1997 BOSTON RED SOX ...
REVERSING THE CURSE, PART 1 ... THE NOMAR ERA BEGINS
 

The 1997 Red Sox was a team in flux. A few years removed from an impressive string of playoff appearances, they had become an ill-fitted collection of fading veterans, young players and a few legit stars.  The year before they had fallen just short of the playoffs. Then ownership, perceived by the fanbase as meddling, let the manager go and their star pitcher as well.

The great run that had begun in 1986 and ended with the 1995 Division Series and mad-dash attempt for the 1996 playoffs that fell just short, had ended. Roger Clemens and Mike Greenwell would be gone and the new cast was unclear.

General manager Dan Duquette decided to not sign Clemens and he filed for free agency. Clemens and Duquette had grown tired of one another. Clemens was accustomed to being the big star and having the front office cater to him. He thought that because of all he had done for the Red Sox, he deserved the biggest contract in baseball. Duquette however, thought Clemens was in the twilight of his career and not worthy of a long-term deal. The Red Sox seemed to recognize that the Clemens departure would change the dynamic of the ball club. In a statement issued to the press the Red Sox management seemed less inclined to go after a championship but was more interested in providing their fans a friendly Fenway Park experience. 

On November 19th the Red Sox selected Jimy Williams to be their new manager. The choice however excited no one as Williams had to prove that the way he managed was better than his unexciting demeanor in public. A month after the McNamara signing, Clemens signed a four-year deal with Toronto.

Duquette continued to sign players on the fringe, getting outfielder Shane Mack and adding sore armed pitchers Steve Avery and Brett Saberhagen, while trading José Canseco to Oakland for John Wasdin..

Spring training started and Nomar Garciaparra, who had briefly come up at the end of the 1996 season was moved to shortstop in favor of John Valentin.  Valentin angrily walked out of spring training when he was moved over to second base, but Nomar was clearly the better player. This was the first of a series of troubles that manager Jimy Williams had to deal with.

The Sox opened the 1997 season with the Angels in Anaheim on April 2nd. In the ninth inning, the Red Sox trailed 5 to 2 with Darren Bragg and Nomar Garciaparra striking out against closer Troy Percival. The Angels were one strike away from winning the game for the next 20 minutes. John Valentin started a rally with a double and then Mo Vaughn walked on a 3-2 pitch. Reggie Jefferson got an infield hit and Tim Naehring walked.  Rudy Pemberton was hit by a pitch and Troy O'Leary beat out an infield hit to put Boston ahead 6 to 5. It was the Red Sox best opening day come back since 1902.

On April 5th in Seattle, the Red Sox mounted another ninth inning comeback, scoring four runs, three of which came from Nomar's first home run of the year.  The Sox finished their first road trip and came back to Fenway Park at 4-4.

The Sox came home to meet the Mariners and lost the first two games, but on April 13th they won their first home game, 7-1.  Nomar had two doubles, but it was Tim Naehring's grandslam that clinched it.  On April 16th, it was Mo Vaughn.  Vaughn went 11 games before hitting his first home run and then hit two three-run shots in consecutive innings, powering the Red Sox past Cleveland, 11-6, for their fourth straight win. The Sox closed out their initial homestand, 5-4 in 2nd place.

The Sox took to the road and at Jacobs Field, On April 22^nd, Garciaparra went 4 for 4, in an 8-2 rout of the Indians, hitting the first pitch of the game for a home run and barely slowing down thereafter. Nomar doubled, singled twice, drove in two runs and scored three. He also walked, putting him on base all five times he came to the plate, stole a base, and scored on a dash to the plate after a sacrifice fly. Garciaparra was batting .457 (16 for 35) during an eight-game hitting streak, raising his overall average to .349. In that stretch, he had four doubles, a triple, two home runs, nine runs, six RBIs, and three stolen bases.

Then Nomar propelled the team to a 2-1 win, with a 12th inning home run in Baltimore on April 24th.  Back home on April 30th, both Nomar and Mo Vaughn led a brutal Sox attack  on the Angels.

The Sox lost 14 of 17 games during the first three weeks of May.  Few players other than Vaughn and Garciaparra were hitting well.  On May 17th, in Minnesota, Tom Gordon shutout the Twins 4-0, and on May 22^nd, the last-place Red Sox exploded for 19 hits, in an 8-2 victory that put a chill on the weekday afternoon crowd in New York. Gordon cruised for the second straight outing and got plenty of help: five hits by Wil Cordero and a three-run homer from Mike Stanley. Mo Vaughn launched one into the third deck at Yankee Stadium.

