Rebuilt for success, Sox start quest
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- They started planning for this at 12:16 a.m. on Oct. 17, 2003, when Aaron Boone's confetti-drenched homer plopped into the left-field stands in Yankee Stadium. In that moment of finality and despair, Red Sox management made a commitment to take the team to a higher level in 2004.
And so they fired a manager and hired a stopper and a closer. They put their highest-paid player on waivers and hired a new manager. They built a team they thought could win 100 games -- and a World Series -- spending $130 million on player payroll. When things didn't go according to plan in the middle of the season, they traded the franchise's most popular player since Ted Williams.
And here they are again . . . on the threshold . . . 11 victories from a hardball heaven that hasn't been experienced here since the doughboys were winning World War I.
With hired gun Curt Schilling on the mound, MVP candidate/home run king Manny Ramirez in left field, closer Keith Foulke in the bullpen, Terry Francona in the dugout, and Nomar Garciaparra in Chicago wondering where it all went wrong, the Red Sox take on the Anaheim Angels today in Game 1 of a best-of-five Division Series. Eleven and a half months after the Bronx tale of woe, the Sox are back where they need to be to win their first World Series since 1918.
The John Henry/Larry Lucchino/Theo Epstein blueprint would have Boston beating the Angels in the first round, overthrowing the hated Yankees in the ALCS, then winning the World Series against the ancient Cardinals or Dodgers. Fall Classic Game 7 is slated for Sunday, Oct. 31, Halloween, in Fenway Park, with the parade through the Hub's canyon of heroes on Tuesday, Nov. 2, which happens to be the same day a Massachusetts favorite son hopes to win the presidency.
This afternoon the Red Sox will be standing on the same haunted-haloed ground where the last Boston World Series entry launched its championship drive. In 1986, two weeks before Mookie Wilson's Little League grounder skipped between the high-topped ankles of Bill Buckner, the John McNamara Sox staged one of the great comebacks in playoff history. Trailing a best-of-seven series, three games to one, the Red Sox came to the plate in the ninth inning, down 5-2, just three outs from extinction. The Sox rallied for four runs, capping the inning when Dave Henderson homered off reliever Donnie Moore. The Sox went on to win in extra innings, then came home to Boston and swept California out of the playoffs. Henderson joined Bernie Carbo in Boston sports lore.
It was said that the Angel franchise might never recover from the crushing defeat (the word "curse" was even used), but in 2002 Mike Scioscia's team made one of baseball's great late-season runs, winning the World Series as a wild-card entry. Many of the players from that Angel team will be in the home dugout today when Schilling throws his first pitch.
The Red Sox have not been home since Schilling beat the Yankees nine days ago in the regular-season Fenway finale. Boston clinched a playoff spot last Monday in St. Petersburg, Fla., triggering a week of debate about which team would be the ideal first-round opponent. Most Boston fans wanted the Sox to play their Oakland cousins (the Sox were 8-1 against the A's this year), but Billy Beane's team dropped out of the running Saturday. No one, it seemed, wanted any part of Minnesota Cy Young shoo-in Johan Santana in a five-game set, and the pinball peculiarities of the Metrodome threatened to expose some of the Sox' weaknesses.
There wasn't much speculation about Anaheim because the Angels looked to be out of it until they went to Texas and crushed the Rangers. Then they did the same thing in Oakland.
The good news is that the Angels had to play hard to the finish and don't have their best pitching rested for optimum effectiveness. Today's matchup of Schilling vs. Jarrod Washburn (11-8) weighs heavily in the Sox' favor. Even tanned and rested, the Angels starters are not a formidable lot.
The bad news is that the Angels are hot and playing with the urgency the Sox may have lost in the last week. Anaheim features a raft of clutch players, particularly Garret Anderson, Darin Erstad, and David Eckstein. Meanwhile, Vladimir Guerrero may have snatched the MVP from Manny in the final week and is capable of taking over any game or series (remember his nine-RBI night against the Sox in June?). Scioscia plays an aggressive game that puts a defense on its heels.
On the plus side, Boston's rotation is in order (though the Nation is nervous about Pedro Martinez's season-ending four-game losing streak) and the post-Nomar Sox are better equipped to deal with Anaheim than they were in the Stonehenge days of the first half of 2004. Boston swept the Angels at Fenway at the end of August, a series that at the time looked as if it might bounce Anaheim from October.
The Red Sox were five outs away from the Series last year. The midnight confessions of Oct. 17, 2003, triggered the most bombastic offseason in franchise history and a 162-game season that yielded the third-best record in baseball and the most wins by any Sox team since 1978.
There it is again, another Sox date with bad connotations. The 1978 Sox lost to the Yankees in the Bucky Dent playoff game. The 1986 Sox lost to the Mets in the World Series. And the 2003 Sox lost to the Yankees in the ALCS. Three great Red Sox teams that left the Nation burned and bitter.
Mindful of the successes and sins of those who came before them, the 2004 Red Sox were built to go the distance. Thus far, they have done what they needed to do. Time now to finish the job.
