in a Red Sox uniform. In 2000, he was named an All-Star and led the American League with 42 saves. He’d also reached considerable depths. In 2001, Lowe seemed to unravel, as he coughed up leads and appeared to be close to tears on occasion. (His tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve caused Red Sox fanatic Bill Simmons, made famous as ESPN’s “Sports Guy,” to dub any particularly mopey expression, “The Derek Lowe Face.”) By mid-April, fans and the media alike were questioning whether Lowe had the mental toughness to be a big-league closer.
In 2002, after being converted to a starter, Lowe did better than anyone could have reasonably expected, going 21-8, throwing a no-hitter, starting the All-Star Game, and placing third to Zito and Martinez in the Cy Young Award voting. In 2003, he continued his forward-backward routine, compiling a 17-7 record mainly on the strength of the Red Sox’s offensive might, as his 4.47 earned run average was barely better than the league average. Even the playoffs seemed a microcosm for his career: In Game 1, he’d been the losing pitcher, and in Game 3, his seven innings of one-run ball likely saved Boston’s season. Now, with two men on and one well-placed hit the difference between a heartbreaking loss and a series victory, which Derek Lowe would show up?
The first batter Lowe faced, catcher Ramon Hernandez, tapped a sacrifice bunt down the third base line, putting men on second and third with one out. The next man to the plate was veteran Jermaine Dye. Grady Little signaled from the dugout to intentionally walk Dye, which would load the bases and create a force out at any base. Just as Dye was about to stand in, Varitek and the home plate umpire told him he was being signaled for from the A’s dugout. Oakland manager Ken Macha was inexplicably sending the little used switch-hitter Adam Melhuse up to pinch-hit for Dye after an intentional walk had been called for. Little decided to call off the intentional pass and let Lowe pitch to Melhuse.
Lowe’s best pitch is his sinker, a sharply diving fastball. When thrown well, it’s almost impossible to hit solidly. When thrown to a right-hander, the ball starts off the plate, then dives back in over the outside corner. This is known as a “backdoor” strike. If thrown too far outside, it’s a ball.
With a left-handed batter the risk is far greater, since the ball appears, at first, to head directly for the batter’s waist before diving over the inside part of the plate at the last moment. If the pitcher misses too far inside against a lefty, the result is a hit batsman. If he doesn’t throw inside enough, the ball will fall over the heart of the plate, every hitter’s favorite zone. As Lowe pitched to the left-handed hitting Melhuse, he noticed the batter kept looking out over the plate, seemingly waiting for a pitch away. “You can’t look for a pitch on both sides of the plate,” Lowe thought to himself. That meant Melhuse would be vulnerable to his sinker, but in order to throw it he had to have complete confidence in his ability to execute the pitch perfectly. It took Lowe a long time—almost a year and a half—to get to the point where he was comfortable throwing it against left-handers in game situations. Now, he had to have faith he could do it again. With two strikes on Melhuse, he settled into his windup, aiming the ball directly at him. It worked perfectly. Lowe froze the A’s hitter. The ball tailed back over the inside corner. Strike three.
Lowe pitched around center fielder Chris Singleton, walking him rather than risk throwing a hittable strike. With two outs and the bases loaded, Terrence Long pinch-hit for Frank Menechino. With the entire Coliseum crowd on its feet, Lowe worked Long to two strikes. Once again, he turned to his sinker. For the half-second it took the ball to travel the 60 feet, six inches from the mound to the plate, hundreds of thousands of Red Sox fans across the country had the same thought: “Perfect. Boston will take a lead into the ninth inning of a deciding playoff game and blow it on three walks and a hit batsman.” As Long tensed in advance of the inevitable impact, the ball cut down and in, landing in Jason Varitek’s glove on the inside corner of the plate.
For a moment, no one moved. Varitek’s glove stayed perfectly still. Long looked down at home plate. Lowe peered in from the mound. And then home plate umpire Tim Welke turned to his left and rung up the batter. Strike three. Game over. For the second time in five years, the Red Sox had come back to win a five-game series after losing the first two games.
