I got to see a World Series game at Fenway Park.
I got to see Curt Schilling pitch a World Series game at Fenway Park.
I got to see Curt Schilling pitch a Red Sox win in a World Series game at Fenway Park.
Holy shit.
Last year we had the luck to get tickets to game 3 of the ALDS, which Trot Nixon won with a dramatic 11th-inning pinch-hit homer to cap a bizarre but ultimately satisfying playoff game that began what had been perhaps the team's greatest playoff comeback...until the events of last week. But through unfortunate circumstances, that had been the last playoff game Viv had gotten to see - she was unavailable for last year's ALCS, so Josh was the lucky recipient of the extra ticket, which ended up being to an entirely unsatisfying game, as the Sox were shut down by David Wells in a six-hitter, losing 4-2. This was after the infamous Karim Garcia/Pedro Martinez/Don Zimmer game, so to see such a lifeless game two days later was a significant letdown...as was the rest of the series, as you might remember.
Not this time around.
The ALDS and ALCS whizzed by - we missed the ALDS because the Sox swept, and Viv was out of town for ALCS game 3 so my brother and I got to go, but once the Sox completed their magical comeback against the Yankees, we got the email once again that we've been so lucky to get all year long - "Do you want Game 1 or Game 2?" As nice as it would have been to be there for the pageantry and pomp that is the first game of the World Series, we had dorm duty Saturday night, and since we've already ditched on our downstairs neighbor for duty a few times, it wasn't an option. So we chose Sunday instead, and then the rotation was released. I'd say a Curt Schilling start at Fenway was a nice game to end up with, no?
Unfortunately, Viv's constitution is fickle this time of year - as the weather gets colder, it gets to her a bit, and when she started sniffling and sneezing on Friday and Saturday, it was a question of how bad it would get. But then, if you have tickets to the WORLD EM-EFFING SERIES, you sack up and deal, as my brother would say (apparently possession of said sack is optional). We watched the first half of the Patriots game - they were winning at halftime, a good omen - and then put on more clothing than Amundsen and Scott on their South Pole expedition. Through no coordination of our own, she ended up wearing all of the red clothing - a red jacket, red fleece, red scarf and red gloves - and I wore all blue - jeans, long johns, sweatshirt, fleece and hat. Just one of those coincidences. The drive in to Fenway was short and uneventful, mostly since we were going in ridiculously early to avoid what I'm sure would turn into a zoo of traffic. Most sobering was seeing the enormous line of police motorcycles outside the Star Market on Boylston Street - I was mostly concentrating on navigating around the vehicles and pedestrians, but when Viv let slip a "holy shit!" I glanced over to see several dozen policemen and cop choppers lined up along the sidewalk across from us. I'm happy to say that their presence was welcome but not needed, fortunately.
An anecdote from the radio on the way in, as we were parking our car. The local station, WEEI, had ESPN's Baseball Tonight commentator Harold Reynolds on as they analyzed and dissected the series to that point. Now, Baseball Tonight has a segment known as "Fact or Fiction?" that basically serves as a quick-hit breakdown of various points about the game or series at hand. During the ALCS, Harold had been on the "Fact or Fiction?" hot seat, and had picked the Yankees all the way along. Apparently, in the wee hours of the morning after the Sox had completed their reverse sweep of the Yankees, Harold's cell phone began to ring off the hook. He answered it only to hear the entire Red Sox team, sitting in their charter plane on the tarmac at Logan Airport, bellowing "FACT OR FICTION, HAROLD?! FACT OR FICTION?!" into the phone, good-naturedly ribbing him for his erroneous prediction, and passing the phone around the cabin so that everyone could delight in his bad prognosis. He took it all in good stride and revealed that his World Series pick was indeed for the Sox. The hosts, of course, were horrified, and demanded that he immediately retract his statement given his history with playoff picks to that point.
