The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, October 22, 2004, Page 8, Image 8
GAME SCHEDULE
„ O WOMEN’S SWIMMING at SMU, 8:30 p.m.
Page 8 VOLLEYBALL vs. Georgia, 7 p.m.
Friday, October 22, 2004 WOMEN’S SOCCER at Arkansas, 8 p.m.
USC students enjoy
classic baseball series
By STEPHEN FASTENAU
STAFF WRITER
USC cornerback Taqiy Muhammad sported a
New York Yankees cap after practice Wednesday,
less than an hour before the deciding game of the
American League Championship Series.
“The Red Sox won’t make it out of New York
alive,” Muhammad said.
Longtime Boston fan Brandon Newton, a third
year management student, thought differendy.
“I knew there was something special about this
team,” Newton said. “As they say, anything can
happen in a seventh game. Johnny Damon is my
hero.”
Red Sox fans might be pronouncing Damon a litde
differendy from now on. The Boston outfielder was “Da
rMan” Wednesday night after the Red Sox completed
the biggest comeback in postseason history and won a
series with the New York Yankees for the first time ever.
Damon came out of a 3-29 series slump with two home
runs in the decisive seventh game, including a grand slam.
Before the final game, baseball analyst Peter
Gammons said that the contest was likely the “most
anticipated game in sports history.” The most heated
rivalry in sports reached its peak this year, as the
Yankees took a three games to none lead in the best-of
seven series. Boston battled back to win the next four,
including the two longest games in playoff history, and
will play for the chance to be World Series champions, a
feat the franchise has not achieved since 1918.
Newton, who lived in New Hampshire for seven years,
learned that hating the Yankees was the number one
priority of being a Red Sox fan.
“After beating those guys, the World Series will seem
anticlimactic,” Newton said. “The Yankees represent all that
is evil in the world.”
Yankee apparel was a rare site on campus Thursday,
“I’m not a huge fan, but I hate the Yankees
just like everyone.”
SPENCE ROBEY
SECOND-YEAR ADVERTISING STUDENT *
whereas many students sported a Red Sox logo. Jerseys of Damon and
pitcher Pedro Martinez were spotted as well as all varieties of baseball caps,
from the traditional navy blue to the pink worn by several girls. Even those
who were fans of neither team got in on the act.
“I’m not a huge Red Sox fan, but 1 hate the Yankees just like everyone,”
second-year advertising student Spence Robey said.
Political science professor Donald Fowler took a quick poll in one of his
classes to determine how many Red Sox fans were present. Roughly half the
students raised their hands. '
The rivalry has escalated recently, as the two teams played to a virtual tie
in head-to-head match-up wins since 2002. Yankees shortstop Alex
Rodriguez became the symbol of everything Red Sox fans hated about New
York when he was traded to the Bronx Bombers after a deal that would have
sent the former MVP to Boston fell through. Rodriguez was involved in a
fight with Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek midway through the season after
the two exchanged words at the plate.
Yankees fans, too, were given a target to heckle after Martinez lost a
second straight game to New York toward the end of the season and uttered a
now famous quip in the news conference that followed.
“What can I do?” Martinez said. “I’ll just tip my hat and call the Yankees
my daddy.”
Chants of “Who’s your daddy?” resonated throughout Yankee Stadium
during Martinez’ time on the mound in the ALCS.
For all the celebration surrounding the Red Sox’ historical win, “The
Curse” stays only partially lifted. Boston has yet to win a World Series since
trading Babe Ruth to New York after the 1919 season, a statistic the Red Sox
and their fans would love to put behind them.
“Children laugh; God is not dead — all because the Red Sox won,”
Newton said. “But we have to do it one more time."
Comments on this story? E-mail gamecocksports@gwm.sc.edu
PHOTO AT LEFT: KATHY WILLENS/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS; PHOTO BELOWJULIE JACOBSON /THE ASSOCIATED PRESS; GRAPHIC ABOVE: DAVIU b i ae.u i me bAMELOCK
David Ortiz, left, celebrates after the Red Sox clinched the victory over the Yankees on Wednesday. Derek Jeter,
below, crouches in the on-deck circle during the sixth inning. The Yankees fell to Boston 10-3 after failing to
overcome a 6-0 lead. Jeter and the rest of the New York squad struggled offensively the last four games of the series.