Though it wouldn’t be long before Lowe’s agent would hire a sports psychologist in an effort to determine why Lowe alternated between being one of baseball’s best and one of its worst pitchers, on this night, at least, Lowe seemed impervious to the pressure. “The biggest thing you have to do is trust it,” Lowe said later. “I found myself in situations [during the game] where I’ve thrown this pitch a hundred times. Throw it through the target, and it worked out well. I’ve thrown it that well before, but it goes unnoticed because it might be strike one in the second inning to the number seven hitter.”
Tom Werner was watching the game from one of the Coliseum’s luxury boxes, and when Lowe struck out Terrence Long, he had to fight back tears. The game had been incredibly unpleasant for Werner—sheets of clear glass divide Oakland’s luxury boxes from one another, and a drunken fan in the next box had spent the game cursing at Werner and writing obscene notes he’d press against the glass. (The fan was eventually arrested.) As he watched Lowe’s pitch settle perfectly into Varitek’s glove, Werner “felt blessed…. With the Padres, we had never gotten to the postseason, and here we had just won our first series [as owners of the Red Sox].”
Boston’s celebration that night was tinged with anxiety—Johnny Damon was still in the hospital, where he’d remain overnight. But both the Red Sox and Derek Lowe felt as if they’d lifted a monkey off their backs. “I don’t know anyone else in baseball with as much heart as Derek to throw those two pitches,” Theo Epstein said in the Red Sox clubhouse after the game. “I think we put a few things behind us historywise, winning this kind of game and this kind of series.”
Come morning, no one would think a first round series against the Oakland A’s gave Boston the right to put anything behind it, historywise. Up next, for the right to play in the World Series, were the New York Yankees.
*The mechanics involved in pitching a baseball produce some of the most violent motions in all of sports. Tests done by a biomechanical engineer at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, showed that an average human ulnar collateral ligament, which connects the large bone that runs from the shoulder to the elbow to one of the two bones that make up the forearm, would snap when placed under the amount of pressure a major sure a major league pitcher uses to throw a fastball. When pitchers talk of building up “arm strength,” they’re talking of building up their muscles so as to decrease the possibility of muscle tears. Obviously, the physical strains of throwing approximately 100 pitches every five days—a normal workload for a starting pitcher—are different from throwing 15 pitches every other day, a more average load for a closer, and one of the most important aspects of maintaining pitching health is allowing the body to properly heal between appearances. A starting pitcher throws more each time out, but he has more time between starts for his body to repair itself. This is why a healthy starting pitcher can average more than 200 innings pitched per season, while it is incredibly rare for a reliever to amass more than 100.
*Baseball has three rounds of playoffs: the League Division Series, in which the wild-card team plays the division-winning team with the best record that’s not in its same division and the other two division winners play each other; the League Championshi
p Series, in which the winners of the Division Series play each other, and the World Series, in which the American League champion plays the National League champion. In 2003, the wild-card–winning Red Sox played the A’s, the American League West winners, while the American League East’s Yankees played the American League Central’s Twins.
*In contrast to David Ortiz, who patiently answered reporters’ questions about his offensive slump, Ramirez refused to speak to the press at all following the first two games in Oakland. At one point, when surrounded by a group of writers, Ramirez ignored question after question. Finally, in an effort to shoo away the last remaining scribes, he sprayed an overwhelming amount of cologne into the air. “Media repellent,” one Red Sox official quipped after watching this scene unfold.
*Sauerbeck required offseason surgery for a torn labrum and punctured rotator cuff, and missed all of the 2004 season.
Chapter 25
Not Again
LESS THAN 48 HOURS after clinching their first round series in Oakland, the Red Sox were loosening up at Yankee Stadium. The team was in rough shape. After Monday night’s game, Johnny Damon had been diagnosed with a serious concussion, and while he remained on the Red Sox roster, he wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to contribute meaningfully. Byung-Hyun Kim was left off the team entirely. Since Pedro Martinez had pitched the final game of the Oakland series, he’d likely be unavailable until Game 3, and Lowe, the team’s second-best starter, wouldn’t be able to pitch until Game 2.
