Boston – Behind third base and above section 30 at Fenway Park, the man in the Red Sox cap with a face of matching color stood at the adjacent urinal. Abruptly he turned, which was not such a swell idea, reached out to shake my hand, which I declined, and gushed: “So, you sawer Curt Schilling tonight? What’d you think?”
“I think I’ll wait to answer that question ’til we’re at the sink.”
As we washed our hands side-by-side, he said: “Well?”
“Forty-nine,” I replied.
“Shu,” he said, only he wasn’t sure what I was talking about.
In 1949 the American League pennant race came down to the final weekend. The Red Sox and Ted Williams took a one-game lead into Yankee Stadium to face dreaded New York and Joe DiMaggio. The Yankees won both games.
Isn’t that why they play? Isn’t this why we care?
At the end of my pilgrimage Thursday night to Fenway Park, watching the Red Sox lose on the field to the Oakland A’s and watching the Yankees win on the left-field scoreboard to the Tampa Bay Rays, the teams were only a game and a half apart with 2 1/2 weeks remaining. Wowzer!
But there is a major(-league) difference between 1949 and 2005 – other than I’m 56 years older now.
The Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox, who always have been the other two teams to the Red Sox and the Yankees, also must be considered.
As must the A’s and the Angels, a pair of West Coast-come-latelies who have won the World Series.
In 1946, the first year of my life, the Red Sox played the Cardinals in the World Series. In 2004, which had a chance of being the last year of my life, they played again. The Red Sox, you may have heard, won.
The Indians beat the Boston Braves in the 1948 Series. It could happen again. And we’ll get to that in a minute.
And the Yankees missed the World Series twice in the 1950s. The Indians were the American League representatives in 1954 and the White Sox in 1959. Here we are again. What goes around.
The Red Sox have looked very tired the past few days. Twenty-six consecutive days of baseball and the stress of the Yankees chasing. Boston seems tired, though David Ortiz has held the team and the city together. Is Big Papi or A-Rod the MVP?
Comes down to the final weekend. You and everybody in the ballpark and everyone out on Yawkey Way know it.
Schilling doesn’t look so much fatigued as he does vulnerable. Three of his first five pitches Thursday to the A’s are ripped into the outfield. When he backs up bases, Schilling limps. The arm and the ankle are not healed.
I had spent a rainy afternoon across from MIT – this is a coincidence – working out the pitching schedules for the rest of the season. Assuming Randy Johnson doesn’t get thrown out of many more games for arguing pitches and Schilling’s ankle doesn’t cave, they would meet in the final game of the season only if the two managers, Terry and Joe, deem it so. Schilling’s last start would be on the 30th against the Yankees. Johnson’s last start would be the next day. Instead, the final two starters might be Shawn Chacon, given up for dead by the woeful Rockies at the end of July, and Bronson Arroyo, whose major claim this season is a CD featuring “Dirty Water.”
Johnson, the Big Left-hander Unit, facing Ortiz, the Big Left-hander Papi, with the game and the season on the line. Schilling, the right-hander, bearing in on Alex Rodriguez for the whole ball of aluminum foil.
Elizabeth Joyce, a Red Sox fanatic, and an innocent bystander wind up in the back row of section 29 attempting to predict the future.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
“Don’t be afraid. I’m here to protect you,” he said.
“I’m afraid the Yankees could beat us out, and we end up being the wild card.”
“You should have more fears than that,” he said. “What if the Yankees beat the Red Sox, and the Indians are the wild card, or the Indians are the Central Division champions and the White Sox get the wild card, and the Yankees are the division champions, and the Red Sox wind up with nothing.”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” she said.
The last time that kind of turncoat talk was heard here was 225 years ago this month, when Benedict forsook the locals for the enemy.
Consider that the Yankees are depending on a couple of washouts – Chacon and Aaron Small. Chacon soon may be pitching the most critical game of his career, odd given his entire time with the Rockies and no game was critical. Small almost gave up baseball this year.
The Red Sox are depending on a guy who throws butterflies 70 miles per hour. Tim Wakefield struck out 12 and gave up only one run – a homer to Jason Giambi, go figure – at Yankee Stadium last weekend, yet lost to Johnson, who struck out fewer.
The White Sox led by – what? – 112 games a month ago, and now the Indians might catch them by next weekend. The White Sox and the Indians play a three-game series this week in Chicago, then guess what happens the final weekend? You got it, bubba. While the Yankees and the Red Sox are in Boston, the Indians and the White Sox are in Cleveland.
Four-way tie? Why not? This is baseball.
Out beyond Fenway is the famous neon sign filling the night sky with colors from the roof of a building. “CITGO” it usually proclaims. But a bank of lights has gone out. What does it mean? “CITGC.” On the other side of the ballpark the full moon beams. There are no lights burned out. Light up October in Boston and New York, just like in 1949 and 2004.
Woody Paige’s column appears in The Denver Post on Sundays. He can be seen weekdays on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNews on “Around the Horn,” “Cold Pizza” and “1st and 10.” He can be e-mailed at wpaige@denverpost.com.
