Post by ZenMaster on Aug 11, 2023 8:41:49 GMT -5
Written by a friend of mine, long but a fun walk down memory lane. Eh MB?
Dirt Dog Diaries: 2004 ALCS Game 7
August 9, 2023
As we ride out whatever the 2023 Red Sox season will be, I am watching back the epic 2004 Red Sox run. In its momentary divine wisdom, Major League Baseball productions released a 12-DVD boxed set of the complete broadcasts of the entire 2004 ALCS and World Series. The two most goosebump inspiring words in all of sports: Game 7. And no game 7 packed as much baggage as this one. 86 years of misery, curses, Bucky Bleeping Dent, Aaron Freaking Boone, and now becoming the first team to even force a game 7 after trailing 3-0. The result would either be agony or ecstasy. Either the Red Sox would pull off the greatest comeback in sports history against their hated rivals, seemingly shifting the balance of power in the relationship forever. (and this has actually been born out over the last 19-years, ((make your argument that the Red Sox AREN’T the Yankees’ Daddy.)) Or the Red Sox come close to Xanadu only to complete their greatest collapse to date and the excruciating pain of being a Red Sox fan rolls on in winless purgatory in perpetuity.
- What I remember about this game from when I originally watched it: I had almost an eerie calm that entire afternoon. After sweating through game 6, there was a bit of “that was the Yankees best shot, the tide has turned and now they’re the ones who are afraid of becoming the laughingstock of baseball.” I’m not saying the Red Sox were playing with house money, but as fans, if we lost it was what happened, but the glory of winning this game was beyond anything we could comprehend. This was Super Bowl 36 turned up to 11 and it wasn’t even for the championship. They said the rubber match between Ali and Frazier didn’t need to be for the heavyweight championship, because it was for the championship of each other. Think of how these two teams spent the 12 months leading up to this game: in 2003 they played the most contentious 7 game series in baseball history, (look at game 3, Pedro Martinez vs Roger Clemens, the benches cleaned more often than Tim McCarver got someone’s name wrong and they still had to play 4 more games. Grady Little leaves Pedro in game 7 (also against Roger) the Yankees mount an 8th inning rally, win in Aaron Boone’s walk off in extras. The Red Sox go scorched earth, trade for Curt Schilling, sign Keith Foulke and pursue the Manny for A-Rod trade for 3 months until it finally falls apart. Then Aaron Boone blows out his knee playing basketball (what an idiot!) so in less than a week, the Yankees do what the Red Sox couldn’t get done in 3 months and trade for A-Rod. Tickets to these two teams playing in Spring Training were being scalped outside of City of Palms Park. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. The Yankees pound the Red Sox all season until Jason Varitek pounds his glove into A-Rod’s mug and then Billy Mueller walks that game off by launching a homer into the bullpen off Rivera. The rematch had to happen. The same as when Rocky won the Academy Award, you knew Balboa was getting a rematch at Apollo. (Sports aren’t always fixed, but the Gods shine down on us sometimes.) I’m rambling, but watching this back it is impossible to be back in that space again. These games felt do or die. The logos mattered. Be honest, you thought less of your friends who were Yankees fans. It’s okay to admit it now, you have amnesty here in the Diaries. What I remember most from watching this game is always fearing the other shoe would drop and it never coming. My dorm exploded when Ruben Sierra grounded out to end the game. My freshmen roommate Lee, (not a sports fan) thankfully shot a bunch of video during and after these games and then edited it down so I have these little 10 minute mini movies after game 7 of the ALCS and game 4 of the World Series. I knew at the time these were going to be cool to watch back some day and now 19 years later they’re like Oppenheimer and Barbie to me.
- What everybody remembers: This was Johnny Damon’s game: 3-6, 2 home runs (1 a grand slam) 6 RBI, 2 runs. Before this game Damon was 3 for 29 for the series. Truly remarkable. His grand slam in the 2nd inning was truly stunning beyond words. In a game like this, you don’t see the early knockout blow coming, you assume you’ll have to sweat it out for 9 innings at a minimum, because why wouldn’t we? We’d been sweating for a week at this point. I mean, think of the past 3 nights, every second was absolutely excruciating, imagine if we had to sweat through this one too? It might’ve been too much. (Another crazy stat from this series: Manny Ramirez did not have a single RBI.)
- What everybody sort of remembers: Derek Lowe was the winning pitcher in all 3 series clinching games in 2004. But what most don’t remember is how freaking good he was in game 6. On 3 days rest, this guy, who wasn’t even in the rotation when the playoffs started went 6 innings, 1 run, 1 hit and threw 69 pitches. He absolutely dominated the Yankees, who continuously beat his sinker into easy ground balls and flailed at what in 2023 would be called a sweeper but in 2004 was just a damn good slider. Game 7 could have turned into a slugfest (a la game 5 of the 1999 ALDS vs Cleveland) very quickly but Lowe did his best Johnny Podres impersonation and turned the Bronx Bombers back. Lowe does not get enough credit for his time in Boston, his 2004 postseason (and that called third strike to Terrance Long in game 5 of the Oakland series) is the stuff of legend.
- What I remember most: There is a moment in the first inning that I think of first when I think of this game. Johnny Damon leads off with a single and steals second. With one out, Manny Ramirez singles to left, a relay from Matsui to Jeter to Posada nails Damon for the inning’s second out. Yankee Stadium is on fire. The Yankees are making Yankee plays in the crucial moment and the universe will not change tonight, not ever, order has been restored. Patrons of the Bronx were doing their best Glenn Frey singing “There’s gonna be a heartache tonight I know!” But before Yankee fans could quit buzzing over the play at the plate, David Ortiz ripped a panzer shot into the first row of the right field stands, 2-0 Red Sox. You have never heard a stadium go quiet so quickly. One could argue that from the moment that David Ortiz’s bat, made contact with Kevin Brown’s fastball, nothing has ever been the same. It is a stunning moment, that because it happened in the first inning and it isn’t one of the two Johnny Damon home runs gets sort of glossed over. But you want ecstasy to agony, nobody has gone from the penthouse to the outhouse faster than Yankee fans in that moment.
