September 29, 1998
...
Mo Vaughn, Pedro Martinez, and Nomar Garciaparra didn't win a World
Series this afternoon. But in the wake of an 11-3 demolition of the
Cleveland Indians in which Vaughn hit two home runs and a double and
drove in seven runs, Garciaparra hit a three-run homer and sacrifice
fly and drove in the other four runs, and Martinez struck out eight
in seven innings, the Red Sox did more than end their 13-game
postseason losing streak.
They
proclaimed, as loudly as Shirley Vaughn was cheering her son during the most
productive game of his career, that they have designs on something beyond just
winning Game 1 of their best-of-five American League Division Series.
The Red Sox,
who had not won in the postseason since Game 5 of the 1986 World Series, salved
the sting of that indignity as surely as Vaughn buried the memory of his
0-for-14 performance in the division playoffs in 1995, when the Indians swept
the Red Sox in three games.
With his
three-run homer in the first inning off Indians starter Jaret Wright, his
two-run homer off reliever Doug Jones in the sixth, and his two-run double off
reliever Jim Poole in the eighth, Vaughn matched Mariner Edgar Martinez's record
for most RBIs in a postseason game. He also drove in more runs than the Red Sox
scored in all three games combined against the Indians in '95.
While
Vaughn's three-run homer had the effect of a stun gun on the crowd of 45,185 in
Jacobs Field, Garciaparra's three-run homer off Wright in the fifth was the
silencer. It gave the Sox a 6-0 lead against a team that managed just two
singles through the first five innings against Pedro.
Meanwhile,
the first two hitters in the Sox lineup, Darren Lewis and John Valentin, were
producing five hits between them and scoring five runs, a total that might have
been even higher if Lewis hadn't left the game after being beaned in the left
earflap by Wright in the fifth.
Vaughn's
second homer of the day, which made him the first Sox player to hit two in a
postseason game since Carl Yastrzemski and Rico Petrocelli during the 1967 World
Series, made it 8-0 in the sixth.
The anxious
moments were few for Pedro, who had never pitched before in the postseason. He
gave up a two-run homer to Kenny Lofton in the sixth, a bases-empty homer to
Thome in the seventh, and invited a visit from manager Jimy Williams in the wake
of Thome's homer when he uncorked a third-strike wild pitch to Travis Fryman and
gave up a double to Brian Giles.
Reliever Jim
Corsi drew mop-up duty, but not before the Red Sox had tacked on three more runs,
two on Vaughn's double, the last on Garciaparra's sacrifice fly
The view
isn't quite as bleak as it might appear for the Indians. They have lost the
first game in seven consecutive postseason series and have come back to win
three. This is the first time, however, that they've lost a series opener at
home.