The Yankees, in contrast, were rested and healthy. They had dispatched their first round opponent, the Minnesota Twins, in four games, which meant none of their four starters—Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, and David Wells—had had to pitch more than once. While the Sox bullpen had been performing better recently, the Yankees had Mariano Rivera, the most dominant postseason closer in the history of the game. And, of course, the Yankees had history on their side, with their 26 championships, too many of which had come at the expense of Boston.
The Red Sox–Yankees series felt like the culmination of everything that had happened since Henry and Werner had bought the Red Sox less than two years earlier. From the day they were awarded the team, the group had spoken of their determination to beat the Yankees and bring a World Series victory to Boston; it was as if a Series victory would count for less if the Sox didn’t go through the Yankees first. The tension between the teams’ front offices had been steadily building. George Steinbrenner was almost comically obsessed with the Red Sox. Some of his lieutenants joked that, judging from Steinbrenner’s preoccupation with Boston, you’d have guessed it was the Red Sox who always seemed to have the upper hand. There was no love lost between the teams’ players, either. Pedro Martinez was likely the most hated ballplayer in the Yankees clubhouse, while Boston fans still smarted from the sight of Roger Clemens in Yankee pinstripes.
Since the beginning of the 2002 season, Boston and New York had played each other 38 times, and the two teams were almost evenly matched—almost, but not quite. Both years, the Red Sox compiled a 9-10 record against the Yankees, even though in 2003 they outscored their rivals, 109–94. Before the series began, the Yankees were the favorites, but only by the slimmest of margins. In fact, for what felt like the first time in the team’s long history, the Red Sox entered the 2003 American League Championship Series on more or less equal footing, and Boston and New York both knew it. Here, finally, was a Red Sox team that didn’t fear the Yankees.
For the first game of the series, on Wednesday, October 8, the Yankees sent righty Mike Mussina to the mound. Back in 2000, Mussina had, along with Manny Ramirez, been one of baseball’s prize free agents, and both the Red Sox and Yankees had pursued him. A five-time All-Star during his decade with the Baltimore Orioles, Mussina was one of baseball’s most dependable pitchers.
He also was known as someone who was consistently good, but not quite good enough. He’d won 18 games in a season three times and 19 games twice, but the common benchmark for excellence, 20 wins, had always eluded him. Twice he’d carried a perfect game into the ninth inning only to have it slip away: On May 30, 1997, in an Orioles game versus the Cleveland Indians, Mussina gave up a hit with one out in the ninth, and on September 2, 2001, he lost a perfect game against the Red Sox with two outs in the ninth when, batting with two strikes, pinch hitter Carl Everett hit a single into left field. (Mussina also lost a bid for a perfect game with two outs in the eighth inning of a 1998 game against the Detroit Tigers.) A Stanford graduate, Mussina had a reputation for both being aloof and somewhat soft, and some of his former teammates had been known to refer to him as “Pussina.”
Red Sox Game 1 starter Tim Wakefield could not have been more different. Whereas Mussina, a taut 6-feet-2-inches and 185 pounds, relied on pinpoint location of his fastball and an array of breaking pitches, Wakefield, a considerably dumpier 6-feet-2-inches and 200-plus pounds, was a knuckleball pitcher. Knuckle-balls have been around almost as long as baseball has been played, and for most of that time, they’ve been held in only slightly higher esteem than a goof pitch. Watching Wakefield, it wasn’t hard to see why. His pitching motion looked ridiculous next to the simultaneously violent and balletic windups of his teammates and rivals. Instead of using his fingers to grip the ball, he perched the ball between his thumb and his three middle fingers, his pinkie extended as if he were a cartoon aristocrat daintily holding a flute of champagne. Wakefield heaves the ball toward the plate more than throws it, coming down on his legs in quick succession as if he were hopping inelegantly over a puddle. Whereas many pitchers—like all four of the Yankees starters—had fastballs that clocked at over 90 miles per hour, a typical Wakefield pitch came in at somewhere between 60 and 70 mph.
