By Ryan McGowan
As an optimistic fan, I hope that a game like Saturday’s epic renewal of the ancient feud between the Red Sox and the Yankees can be a catalyst for the sudden phoenix-like revival of an otherwise frustrating 2004 season for the Boston Nine.
As a human being, I was happy to finally see the Olde Towne Team whup some ass.
About two or three weeks ago, I was watching a random midweek Sox game at Fenway Park, notebook in hand, futilely attempting to pen some ideas about what it is that this version of the Sox is lacking. It is certainly no secret that the Nation has been up in its collective arms this year over the perceived (or actual) underachieving of an otherwise supremely talented squad. In the preseason, talk centered along the understanding that this was possibly the most talented Sox squad in history that didn’t include a fat right fielder/pitcher named Ruth. They had the pitching, they had the bats, they were winning games… they just didn’t have certain intangibles that so epitomized the 2003 Cowboy Up squad. And since we in Boston simply counted the 2004 season as an extension of ’03 (just with a few extra days off for Pedro and Manny), we consciously (or unconsciously) assumed that the Sox would easily pick up where they left off, continuing the wizardry and intensity of last year’s magical September run and two Instant Classic playoff series.
But they just didn’t have “it”, that impossible-to-quantify characteristic of a blessed team. We know because we’ve seen “it” many times before. The ’67 Sox had “it”. The three generations of Celtics dynasties had “it”. The great Yankees teams that we have chased since 1996 clearly have had “it”. This year’s team, supremely talented as it is, seemed to merely sleepwalk through games, devoid of any sense of urgency or desire to win THIS game above all else, something that the legions of fans who have not played major league baseball just do not comprehend.
They were too complacent, we complained. They didn’t want it badly enough, we moaned. The manager isn’t tough enough, we shouted. Talk show callers demanded Terry Francona and his watch-wearing, dugout-rocking habits be fired, Nomar Garciaparra and his maniacal superstitious mannerisms be put on the nearest cattle car out of town, and Kevin Millar be hanged by his flaming goatee on top of Beacon Hill. They were missing the desire to be winners. They were a team of Tony Mandariches or Todd Van Poppels; guys who had all the talent, but just didn’t want to pay the necessary price to be champions.
To the admiration of Red Sox Nation and the horror of the Evil Yankee Empire, Jason Varitek changed that perception completely with one bad-ass slap to the $25 million man, the Ambiguously Metrosexual Alex Rodriguez.
Like the 1994 O.J. Bronco chase, I will always remember where I was when I watched A-Rod get punked by Tek. Right in the middle of the McGowan Open after-party, I found myself in the living room of my parents’ house with about 20-25 other partygoers who, like myself, are all certainly unnaturally obsessed with the Red Sox. Normal people don’t take a break from an eight-keg mega-rave to come inside and watch a Saturday baseball game in July. Needless to say, the words “normal” and “Sox fan” are rarely used in the same vicinity, and certainly never about McGowan Open participants.
For anyone who didn’t see it, the incident started innocently enough. Bronson Arroyo, a man who defines the word “inconsistent,” plunked Rodriguez with an off-speed pitch in the third inning with the Sox down 3-0. It had, up to that point, been another sluggish Sox performance, seemingly still hung over from Friday night’s disappointing 8-7 Yankee win. Rodriguez, arguably the game’s best player, in an obvious attempt to intimidate the young Arroyo, started firing some macho, alpha male bravado in the direction of the mound. Varitek, an old-school ballplayer who respects the game as much as anyone (and demands that same respect out of teammate and opponent alike), told A-Rod “in a few choice words” to get his butt to first base and to shut his mouth. Taking exception to this, Rodriguez fired back at Varitek, and one does not need to be a professional lip reader to understand the gist of their casual chat. Suddenly, A-Rod challenged Varitek, saying something like, “Let’s go.” Varitek, still wearing his mask, lashed out at Rodriguez, and the benches cleared.
All of a sudden, everything changed in Red Sox Nation. The team and fans alike were suddenly energized, pumped with a vigor that made it feel like 2003 again. At my parents’ house, a couple dozen crazed maniacs started slapping high fives, yelling at the screen, screaming bloody murder as Gabe Kapler, David Ortiz, and Trot Nixon pile-drived Yankee started (and Worcester, MA, native) Tanyon Sturtze to the ground. Curt Schilling was right in the middle of the fracas. Pedro, in the words of Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, was “wisely guarding the equipment.” Either way, the Sox suddenly had an energy and vitality that they had been missing for the majority of this lethargic, comatose season. They went on to battle back, came back from two runs down in the ninth to perhaps the best closer of all time, Mariano Rivera, and won the game on a dramatic walk-off home run by Bill Mueller in the bottom of the ninth. Just another Red Sox-Yankee game, the latest bit of lore in this most intense and meaningful of sports rivalries.
Normally, you would hope that a team doesn’t need to resort to a bench-clearing brawl to ignite it. Many local columnists, including the Herald’s Howard Bryant, ripped the Sox for “embarrassing” themselves by engaging in such low-brow tactics. Most would prefer the galvanizing force behind a season to be an improbable, hard-fought victory, such as last year’s Labor Day win in Philadelphia which is credited by many for propelling the Sox to the playoffs. Only yahoo fans with a twisted professional wrestling mentality would ever cheer for a baseball brawl, the conventional wisdom cried.
I didn’t care. There are going to be suspensions; I don’t care about that either. Yankee fans have been calling Varitek a coward for leaving his mask on during the fight (an incredibly ludicrous assertion; as if he had time to say, “Hold up, Alex, let me get rid of this pesky mask so some illiterate guy from Yonkers or Jersey City will respect me more”). I don’t care about that either. All I cared about was that on Saturday afternoon/evening, and then in Sunday’s 9-6 win over Jose Contreras (who I believe has legally changed his first name to “The Struggling”), it was fun to be a Red Sox fan again. We all of a sudden had the kind of a team again that we in Boston want to root for: a tough, hard-nosed group of dirt dogs who care about the games on the field as much as we do in the stands. When Mueller’s home run landed in the right field bullpen and the Faithful erupted in a catharsis of jubilation, we felt again that we had a chance. Still, we believed.
So where do we go from here? I want to be able to look back in October and point to Jason Varitek not backing down from a bullying A-Rod as the turning point of the season. That, of course, requires the team to start performing more consistently. As I write this, the Sox have a 6-0 lead in Camden Yards against the Orioles, a team that they have certainly struggled against this season. They need to take this energy and make playing inspired baseball into a habit, rather than an occasional occurrence for when they “feel like it.” It would be great if they could run off a Morgan Magic-esque 10 or 11 game winning streak, make the division race more interesting and pull away a bit from their Wild Card foes, Oakland, Anaheim, et al. It would be phenomenal if they would finally start consistently playing up to their potential on the field.
If not, we can always sic Varitek, Kapler, Nixon, Ortiz, Schilling, Millar, Jim Rice, the Eck’s mullet, and Wally the Green Monster on some team and beat the crap out of them. Hey, whatever it takes to get the job done.