At Fenway on May 26th the Sox brought back some of the "Magic" when Tim Naehring smacked a double off the left field wall in the 9th inning, to score Wil Cordero and Jeff Frye, giving the Sox a 3-2 walk-off.

Vaughn had perhaps his best day ever in a Boston uniform on May 30th against the Yankees at Fenway Park.  In five plate appearances, he was perfect. He singled off the wall, homered into the Red Sox bullpen, homered to left-center, walked, and homered into the Red Sox bullpen again, as the Sox beat the Yankees 10 to 4.  However the Red Sox remained in last place.

June started off with a string of losses to the Yankees, Brewers and Indians.  But on June 8th, the team, led by Nomar and Troy O'Leary, put it all together for a 12-6 win over the Indians.  After going 6 for 7 with two home runs and four runs batted in, Mo Vaughn very well could have been muttering to himself after the Red Sox were swept by the Orioles, 7-2 and 4-2, in a doubleheader on June 10th, at Fenway Park.  After the double loss, for the next two weeks, the Sox got hot, winning 11 of 14 games played.

Led by Reggie Jefferson at the plate and Tom Gordon tossing a complete game, the Sox pounded the Orioles, 10-1, on June 11th.  In Detroit on June 22nd, Gordon again pitched a gem, beating the Tigers 2 to 1.

The season turned tabloid in June, when Wil Cordero, uncomfortable in the outfield and not hitting, was arrested for assaulting his wife. The Sox reluctantly bowed to community pressure and kept him out of the lineup for nearly two weeks. They brought him back and benched him again, when his wife made more allegations and Cordero laughed his way through an ESPN interview. Then Mo Vaughn had arthroscopic knee surgery and was also absent from the lineup.

The Sox then went up to Toronto and swept the Blue Jays.  On June 23rd they squeaked out a 7-6 win.  On June 24th, led by Nomar's four hits, the Sox won 9-6.  And finally on June 25th, in an exciting slugfest, the Sox emerged victorious, 13-12, with Nomar going 3 for 4.

As July started, the Sox lost 7 of 10 and found themselves 18 games out of first. The Sox quickly went from bad to worse. Roger Clemens made his Fenway reappearance in a Toronto uniform on July 12th and struck out 16 men.

The Tigers came to Fenway Park on July 14th and the Sox unloaded their frustrations, scoring 18 runs on 21 hits, in a lopsided 18-4 win.

The Sox went on the road and on July 17th at Camden Yards, Mo Vaughn, on a night the Red Sox had 21 hits, delivered the biggest. An eighth-inning 425-foot, two-run home run into the Orioles' bullpen broke a 7-7 tie. The home run was Vaughn's 22nd of the season. John Valentin had four hits, and Vaughn, Reggie Jefferson, and Mike Stanley had three apiece, on a night that began with a game-time temperature of 101 degrees and when every Red Sox starter, save Jesus Tavarez, had at least one hit.

The next night, July 18th in Cleveland, Tim Wakefield threw a complete game shutout at the Indians, 7-0, for one of the top Sox pitching performances of the season.  Two nights later, Steve Avery limited the Tribe to 4 hits in a 3-1 Sox win.  Back at Fenway on July 24th, Jeff Suppan shut out Oakland, 3-0.  Nomar went 3 for 4 with a double, triple and a home run.

Off the field, it was Mo Vaughn making the news, when he was accused of punching a patron in a Rhode Island nightclub.

The Angels next came to Fenway and on July 26th, Mo Vaughn slammed a walk-off three run homer to give the Sox a come-from-behind 6 to 4 win.  The team notched another walk-off win the next night, on July 27th, as Wil Cordero capped a three run ninth inning comeback by driving in John Valentin with the game winner. The Sox had won 11 and lost 5 during the last two weeks of July and climbed out of last place.

The Sox continued to roll.  Rookie Jeff Suppan (5-0) shut out the Oakland A's on July 24th.  On July 29th, Tim Wakefield threw the second shutout in the last three games, beating Randy Johnson and the Mariners, 4 to 0.  Then it was another come-from-behind win on July 30th.  The Sox scored 3 runs in the bottom of the ninth after scoring two in the bottom of the eighth, to take the game into extra innings.  Nomar Garciaparra stroked a line drive single off the wall to score the winning run in probably the most exciting game of the season.  The sox won it 8 to 7.

At the end of July, Mo Vaughn was batting .326; Troy O'Leary batting .318; John Valentin was hitting .304;  and Reggie Jefferson at .363, but they were still 17 1/2 games behind.  On July 31st, the Red Sox traded pitcher Heathcliff Slocumb to the Seattle Mariners for Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe.

