Victory was redemption for all
NEW YORK -- This is what Yankee Stadium looks and feels like after Steinbrenner has been humbled, Sinatra has been silenced, and the Yankee Stadium monuments avert their eyes in shock at what this Red Sox team, unlike any of its predecessors in almost a century's worth of trying, was able to accomplish at the expense of pinstriped pride that may never feel quite the same again.
The place is devoid of all but Red Sox fans, who are crowding a dozen rows deep behind the visitors' dugout and chanting "Who's your daddy?" as Johnny Damon, the man who stuck a dagger in the Yankees not once, but twice, with a grand slam and two-run home run, is bathing them with champagne before falling wearily into the embrace of his fiancee, Michelle.
One fan holds aloft this sign: "History Starts Now."
Inside the visitors' clubhouse, where the corks began popping shortly after substitute second baseman Pokey Reese flipped to sub first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz at 12:01 a.m. for the final out of this improbable odyssey, Sox radio man Jerry Trupiano collared Theo Epstein and asked if he had detected traces of tears in Epstein's eyes.
"No, not yet," said Epstein, in a baseball cap turned backward and a shirt saturated with a champion's nectar. "I'm saving those for the World Series. That's just good old-fashioned Budweiser."
It was a year ago, almost to the day, when the calendar read Oct., 16, 2003, and time seemed to stop, just five outs away. In the midst of last night's party celebrating the completion of the job that was left undone last season, Pedro Martinez paused for just a moment to reflect on how that memory may have been erased forever.
"That's the first thing Tim Wakefield said to me," said Martinez, who was a fallen hero in Game 7 a year ago and a bit player in last night's 10-3 win in which the Sox did not have to place all their faith on his narrow shoulders. "He said we were in this clubhouse last season crying, and now we come back to have the last laugh."
Epstein, who is only 30 but has an appreciation for history of a man twice his age, said this victory last night was not only for the names that appear on the 2004 roster. Not just for Derek Lowe, who is a bit of a rogue but last night pitched far better on two days' rest than Gentleman Jim Lonborg on another team of Impossible Dreamers, Lowe holding the Yankees to just one hit and a run in six innings.
"Derek wasn't feeling that great," said Curt Schilling, the man with the most famous foot in these parts since Super Bowl hero Adam Vinatieri. "He had some issues going on with his back. It was a little bit of a struggle for him, but I'm so proud of Derek. The last 10, 12 days what he's gone through emotionally, that had to be tough. But we wouldn't be going to the World Series without Derek Lowe."
This win was not just for David Ortiz, the unanimous MVP of this series, who may soon have his own statue on the cobblestones outside Faneuil Hall after he hit his fourth home run of this series last night to jump-start the Sox, a two-run shot right after Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter had gunned down Damon at the plate in the kind of defensive play that can inspire a ball club.
This win wasn't just for all the names an ecstatic Schilling rattled off as he talked of all the mates for whom he felt so much pride: Bellhorn and Pokey, Trot and Tek, Millar and Mueller, and a little shortstop named Cabrera who so smoothly took over turf that had once belonged exclusively to Nomar.
"Two outs in the ninth, and I was still sweating," said Schilling, whose anxiety undoubtedly was shared by Sox owner John W. Henry, who after the Sox' pulsating 4-2 win in Game 6 said he'd never felt more stress in his life. And this is a hedge fund trader who can make and lose millions of dollars in the course of a single phone call.
No, Epstein said, there were other names that needed to be invoked on this night, one in which an entire region spent much of the evening calling loved ones and saying, `Can you believe this?"
Epstein spoke to the heart of the Nation.
"We did this for all the great Red Sox players who never found a way to beat the Yankees," he said. "The '49 team with Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky. The '78 team that should have won the playoff game. For our team last year, that should have won and gone to the World Series. I can't really put this in historical terms, but it's taken a long time to beat the Yankees. Our hats are off to them, a class organization, from [owner George] Steinbrenner to the 25th guy on their roster, and especially [to GM Brian] Cashman.
"But this was for all those great Red Sox teams of the past. This is for them. We talked about it last year, when we lost. We said we felt like we were going in the right direction and were going to win a World Series, but it's incredible that a year later, we have a chance to come back to Yankee Stadium for a chance we might not have again, and win a Game 7."
The couldas, wouldas, and shouldas have been silenced forever. Sox win, Yanks lose. You can look it up.
