Feeding the Monster

by Seth Mnookin

  As Garcia and Martinez began jawing at each other, the Yankees bench joined in the fray, with Clemens, catcher Jorge Posada, and 72-year-old Yankees bench coach Don Zimmer the most verbal. Martinez later said that Posada had been screaming at him in Spanish and had at one point insulted Martinez’s mother. “Posada is Latin,” Martinez said. “He should know, if you don’t want to fuck with someone, you don’t say anything about their mother.” Before play resumed, Martinez pointed first at his head, then at Posada. He was, he said later, only telling Posada he’d remember what he said. Others had a less generous interpretation, and lip readers swore Martinez was mouthing “I’ll hit you in the head” to the Yankees catcher. Whatever the message, the Yankees scored another run before the end of the inning, giving New York a 4–2 lead.

  Manny Ramirez led off the bottom of the fourth inning, and Clemens, in the fourth pitch of the at-bat, threw a ball that was high and inside—a purpose pitch, one designed to back Ramirez off the plate, but not one close enough to the hitter to be of much concern. Ramirez saw it differently, and began yelling at Clemens before starting toward the mound, bat in hand. The melee that followed added another ugly chapter to the Red Sox–Yankees history. Many baseball fights are little more than show, with both teams assembling around home plate and puffing out their chests before everyone goes back to their respective benches. This one was for real, and it culminated with the elderly Zimmer charging directly at Martinez. “He reached for my right arm,” the right-handed throwing Martinez said later. “I thought, ‘Is he going to pull it? Is he trying to hurt me?’ ” Martinez stepped to the side and pushed Zimmer down in a movement that resembled a matador dodging a bull. It had been Zimmer who ran at Martinez, but the image of the voluble pitcher flinging an elderly man to the ground further cemented Martinez’s status as New York’s favorite villain. The fact that the Yankees held on to beat Martinez and the Red Sox, 4–3, did not dull their anger any.

  On Monday, Wakefield beat Mussina for the second time in a week, and the 3–2 Boston victory tied the series at two games apiece. After David Wells beat Derek Lowe in Game 5, the two teams headed back to the Bronx. Boston needed two consecutive wins to advance. An improbable Boston victory in Game 6—the Red Sox rallied from a 6–4 deficit in the seventh inning against Jose Contreras, the Cuban pitcher whose acquisition by the Yankees had prompted Lucchino’s “Evil Empire” comment—created a Martinez-Clemens rematch on October 16, 2003. Game 7, winner take all. Fittingly, the game would mark the first time in baseball history two teams had faced each other more than 25 times in a single season. Dan Shaughnessy called the matchup “hardball heaven in the Hub, potentially the greatest sports event in the long history of our city.”

  While John Henry and Larry Lucchino made the trip to New York for the final game of the series, Tom Werner remained at home in California. He was still rattled by his experience in Oakland during the final game of the previous playoff series, and he’d had a particularly unpleasant encounter in Yankee Stadium back when he was the owner of the Padres. While Werner walked through the stands wearing a Padres cap, a fan pushed him and told him to take off his cap. Werner glanced up at a nearby policeman, and after he was pushed again, Werner asked the cop if he would do anything about the situation. “He said to me, ‘You’re lucky he didn’t slug you,’ ” says Werner. On this night, he’d watch the game from home. John Henry was sitting in seats near the visitors’ dugout, while Epstein was in a seat directly behind home plate.

  Now, finally, momentum seemed to be on the Red Sox’s side. Johnny Damon had gutted his way back into the lineup, and had worked three walks the night before. Nomar Garciaparra had emerged from his postseason slump, and Ortiz and Todd Walker continued pounding the ball. Down three games to two, the Red Sox had been expected to fold, but hadn’t. Now the pressure was on New York. And early in the game, the pressure seemed to be getting to them. Clemens didn’t make it out of the fourth inning, while Martinez was cruising. After six innings, it was Boston 4, New York 1. As Martinez sat down in the Boston dugout between innings, he turned to assistant trainer Chris Correnti. “Chris,” he said, “I’m a little fatigued.”

