Alive.
I suppose it is fitting that last night’s dramatic effort was the biggest playoff comeback since 1929, the year of the stock market crash leading to the Great Depression.
We’ve spent all summer reading and learning. Learning that our world isn’t as foolproof as we once thought. We learned about CDO tranches and credit default swaps, and how they could potentially destroy our economy. We learned that David Ortiz was a 33-year-old human being, whose knees and wrist and back were made of the same bone and cartilage as everyone else. We learned that a steady ROI from real-estate purchases were not always a sure thing, and neither are the returns on top prospect pitchers with “plus plus” changeups and curveballs.
This October has been a particularly dark one. In 25 of the past 28 innings, the Red Sox had suffered a complete breakdown of baseball fundamentals in this ALCS. It’s as if they had completely forgotten how to pitch and how to hit. The Rays were not just beating Red Sox, they were embarrassing the Red Sox. They were grabbing us by the scruff of the neck and rubbing our faces in dog shit.
Last night was a bit of the same, all up until the bottom of the 7th inning.
Suddenly, something clicked. Ortiz was Ortiz again, and the Pedroia/Youkilis combo was the MVP worthy tandem weve seen all season long. J.D. Drew reprised his role as postseason hero, a role which has suited him since his first season in a Red Sox uniform.
I’m going to use a word that I hate using to describe baseball players, but I think it fits here, regardless of the outcome of Game 6 tomorrow night: this team has heart. There, I said it. These guys are not as talented as the 2004 or 2007 Red Sox, they’ve been hurt by injuries and natural veteran regression, but to muster up enough focus to score 8 runs in 3 innings with their season on the line, after they’ve been beaten and bloodied and embarrassed by the same players over the past week? That, my friends, requires a little something more than the ability to hit and throw. “Mental toughness” would certainly be a better noun to describe this trait, but I’ll just give a nod to the old school this morning and use their term. Heart. The 2008 Red Sox have it.
And just like that, the Tampa Bay Rays are no longer the story of Major League Baseball in 2008. The Underdog Halo was been transferred, and is now fixed above the caps of Terry Francona and the rest of the Red Sox. The drooling halfwits in the TBS broadcast booth will not see it this way, but if you mute your television and watch the action on the field, you will see that Tampa Bay is clearly the more talented team, the team more likely to win the series. The Red Sox are underdogs fighting their way out of the corner, and a neutral observer would see that and root accordingly (without being coaxed in either direction by voices on the television).
Now the team finds themselves in a similar position as they were at this time in 2004 and 2007. They just need to win one more. (And then one more after that.)