The Sox stayed hot as August began winning 7 of 9 games.  In Texas, on August 4th, Troy O'Leary's triple with the bases loaded and one out in the eighth inning, gave the Red Sox a 7-5 lead, and then Boston pushed across four more runs, to make it 11-5. Texas had lost six out of their last seven.

The Sox teed off on what passed for major league pitching, by clobbering the Rangers the next night, annihilating the Texas Frisbee-tossers, 17-1, in a 24-hit barrage.  Garciaparra was the most vaunted of the Red Sox hitters. The rookie went 4 for 7, with two doubles and a homer (his 20th) as Boston batted around in both the third and fourth innings. Garciaparra got two hits in the third inning, when the Red Sox scored eight runs and sent 14 players to the plate, and also helped key a four-run barrage in the fourth, when the Red Sox paraded a measly nine batters to the plate. Nomar's performance was magnificent. The rookie led the American League in hits, at-bats, multihit games, and triples.

Garciaparra continued in dramatic fashion on August 10th. Garciaparra, who had hit a two-run homer to extend his hitting streak to 13 games, blasted a double in the eighth, driving in Mike Benjamin with the go-ahead run in Boston's 6-4 victory over Kansas City.  The Sox were 20-12 since the All-Star break, thanks in large part to Nomar, who was hitting .307 and had scored 90 runs.

At the end of August Nomar had run a hitting streak that ended at 30 games, four games from tying both Dom DiMaggio's club record and the major league record for longest hitting streak by a rookie.

On September 12^th in Milwaukee, Nomar paced a power parade with two homers, giving him 28 and lifting his major league-record total for RBIs by a leadoff man to 90. Garciaparra reached yet another milestone when he hit the first of three homers off Brewers starter John D'Amico, a line drive to left on a 1-1 pitch to open the game. It was his sixth game-opening homer of the season, one of the top 10 such performances of all time, and he became the first Red Sox player on that list.

Jeff Frye was a valuable addition to the Red Sox.  Replacing the injured Tim Naehring at second base, Frye chipped in with many clutch hit, some of which won ball games.  On September 18th, he knocked in the Sox winning run to beat Roger Clemens and the Blue Jays. Frye was hitting .407 for the month (22 for 54) and was hitting .309 overall.

On September 20^th, as the Red Sox went down to a 6-4 loss to Chicago, Nomar Garciaparra became the 10th player in club history to reach the 200 hit milestone with a two-run, seventh-inning single that tied the game, 3-3. Garciaparra then stole second and came around to score the fourth run on a single by Mo Vaughn.  Garciaparra was the first rookie to reach the milestone since Kevin Seitzer had 207 for Kansas City in 1987.

It was Nomar Garciaparra who saved the season. He hit his 30th home run, on September 27^th in Toronto, and then added two more hits to break Johnny Pesky's 55-year-old club record for most hits by a rookie, 207. His emergence as one of baseball's premier shortstops may have well saved Jimmy Williams and Dan Duquette. No shortstop in club history had ever offered the combination of offense and defense that was shown by Garciaparra. Quiet and unassuming, and apparently allergic to touting his own accomplishments, Garciaparra was the perfect antidote to a season marked by scandal. He combined the best qualities of every Red Sox shortstop in history. He displayed Johnny Pesky's batting ability and demeanor. He had Rick Burleson's arm and the power of Vern Stephens and Rico Petrocelli. He had the range and speed of Luis Aparicio.  He was the rarest of players, particularly for the Red Sox. He was a five tool guy, who demonstrated the sixth sense of knowing how to keep his mouth shut.

Mo Vaughn's inability to stay quiet dominated the last half of the season. His contract was due to expire and in June the Red Sox made him a multiyear offer for 8 1/2 million dollars per year. Vaughn and his agent never responded and in September Duquette and Vaughn clashed. Duquette gave Vaughn an ultimatum and vowed that he would never allow another front-line player to walk away and receive nothing in return, as had happened with Roger Clemens. He claimed the club's offer to Vaughn was fair, but Vaughn was equally stubborn. He thought his stature in the community, not to mention his ability, counted for something in spite of his recent troubles. He charged that the Red Sox were lying to the press about their offer, bad mouthing him in private, and having him followed by detectives. To him the issue was one of respect. And so the standoff continued through the end of the season.

In that 1997 season, only two players who would eventually play in the 2004 and 2007 postseasons, were on the Red Sox roster, Tim Wakefield and Jason Varitek.

Wakefield was a pitcher who had done so much with so little rest. He reached double figures in victories for the third straight year.  On September 24th, Jason Varitek made his major league debut in Detroit, as a pinch hitter, and got a base hit.