  In the seventh, Martinez did appear to tire. With one out, Jorge Posada hit a sharp drive to center field, which Damon caught. Jason Giambi followed with his second home run of the game, and the next two Yankees batters reached on hard-hit singles. With two out and the go-ahead run at the plate, Martinez struck out Alfonso Soriano in a six-pitch at-bat, bringing his pitch count for the game to 100. As he walked off the mound, he looked at the sky and pointed in the air, his way of acknowledging God after a night’s work. Boston pitching coach Dave Wallace pulled out a notebook from his pocket, crossed out Martinez’s name, and wrote in Alan Embree’s, whom he assumed would start off the eighth to face the left-handed Nick Johnson. Both Correnti and Wallace indicated to Martinez his night was over, and Martinez began heading toward the steps that led from the dugout to the showers.

  In the stands, both Theo Epstein and John Henry also assumed Martinez was finished, and, with six outs to go, they felt confidentthe team’s bullpen could finish the game. The relievers’ spring troubles were well in the past. Even without Kim, the combination of Embree, Mike Timlin, and Scott Williamson had been dominant in the playoffs, combining for 222/3 innings in which they gave up only 12 hits, 4 walks, and a single earned run, while striking out 25. It was one of the most overpowering bullpen performances in recent memory, and all three pitchers were ready to go. What’s more, as Epstein had told Little time and time again, the Pedro Martinez you get with pitches one through 105 was vastly different from the Pedro Martinez you got from pitch 106 on. The former was an all-time great; the latter very mortal, particularly that season, when hitters’ batting average against him leaped from .231 on pitches 91 through 105 to .370 on pitches 106 through 120.

  Little, however, suddenly decided he couldn’t depend on his bullpen. Perhaps he was thinking back to the first game of the Oakland series, or to the team’s early season struggles, or maybe even to 1986, when Roger Clemens left Game 6 of the World Series with the Red Sox leading 3–2 only to watch from the bench as his team lost the game. Little stopped Martinez just as he was exiting the dugout. As Martinez later told Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci, Little asked him, “I need you to go one more [inning]. Can you give me one more?”

  “I didn’t know what to say,” Martinez told Verducci. “If anything happens, everyone will say, ‘Pedro wanted to come out.’ I wasn’t hurt. I was tired, yes. I never expressed anything about coming out. The only way I would say that is if I was physically hurt. The only way.” As David Ortiz hit a home run off David Wells to give the Sox a 5–2 lead, Martinez told Little he could give him one more inning. “I’ll tell you what, Petey,” Martinez said Little told him. “Why don’t you try to start the eighth. I might even send you out there just to warm up. Help is on the way.” At that point, Martinez said later, he assumed that if even a single runner reached base, Little would summon Embree from the bullpen.

  When Pedro Martinez returned to the mound in the eighth inning of Game 7, John Henry felt as if he were watching a horror movie. He knew Martinez was spent; hell, Henry thought, any sentient being watching the game knew the pitcher was cooked. He looked over at Epstein, sitting a couple of sections away, and the two men caught each other’s eye. Epstein gave a little shrug, as if to say, “I have no idea what he’s doing out there, either.” Martinez got the first batter to pop-up to shortstop, putting Boston five outs away from victory, and a trip to the World Series. Then, in an instant, the Yankees bats began lashing at Martinez’s pitches. Derek Jeter sized up a shoulder-high 0-2 fastball and smacked it into right field, where Trot Nixon misplayed a catchable ball into a double. With Bernie Williams at the plate, even the TV announcers were saying that, regardless of what happened here, Embree would likely come in to face the left-handed Hideki Matsui, who was on deck. Williams hit a sharp single to center, scoring Jeter, 5–3.

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bsp; Now, finally, Little shuffled out of the dugout and over to the mound, where he conferred with Martinez. In his seat, Henry was beside himself. At least, he reassured himself, there’s still a two-run lead and Martinez was finally coming out of the game. Then, inexplicably, Little walked back to the dugout alone, leaving Martinez on the mound to face the dangerous Matsui. Henry turned to Lucchino. “Can we fire [Little] right now?” Henry asked. “I felt pure rage,” he says. Matsui proceeded to hit the Yankees’ second double of the inning, sending Williams to third. By this point, Martinez had thrown 118 pitches. His average during the season was less than 100, and he very rarely went over 110. What’s more, only a couple of weeks earlier Martinez had thrown 130 pitches in the first game of the Oakland series, the most pitches he’d thrown all year. Now, even Martinez was convinced his night was over.