What the knuckleball lacked in speed it made up for in unpredictability. It seemed to flutter toward the plate—like a butterfly, batters often said—dancing up and down, side to side.* Corralling the knuckler was so exhausting that Wakefield had what amounted to his own private catcher, Doug Mirabelli, and even Mirabelli had to use an almost comically oversized mitt while working behind the plate.
Historically, knuckleballers were known as being as flighty as their signature pitches, but Wakefield, the longest tenured member of the Red Sox, was as stand-up a guy as could be found on a major league roster. After Wakefield was drafted as an infielder by Pittsburgh in the eighth round in 1988, a Pirates minor league coach saw him fooling around with a knuckleball one day and converted him to a pitcher. In 1992, his rookie year, Wakefield went 8-1 and won two playoff games for Pittsburgh. Two years later, he’d been demoted to the minors, and when Pittsburgh cut Wakefield early in the 1995 season, the Red Sox quickly signed him. He was an excellent acquisition for Boston that year, going 16-8 with a 2.95 earned run average and finishing third in the Cy Young Award voting. Over the next eight seasons, Wakefield filled almost every role on the Sox pitching staff, working as a starter, a closer, and a middle reliever. In an often-unpredictable Boston clubhouse, Wakefield became the very measure of constancy, quietly going about his business, concentrating on his knuckleball, his family, and his charitable endeavors. Still, as beloved and respected as Wakefield was, Boston fans weren’t eager to see him on the mound in Game 1—Wakefield, after all, had been left off the Red Sox roster the last time the team made the American League Championship Series, in 1999.
On this cold night in the Bronx, Wakefield’s knuckler was dipping and floating like a drunken honeybee. At one point, from the second to the seventh innings, he retired 14 straight New York batters. Boston’s hitters weren’t having any such problems with Mussina, as both David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez bounced back from their power outages against Oakland. In the fourth, Ortiz drove a ball into the third deck of Yankee Stadium, and Ramirez and Todd Walker followed up with homers of their own in the fifth. By the end of the night, Tim Wakefield had earned his first playoff victory since his 1992 rookie year with the Pirates, and the Red Sox had won Game 1, 5–2. The next night, the Yankees’ Andy P
ettitte bested Derek Lowe, 6–2, leaving the series tied at a game apiece as the teams headed to Fenway Park.
Game 3, on the afternoon of Saturday, October 11, was already being billed as the matchup of the century. For the second time in five years, Pedro Martinez, the best Red Sox pitcher of the 1990s, would take the mound to face New York’s Roger Clemens, the best Red Sox pitcher of the 1980s. The first time the two fireballers met in the postseason—on October 16, 1999—it was a Boston rout, with Clemens not making it out of the third inning and Martinez striking out 12 en route to a 13–1 Boston victory.
It was clear early on this would be no repeat. Martinez didn’t have his best stuff, and in the fourth inning, the game was tied, 2–2. After Martinez gave up a run on a walk, a single, and a double to lead off the inning, New York began doing the unthinkable: taunting one of the best pitchers ever to play the game. “You’ve got nothing,” they shouted from the bench. Martinez, one of the proudest men in baseball, didn’t acknowledge the Yankees, but it was clear he’d heard the jeers. With men on second and third, Martinez went into his windup, reared back, and sent one of his fastballs sailing toward the head of Karim Garcia, a little-used Yankees outfielder. The pitch hit a shocked Garcia in the back. Sox catcher Jason Varitek hadn’t even retrieved the ball when Martinez had snapped his glove up, indicating he wanted it back. Martinez, as he’d done so many times in his career, had delivered a message: Whatever you do, don’t disrespect me.*