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THE "IDIOTS" REVERSE THE CURSE
2004 ALCS, GAME #7
The Red Sox finish the
greatest postseason
comeback in baseball history
October 20, 2004 ... The 2004 Red Sox won the American League pennant in the heart of the Evil Empire. The Red Sox embarrassed
and eliminated the Yankees at their house, 10-3, in the seventh and deciding game of their American League Championship Series. On the very soil where the Sox were so cruelly foiled in this same game one year ago, the Sox completed the greatest postseason comeback in baseball history. No major league team had ever recovered
from a 3-0 series deficit.
The Sox won the much-hyped finale on the strength of two homers (including a grand slam) by Johnny Damon and a stunning six innings of one-hit pitching from Derek Lowe, who lost his job in the Sox' starting rotation before the start of the playoffs. Pedro Martinez came on for a curious
(two-run) relief stint in the seventh, followed by Mike Timlin and Alan Embree. Embree retired Ruben Sierra on a grounder to second for the final out at 12:01 this morning. Sox players and officials celebrated on the Yankee Stadium infield and the area in front of the third base dugout a
half-hour after the final out. Thousands of Boston fans gathered behind the dugout and players tossed equipment and sprayed champagne into the stands, while the throng chanted, "Let's Go, Red Sox!"
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JOHNNY DAMON |
Red Sox-Yankees Game 7 had the requisite classic themes of history, revenge, passion, and redemption (Lowe, for one, comes to mind). It had the two most storied baseball teams meeting in a winner-take-all game for the second time in 12 months. It had a long- suffering Red Sox Nation
convinced that this really is the year.
It was 54 degrees in the Bronx when slumping Damon (.103 in the series coming into the game) stepped in to face the first pitch from Yankees righthander Kevin Brown at 8:30 p.m. Ortiz crushed a first-pitch, two-run homer to right to give the Red Sox a 2-0 lead in the first inning. In
the second, after Brown was pulled with the bases loaded and one out, Damon hit Javier Vazquez's first pitch over the wall in right to make it 6-0. There was bedlam in the Boston dugout as Damon circled the bases. Damon launched his second homer, this one into the upper deck, with one
man aboard in the fourth to make it 8-1.
As the game lurched into the middle frames, anxious Sox fans waited patiently for more outs and more innings that could deliver the Sox back into the World Series. Lowe did the job. Lowe had retired 11 consecutive batters when he was pulled at the end of six innings. A homer by Mark Bellhorn
in the eighth made it 9-3. Orlando Cabrera's sacrifice fly in the ninth completed the scoring, and Timlin, then Embree, finished off the Yankees in the bottom of the ninth.
In the end, there was the strangest sight of them all: Boston Red Sox players jumping up and down and hugging one another in the Yankee Stadium infield, laughing and goofing like little boys, celebrating their hard-earned American League pennant while "New York, New York" boomed over the
public address system.
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