  Still, Little stayed in the dugout. With his nemesis Jorge Posada at the plate, Martinez reared back and threw a cut fastball for ball one. He got a called strike with his next pitch, a curve, before missing again with the third pitch of the at-bat. Another curve fooled Posada into swinging, evening the count at 2-2. Now, with his 123rd pitch of the night, Martinez threw a 95 mile-per-hour fastball in on Posada’s hands, which Posada fisted into shallow center field, where it dropped. As Posada scrambled to second base, he saw that both Yankees runners had scored, tying the game. He began to clap his hands furiously. Here, finally, was retribution for all the times Martinez had mockingly referred to Posada as “Dumbo” because of his large ears, retribution for Saturday’s Game 3, when Martinez had looked at Posada and pointed at his head. Only then, with the game tied, did Little hurry out to the mound and take Martinez out of the game. There was no pointing at the sky this time around. As Yankee Stadium howled—Posada later said it was louder than he’d ever heard it—Martinez walked back to the Red Sox bench, his head hanging.

  For the remainder of the eighth and the ninth innings, Alan Embree and Mike Timlin did what they had been doing all series—they shut down the Yankees. In the 10th, with the game in extra innings, Little summoned Tim Wakefield, who had two wins in the previous six games and would undoubtedly have been the series MVP had the Red Sox found a way to win. Wakefield retired Matsui, Posada, and Giambi on 14 pitches in the 10th. In the top of the 11th inning, Mariano Rivera, the Yankees closer, retired the Red Sox in order. It was Rivera’s third inning of work, and he’d thrown 48 pitches—both highs for the season. As Wakefield prepared to pitch to light-hitting Yankees third baseman Aaron Boone in the bottom of the 11th, TV analyst Tim McCarver was telling viewers that the longer the game went on, the more it tilted in Boston’s favor. After all, McCarver said, Wakefield could throw forever, and Boston still had Scott Williamson in the bullpen. Rivera, on the other hand, was likely done for the night.

  Wakefield’s first pitch to Boone didn’t have the knuckleball’s usual movement, and Boone took a mighty swing. As soon as it left the bat, it was clear the ball would not be landing in the park. As it soared toward the left-field bleachers, Boone threw his bat down and held both his arms in the air. He’d done it. Just like Bucky Dent 25 years earlier, Boone had hit a season-ending home run against the Boston Red Sox. As Boone ran the bases and the Yankees poured out of their dugout to embrace him at home plate, Tim Wakefield walked stoically off the mound, head down, convinced he’d just become the young century’s Bill Buckner, that his name would forever be associated with yet another heartbreaking Red Sox failure. In the glum Red Sox clubhouse, Derek Lowe said, “If we played 100 times, I think we’d win 50 and they’d win 50.” He was wrong. That year, it seemed that if the Red Sox and Yankees played 100 times, New York would win 51 games to Boston’s 49.

  In California, Tom Werner felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. “I was very devastated by that loss,” Werner says. “I was experienced enough to know that it would be very difficult to get back to that position. It’s so hard to even get to the postseason, and then it’s hard to win a Division Series. We were very fortunate to have beaten Oakland. I just thought it would be very difficult.” Werner was, he says, “comatose” for a couple of months.

  Instead of feeling shock or sadness, the first emotion John Henry felt that night in Yankee Stadium was an anger bordering on rage. “I knew at some point he was going to blow the season for us,” Henry says of Little. “And he did.” When he got to the Sox clubhouse and heard Little telling everyone that there was no reason to be upset, that they’d had a great year and had entertained a lot of people, Henry had to hold himself back from erupting right there.

  Adding even more poignancy to the loss was the fact that in the World Series the Yankees would face the Florida Marlins, the team Henry had sold just two years earlier. “As much as I love some of the Marlins players and root for them, I have no interest in watching this series,” Henry wrote in an email in late October. “The only interest I currently have in baseball is to prepare for next season.” He explained that the Sox’s loss had taught him of the true devotion of the team’s fans. “I thought initially New Englanders would just finally throw up their hands,” he wrote. “But their level of commitment and resolve is astonishing and deserves our full attention.” Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino, Henry said, had not taken even a day’s break following the team’s defeat as they began preparing for the 2004 season: “The franchise is in very good shape with these two leading it,” he wrote.

