Alpine slide
“There is no way these Red Sox are winning the World Series.” – Local boob
Mea culpa?
At the time those words were written, the first-place Red Sox were escaping New York, swept by the Yankees in embarrassing fashion. Josh Beckett was the victim of some bad luck. Daisuke Matsuzaka was hammered by the Yankees offense. Kevin Youkilis nearly had his head knocked off by Joba Chamberlain, and Jonathan Papelbon warned that the Yankees just might have awoken a sleeping beast.
They didn’t. But something did.
The Red Sox are back in the World Series on the heels of yet another playoff comeback, the fourth time in their last nine postseason series dating back to 1999 that they have responded to win a series in which they were one game away from elimination.
They have the best postseason pitcher in baseball in Beckett, and perhaps one of the few he supplanted for that title in Curt Schilling. They have an offense that’s starting to run on most, if not exactly all, cylinders, the front six scorching the ball at a prodigious pace, with Kevin Youkilis (.425 postseason average) leading way with expected mashers David Ortiz (.387) and Manny Ramirez (.400, 14 runs batted in). They have the most charismatic closer in the game in Papelbon, and a rookie outfielder and second baseman who are proud beacons of a farm system that promises this success to only keep on going.
And yet, around the time September arrived, something was still missing. The Red Sox were in first place, but it still seemed that they lacked a certain drive and passion that defined their World Champion predecessors. The team that won it all in 2004 had already created for itself a resume that showed it could come back from being down, as the Red Sox did that season with dramatic flair. By the time they won the ALCS, it became the culmination of their team identity rather than an out-of-nowhere fluke.
In 2007, that identity was difficult to find, impossible to define.
Red Sox GM Theo Epstein, the man who built this team, probably wasn’t even sure of what he had on his hands. Ask him a month ago what he thought about his team, and he’d be sure to pepper you with a lot of numbers and head-to-head stats that did their best in predicting how his team was going to perform in the playoffs. But as to how his team would respond? Who knew?
Then the Red Sox completed their ALCS comeback vs. the Indians and something clicked.
“How many teams can say they found their identity in the ALCS? We did, to a certain extent,” Epstein said.
The Red Sox come into the World Series against the Rockies rolling, if not exactly on the same length of a streak that Colorado has stitched together, winning 21 of its last 22 games and sweeping its way through the ALDS and ALCS. If and when the Red Sox deal the Rockies a loss, it will be their first since Sept. 28. You have to go back to Sept. 13 before you come across four “L’s” on the Rockies schedule.
But they drag with them the stigma of playing in the JV league, where pitchers hit and lineups have the firepower of Switzerland. They’ve sat around for eight days now, perhaps dusting cobwebs off their hot streak, and now they have to face the most popular team on the baseball landscape. The Rockies are the darlings of next to nobody east of Topeka.
It’s no surprise, therefore, that the Red Sox are seen as heavy favorites across the country. Here is a roundup of predictions:
But Daisuke Matsuzaka and Jon Lester pitching in the uncertainty of Coors Field would scare me if I’m Terry Francona. And let’s not forget that the pitchers will take the place of one of Ortiz, Youkilis, or Lowell in the National League park, which will significantly weaken the bottom of Boston’s lineup, which has struggled thus far behind Jason Varitek, Julio Lugo, and Coco Crisp. Jacoby Ellsbury will replace Crisp for Game 1, but it remains to be seen if Francona will commit to the rookie over Crisp for the long haul.
The Rockies might be an unknown for Red Sox fans, but this is no flash in the pan. Including their playoff run, they are 79-46 since May 22. Over that time period, these Red Sox aren’t so bad either, a comparable 72-55.
Names like Josh Fogg and Aaron Cook don’t exactly scare anyone. Until you remember what they’ve done against these Red Sox (Fogg: 1-0, 3.60, Cook: 0-1, 2.45). The last time Francis faced Boston, he shut them down and beat Beckett, a task he faces repeating tonight.
He won’t do it, but if the Rockies can manage a split at Fenway by beating Schilling tomorrow, they’ll find themselves in the driver’s seat. Boston might be the better team, but the Rockies are very nearly as good, and even with the layoff will have momentum on their side. But even the few who are going out and picking the Rockies are doing so with a sense of “October magic” and the unscripted end to a Cinderella story. Bottom line, these guys belong here and fate probably had little to do with it.
We are, of course, a bit more hesitant about our August claim now that the Red Sox have surged back into the Fall Classic in a dramatic fashion that is becoming the norm around this time of year, but we’ll stick with it.
Rockies in 6