Boston finally topples Evil Empire
By RONALD BLUM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — It was a strange sight indeed:
the Boston Red Sox jumping with joy in Yankee
Stadium.
Seldom have the Red Sox risen so high, and
rarely have the Yankees bowed so low.
Believe it, New England — the Red Sox are in
the World Series. And they got there with the
most unbelievable comeback of all, with four
sweet swings after decades of defeat, shaming the
dreaded Yankees.
David Ortiz, Johnny Damon and Derek Lowe
made sure of it.
Just three outs from getting swept in the AL
championship series three nights earlier, the Red
Sox finally humbled the Evil Empire, winning
Game 7 in a 10-3 shocker Wednesday night to
become the first major league team to overcome a
3-0 postseason series deficit.
“All empires fall sooner or later,” Boston
president Larry Lucchino said.
Cursed for 86 years, these Red Sox just might
be charmed.
There is no torture this time, no hour of
humiliation. Better yet for Boston fans, it’s the
Yankees who are left to suffer the memory of a
historic collapse.
“Not many people get the opportunity to
shock the world. We came out and did it,” Boston
first baseman Kevin Millar said. “You know what?
We beat the Yankees. Now they get a chance to
watch us on the tube.”
Boston didn’t need any of the late-inning
dramatics that marked the last three games,
leading 6-0 after two innings. Ortiz, the series
MVP, started it with a two-run homer in the first
off broken-down Kevin Brown. Damon, in a 3
for-29 (.103) slide coming in, quieted Yankee
Statftim in with a grand slam on Javier Vazquez’s
first pitch.
After Derek Jeter sparked hope of a comeback
with a run-scorine single in the third, Damon put
a two-run homer into the upper deck for an 8-1 ,
lead in the fourth.
Lowe pitched on two days’ rest and allowed
one hit in six innings. He silenced the Yankees’
bats and boasting fans, who just last weekend
assumed New York’s seventh pennant in nine
years was all but a lock. Pedro Martinez started the
seventh, his first relief appearance in five years, and
immediately sparked chants of the now famous
“Who’s Your Daddy?”
Three hits and two runs got the crowd going,
but the rally stopped there. Mark Bellhorn added a
solo homer in the eighth, and the bullpen closed
out a five-hitter.
“It’s very amazing, I think, to do what we did,”
Red Sox manager Terry Francona said.
Yankees players slowly walked off, eliminated
on their home field for the second straight season.
“I’m embarrassed right now,” Alex Rodriguez
said. “Obviously that hurts — watching them on
our field celebrating.”
The World Series will start at Fenway Park on
Saturday night against St. Louis or Houston.
Now that the Babe’s team has been beaten,
Boston can try to reverse The Curse, win the
Series for the first time since 1918 and bring
happiness to the Hub, which can scarcely believe
the tumultuous turn of events.
From Fenway Park to Faneuil Hall, from
Boston Common to Beacon Hill, the 11th
pennant for the Red Sox, the first since 1986, will
be remembered as the best for one reason: beating
New* York in Yankee Stadium, site of last year’s
Game 7 meltdown.
This was for Williams, Doerr and Pesky, for
Yastrzemski and Yawkey, for Fisk and Rice and
even Buckner and Nomar, just a few of the
hundreds who suffered the pain inflicted by their
New York neighbors.
J “That’s for the ‘03 team, just like it’s for the «78
and the ‘49 team,” Red Sox general manager TJ5eo
Epstein said. “I hope Ted Williams is having a
cocktail upstairs.”
None of the previous 23 major league teams
that fell behind 3-0 even forced a series to seven
games. The wild-card Red Sox became only the
third of 239 teams in the four major North
American leagues to overcome a 3-0 deficit in a
best-of-seven series and win, joining the 1942
Toronto Maple Leafs and the 1975 New York
Islanders.
It had been 100 years since Boston
last won a pennant in New York on
the final possible day, a 3-2 victory
in a doubleheader opener at Hilltop
Park in 1904. New York overcame
the Red Sox by winning the final two
games of the 1949 season at Yankee
Stadium, the Yankees won a one
game playoff for the AL East in 1978
behind Bucky Dent’s three-run
homer at Fenway Park, and Aaron
Boone hit the llth-inning homer
that won Game 7 last year.