- What you probably forgot: Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez. I’ll admit, I sort of forgot about their existance and that’s probably the best thing you can say about their careers in New York. These were the Yankees big replacements for Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and David Wells and it just never worked. Brown was such a disaster that on September 3rd after a bad outing, Brown broke a bone in his hand punching a wall. Game 7 was actually the first time pitching in Yankee Stadium since that incident. I forgot about the two of them during this rewatch because both pitched in game 3, Brown got bombed and Vazquez threw 96 pitches so he wasn’t ready until game 7, which was still short rest. Brown only lasted 1.1 innings and was pulled with the bases loaded, Vazquez gave up the grand slam to the first batter he faced, Damon. Brown had an era of 21.60 for the series, Vazquez 9.95. Damon his both of his home runs of Javier Vazquez, though I feel like Kevin Brown took the brunt of Yankees’ ire for losing game 7.
- Thing I’ll never understand: Lowe throws 69 pitches through 6 innings and Francona takes him out (he’s on 3 days rest and you’ve got everyone available except Schilling) and he brings in game 5 starter (who we know threw over 100 pitches) Pedro Martinez. At worst this was tempting fate and at best it was rubbing salt in the New York wound and exercising Pedro’s demons from a year ago. The score is 8-1 when enters the game and Pedro quickly gives up back to back doubles to Matsui and Williams (8-2, no outs) Posada popped out, Lofton singles and Williams scores (Kenny Lofton was on this Yankee team!) and it’s now 8-3 with a runner on, one out and as Ric Flair would say “Yankee Stadium is all the way live!” Like Yankee Stadium was plugged into Maine Yankee, the ”Who’s your daddy?” chants rang out so loud the reverberations are probably still rattling around the borough somewhere even to this day. What does Francona do? It’s Pedro, so everybody leaves him in, only this time he strikes out the pinch hitting John Olerud and gets Miguel Cairo to fly-out to right. This was the only nervous part of the night after the grand slam in the 2nd inning, but Mark Bellhorn led off the 8th by smoking one to right that was only kept out of the upper deck because the foul pole got in the way. This righted the ship, 9-3 Red Sox, 6 outs to go.
- In my memory Mike Timlin and Alan Embree were a two headed monster setting up games for Foulke in this series but really after pitching in game 3, we hardly saw Embree during the comeback, but we saw Timlin and Foulke every night. Timlin gets the Yankees in order in the 8th and actually comes back out for the 9th to get two quick outs. In my memory, Francona pulls Timlin after he gets the second out and brings in Embree who gets Sierra to ground out to end the game and it always sort of bugged me that after pulling the wagon as far as he did that Timlin didn’t get that moment of being the guy on the mound to finish out that game. But he did get a chance. I totally forgot (a lot going on watching this moment live) that Timlin faced Lofton with two out and a man on and walked him on 4 pitches. This was probably a pretty good indication that TImlin was cooked. Francona made the right decision in not letting it go any further.
- Sideline reporter Kenny Albert interviews Johnny Damon on the field and Damon is wearing the on-field World Series hat during the interview. Not the championship hat, the regular authentic hat with the 2004 World Series logo on the side that they wear in the series. I’ve never seen those hats pop up so fast. Just an interesting tidbit.
- Watching the video of the Husson celebration after this game, there is a moment I sort of forgot about. After chanting Yankees suck and what not in our revelry, we broke into a chant of “we want Roger!” I always forget that the same night as this game, the Cardinals beat the Houston Astros with a 12-inning Jim Edmonds home run to force a game 7 of their own. If the Astros had won either games 6 or 7, we would have gotten Roger Clemens pitching against the Red Sox in the World Series. Imagine if he’d pitched one of the games at Fenway Park, against Pedro or Schilling? This would’ve been one of the hottest tickets ever. (Believe it or not, I did some research on this.) So most likely Clemens would not have pitched in one of the first two games at Fenway Park, unless the Astros had won the NLCS in 6 games. Clemens started in game 7 and went 6 innings, 6 hits, 4 earned, taking the loss. This was on Thursday night and game 1 of the World Series was scheduled for Saturday and game 2 Sunday. So say the Astros and Clemens had won game 7, Clemens wouldn’t have pitched games one or two which would have been at Fenway because the American League won the All-Star game and were given home field advantage. (Remember when that was a thing! The American League pounded the Senior Circuit 9-4 (in Houston) led by Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, who both homered. Manny’s first inning blast was off of NL starter, Roger Clemens.) So if Houston had managed to squeak by the Cardinals, Clemens would have likely pitched in game 3 of the World Series in Houston. But, if the World Series had gone 7 games, that 7th game would have been hosted at Fenway Park and if the Astros kept he same pitching schedule that they did in the NLCS, and the Red Sox kept the same pitching rotation that they wound up using in the actual 2004 World Series, not only would Pedro Martinez have opposed Roger Clemens in game 3 in Houston, the two would have met for the second year in a row in a game 7, this time for the World Championship. It’s been 19-years and I think my head just exploded knowing that we weren’t that far away from Pedro vs Roger in game 7 of a World Series at Fenway Park. I need to lay down.
Not you. Was thinking Mach would and write up a review of his own though. 😝
How many times can we repost it? 🤣