  Henry was right: Neither Epstein nor Lucchino had taken any time off. By Friday, October 17, less than 24 hours after their season had ended, the two men were busy preparing for the next campaign. With Martinez, Lowe, Garciaparra, Varitek, and Trot Nixon all heading into the last year of their contracts, the powerful core of the team was beginning what was likely their final year together. The Red Sox would have one more chance with this crew, and they intended to make it count.

  *Befitting the knuckleball’s reputation as a rogue pitch, it’s difficult to describe why the knuckler dances without an advanced knowledge of physics. Here’s the simple version: The knuckleballer’s grip allows him to release the ball with virtually no spin. As the stitches on the ball interrupt the flow of the air around the ball, pockets of lower pressure are created, and they send the ball dropping downward.

  *It’s worth noting that in the three-plus innings he pitched before hitting Garcia, Martinez gave up six hits and a walk. In the four remaining innings he pitched that day, not a single Yankees batter reached base.

  Chapter 26

  Nomar Wants to Know

  Where He Fits in

  EVER SINCE HE WAS A CHILD, Anthony Garciaparra was known by his middle name: Nomar, for his father’s name, Ramon, spelled backward. He was born in Whittier, California, about 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Lithe and graceful, Garciaparra was a natural athlete, and by high school, he was being touted as one of the top baseball prospects in the country. Unlike many schoolboy phenoms, Nomar didn’t much look the part: His prominent nose, delicate cheekbones, and skinny frame gave him the appearance of a Baroque painting, and his high-school classmates gave him the nickname “Glass,” because he appeared as if he might break. When he was just 17, Garciaparra was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers; instead of signing with the team, he opted to go to Georgia Tech, whose varsity baseball team at the time also featured future Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek. In 1994, the Sox made Garciaparra the 12th pick of the draft. Two years later, on the last day of August 1996, Garciaparra made his Red Sox debut, and played in most of the team’s games during the last month of the season.

  The mid-1990s were barren years for the Red Sox. Outside of a division title in the strike-shortened 1995 season, Boston fans found little to cheer about between 1992 and 1996. In 1997, Garciaparra changed that. Twenty-four years old, skinny, and a bit guarded, the young shortstop was filled with odd superstitions and perversely fascinating routines. When heading out for his turn at bat, he’d climb on each step of the dugout with both feet, almost like a child gingerly making his way up a flight of stairs. In
the batter’s box, he repeated the same obsessive routine—tapping his toes into the dirt, adjusting and readjusting his batting gloves, genuflecting at the plate—before every single pitch of every single at-bat. (“It’s important how my feet feel and the way my hands feel,” Garciaparra once explained.) All of this would have been seen as distracting, or perhaps even annoying, except for one fact: The preternaturally talented Garciaparra was hitting the ball like no Red Sox rookie since Fred Lynn two decades earlier. By the end of the year, Garciaparra had put up truly awesome numbers, hitting .306 with 30 home runs, 98 runs batted in, 209 hits, and 22 steals. He set a major league record for RBIs by a leadoff batter, and his 30-game hitting streak broke the American League rookie record by four games. A unanimous selection for the American League Rookie of the Year, Garciaparra, by the end of his first full year in baseball, had become the public face of the Boston Red Sox.

  Boston fans wholeheartedly embraced the quirky, oftentimes shy Mexican-American kid from Southern California. Three months into the 1997 season, the Globe’s Gordon Edes compared Garciaparra’s arrival in Boston to the first 100 days of the Kennedy administration. Edes would later write how Boston fans and sportswriters alike realized they were witnessing “one of the greatest players to put on the uniform of the Olde Towne Team, a toe-tapping, glove-tugging manifestation of all the qualities we hold so dearly in ballplayers who steal our hearts: an obvious love for the game, a run-out-every-pop-up effort, a priority list that placed winning as a team over individual achievement.”

  During spring training of 1999, Garciaparra’s prodigious skills were acknowledged by Ted Williams, the greatest Boston baseball legend of them all. “Boy, I’m looking at someone who is going to be as good as anyone who ever played the game,” the wheelchair-bound Williams said, gazing at Garciaparra sitting next to him. “I say that, and boy, I believe it, too. And the best thing about it, he’s a terrific kid. Boy, he’s got so much going for himself. You’ll be here, 10 to 15 years from now, singing the praises of Nomar Garciaparra. I can’t say enough about him.”