We walked down to the Longwood T stop to pick up our tickets from our benefactors, and it was a momentous occasion as Viv had never met Chris' parents, the Holders of the Tickets. Indeed, a teary moment for all involved. Well, maybe not. The tickets were enormous and fairly reasonably priced - we were expecting triple digits, but they were a mere $70 apiece, more than worth every cent. Something to tell the grandkids when I'm bouncing them on my knee later in life, you know? But we stayed to chat for a while before they finally shooed us off in the direction of Fenway Park, lest we miss a second of the camaraderie to be had in the Arctic reaches of section 38. But before we made it to the upper echelons, we put in a call to our friend Steve, who had (ahem) acquired a pair of tickets in a right-field skybox along with his father, for an exorbitant sum that neither cared to mention. We met up underneath the stands and chitchatted for a bit, where I heard for the first time that there was a good possibility that Curt might not be able to pitch, having experienced a great deal of pain since waking up that morning after his second surgery to intentionally displace a tendon in his foot that had burst free of its protective sheath and bone groove that normally houses it. The mind boggles, it really does...it's basically tendon bypass surgery, done to facilitate a range of motion of the body that is unnatural to begin with...only multiple times, with sutures put in and then taken out immediately afterward. And the prospect of welcoming him back to the mound at Fenway for the first time since putting his ankle, shoulder and entire body on the line...it was almost too good to believe.
Our small talk concluded, we began the lengthy climb to row 30, coming up out of the tunnel just in time to see Schilling begin the long, slow stroll from the dugout to the bullpen to begin his pre-game ritual. Now, he was walking with his batterymate, Jason Varitek, the entire time, no doubt going over the minutiae of the Cardinals hitters, and formulating the last remnants of an elaborate game plan designed to silence one of the most fearsome lineups in all of baseball, a lineup that had bashed its way to 105 wins, the most of any team in the DECADE to date. No small task for a healthy man, let alone a 37-year-old man with a recently-operated ankle, under the klieg lights of World Series coverage and faced with a nasty New England night of mid-to-upper 40's and cold, swirling mist. The crowd, of course, began to buzz, then simmer, and then come to a full rolling boil...it started in sections 13 and 14 behind the Red Sox dugout, swept down to the right field corner, and built up to an elated, deafening roar by the time the cheers swept up the stands to where we were. But the entire time, he kept his head down, discussing the finer points of pitching to the Cardinals...until the bullpen gate swung open. At that point, two or three steps from the practice mound, his cleats crunching on the grit of the warning track, he simply raised his glove above his head, acknowledging all of us sitting there cheering ourselves hoarse for him and the performance we knew he didn't think he'd be able to give that morning.
If there's one thing we've learned from watching some pitching greatness over the years, it's that a pitcher can't do it all by himself. Too many sparkling performances over the years I've watched - in particular, one of the most forgotten great games, David Cone's pitching job against Mike Mussina's near-perfect game in 2001 - have gone by the boards for lack of support from the offense. Not tonight. None other than Curt's backstop, Jason Varitek, made sure of it by blasting a two-run, two-out triple in the very first frame to warm up the fans. Straight to center, we couldn't even see where it landed but instead had to rely on the upthrust arms of the fans in front of us with a better view. Even though the breeze trickled down the backs of our necks from behind us, sending an ungodly chill through our bodies, we had a lead and we had hope. First and second, one out, another threat. A screaming liner to third on a hit-and-run, stabbed by Bill Mueller and turned into a double play escape act. The Cardinals plated one run thanks to a few miscues in the field, but Mueller, the very author of those miscues, came through with a crucial stop that would choke off the rally. A ground ball to the chest and a race to the third base bag. Third out, inning over. Very next inning, Mueller redeemed himself completely with a double to right, after which he came around to score on a Mark Bellhorn double. Once again, a hit to straightaway center, and the joy of two more runs rushed back up to us in a wave as the first few rows celebrated and passed it back. Two more innings, two more runs, and the outcome was never in doubt. Even when one run scored in the eighth, Keith Foulke strode in to the strains of Danzig, squashed the rally and then plowed through the Birds in the ninth, closing out the game with a 1-2-3 top of the inning as we danced to "Dirty Water" for the second time that night. The sweetest sound at Fenway.
As I type this, Pedro Martinez has spun another gem and gotten support from the bats, and Red Sox Nation sits on the edge of something unreal. The Red Sox won the very first World Series played, and now they are in control of the hundredth World Series ever. Even as the third game ended tonight, I wasn't jumping up and down, I wasn't hollering and high-fiving...I found myself calm and relaxed, as if everything was simply coming to us. Security and sureness should be alien feelings to us as Red Sox fans, but finally breaking that spell after game 7 of the ALCS was almost like a catharsis, like shaking off an eternal daze and realizing what needs to be accomplished and how easy it can be.
We have four chances. Let's get it done.
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