New York, which dropped to
10-2 in the LCS, will no doubt
face a bitter winter, with owner
George Steinbrenner likely to
take charge of overhauling a roster f ~
that has been short of starting m M
pitching since the spring. W
“I want to congratulate the ,Jr _
Boston team,” Steinbrenner said.
“They did very well. They have a
Brown and Vazquez were booed fl^^B
by the sellout crowd of 56,129.
Rodriguez went 2-for-17 in the
final four games and Gary
Sheffield 1-for-17. *
New York had a record $186 |Hfc3w|
million payroll, far beyond ISipINM
Boston, which was second at
$128 million. But the Yankees L'f?
haven’t won the Series since ..*3P
2000 and couldn’t finish off an |||||||||
opponent in the cool, efficient,
ruthless way they did only a few
years ago.
The Yankees had a 4-3 lead in the ninth inning
of Game 4 on Sunday night, only to have Bill
Mueller single home the tying run off Mariano
Rivera and
inning homer against
Paul Quantrill.
They held a 4-2 lead in the eighth
inning of Game 5 before Ortiz s homer off Tom
Gordon and Jason Varitele’s sacrifice fly off
Rivera, and Ortiz’s winning single off
Esteban Loaiza in the 14th.
£ Then Curt Schilling, his right ankle
?• held together by three sutures, beat the
Yankees 4-2 Tuesday night to tie the series 3-all.
“We stuck together,” Damon said, “and erased
history.”
New York
makes for
great Loser (
■ Highest paid team
in history makes Sqx’
win one for the books
The true test of a man comes when
he knows he’s made a mistake. The
honorable thing to do is to admit your
inaccuracies and move forward. That is
what I am going to do for you today.
I wrote a column Feb. 18 that said
the acquisition of Alex Rodriguez and
the $190 million payrojl of the Yankees
were bad for baseball. I said that this
Yankee team, the highest-paid team in
baseball history, was a stain on the
n sport. 1 could
not have been
more wrong.
I, like any
other sports fen a
with a pulse, ®
was glued to ,
my televis- J
ion Wednesday I
night watching *
game seven of
JONATHAN the Amer
HILLYARD
SECOND-YEAR Series. Not
ELECTRONIC
JOURNALISM "V
STUDENT affiliation with
either team, I
began to
contemplate just exactly why I could
not turn my eyes away from this game.
Was it because the Red Sox had the
chance to become the first team in
baseball history to rebound from a 3-0
series deficit to win the series? Yes.
Was it because 1 could identify ^
(being a Braves fan) with Boston’s
heartbreak in 2003 on the Aaron Boone
home run? Probably.
Was it because we all like to cheer
for the underdogs, especially the ones
believed to be stuck in the middle of an
86-year curse? Without question.
However, the most intriguing thing
about this game was that tKe Red Sox’
opponents were the Yankees. That’s
right sports fans — the 26-time world
champion New York Yankees. This is
the most storied franchise in sports, the
best team that money could buy, the
undeniably most-stacked team in sports
*
And how perfect was it that New
York would lose, in Yankee Stadium,
the house that Babe Ruth built, to a
bunch of unshaven self-proclaimed
holding up pictures of Ruth’s ugly mug
all night? Any way, a year and a half
ago, you couldn’t have convinced me of
this, but this is without a doubt the
greatest rivalry in sports.
Just looking at the lineup cards
makes me want to smile. The Yankee
lineup is filled with future Hall of
Famers like Jeter, Rodriguez, Sheffield,
Giambi and maybe even Matsui.
Could anybody other than true
Yankee fans be cheering for Rodriguez,
who, despite maybe being the most
talented player in the game today, feels
like he needs to slap at a player’s glove
to win a baseball game? Boston pitcher
Curt Schilling later called the move by
Rodriguez^J-bush league” on ESPN.
He’s absolutely right, and he has every
right to say such a thing.
Schilling, whose teams are now 2-0 |
against the Yankee^ in postseason
;s, went out on the mound
in game six with a cetjdon
basically hangit% off