Hey, Boston, GEICO wants their cavemen back! Wait, are those the… Did the duck commanders lose weight? No, no it can’t be them. Twigs to Paul Bunyan’s family tree? No…
Whoever it is, they did not get the memo on where above the shoulders you’re supposed to apply Bosley ointment. Oh, it’s the Boston Red Sox! You know, the World Series champs. The predictors’ favorites. The scruffy Sox.
Scruffy socks, in general, aren’t too comfortable, so it’s pretty fitting that these Sox have made every opposing team’s manager uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with the fact that, say by the seventh inning or later, everyone in the opposition would be grinding their bicuspids to the gum in anxiety—if they hadn’t been already.
Games could have every sign that it was wrapped up in one team’s favor, and the Red Sox would storm back. Seventh inning stretches would be considered by some to be like an uneventful bottom-of-the-ninth, a chance to leave. This Red Sox team could flip on a ‘liveliness’ switch more abruptly than Independence Day’s first firework. And then those fans would rush back to down to their seats.
All in all, Boston’s summer was great. The first couple postseason series were greater. But in the World Series, on the greatest stage, they played their absolute greatest. The heart of such a juggernaut offense, the rally catalyst, was 37-year old postseason veteran David Ortiz. What a surprise, right?
Disregarding sarcasm, this one actually was the surprise: Ortiz went on to bat a pupil-popping .688 average. Against St. Louis in that World Series, he let his heroic bat fly more than Sin City at night.
“We probably don’t have the talent that we had in ’04 or ’07,” Ortiz said, “but we have guys that are capable to stay focused and do the little things. And when you win with a ball club like that, that’s special.”
Sure, a pitching trio of Lester, Dempster, and Lackey isn’t any Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, and Ramiro Mendoza, nor is Mike Napoli any Manny Ramirez, Dustin Pedroia any Nomar Garciaparra. The margin from previous talent to now may have gaped, the lead on top teams this year narrowing. Room for error was a sliver.
Having slipped by the Tigers in the AL Championship the series prior with monumental late-game rallies, the burden on St. Louis hung around every darkening inning of those World Series night games.
Those rallies kept St. Louis apprehensive about subbing out shoulders on the pitching mound. Boston had its share of horrendous starting pitching; we’ve seen it against Detroit multiple games. The Cardinals knew they had to take advantage of their chances to put runs up early like the Tigers did.
They would’ve had to get on the board and establish a lead from the giddy-up because the Red Sox have had no hesitation in bringing in their bullpen early, even into the fourth and fifth innings. That had brought the challenge; that ‘challenge’ can come trotting out of the bullpen in the form of Junichi Tazawa or ALCS MVP Koji Uehara, two incredible pitchers, so it was seen as essential that St. Louis take advantage of weak areas of pitching early on and capitalize with runs.
That consistent aggressiveness at the plate was brought but runs weren’t. When this happens, the only thing that is batted in is a predicament. With no advantage on the scoreboard and the Cardinals’ greatest disadvantage on the mound, an uncorked champagne bottle would seem to look far, far away for them. Like a fluttering cardinal fleeing a brewery’s New Year’s party, it soon did.
With the exception of the first and last games, one and six, the Red Sox started off the first five or six innings in their tradition of dullness: zero runs. But when Cardinals’ pitchers’ arms got tired, Red Sox bats caught fire. As did that familiar spark of momentum.
In a nutshell, Boston brought what brought them there. Early in games, it was a priority to take advantage of their open shot to take an early lead, given the efficient ability to hold off runs on the opposite half of their innings. They had to bring the heat Cardinals pitchers delivered.
Boston’s offensive production could be held off until the last several innings like it had been all series with Detroit. They were asked to produce, and they answered with a factory. They were the Industrial Revolution of late-game production in that series.
The first five to six innings of all the games had below-average batting from Red Sox batters—all but Ortiz. So when his teammates finally got in position to score later in games and he was up to bat, it was like the intensity yet easiness of Steve Nash shooting a pair of game-winning free throws.
Ortiz was called upon to step up when the rest of the lineup was stuck to the first step. Like the man upstairs, he answered every calling; the worshippers in a harmonic Mass(-achusetts) can’t thank him and their team enough for finally jumping up the entire staircase.
“BOSTON STRONG,” the entire city chanted at the team’s championship parade a few days after the confetti, the champagne, and the emotion had soaked in. The marathon bombings from the start of the season became polarized to the moment Boston now cherishes. That day at the parade, those emotions met at the equator, gratified victory prevailing as the overwhelming sentiment.
It was a reminding perspective of how impactive sports are to a community bereft for so long of triumphant joy.
“It is kind of a poetic end to a season that began with tragedy,” a Red Sox fan said at the parade. “We are ‘Boston Strong.’”
A much needed gift of morale comfortablity was needed for this city. Comfortablity. Who would’ve thought scruffy sox could do the trick?