Now comes the hard part. Knowing we’re going to watch Red Sox baseball for the rest of our lives and it will never be able to top that.
(Left three photos via AP. 2018 via Fox.)
For more than a generation, this morning was just beyond the horizon. Always out of reach. The team that won five of the first 15 World Series disappeared for 30 years, lost a heartbreaking Game 7, disappeared for 20 more, then lost in 7 as a Cinderella and birthed the whole New England sporting culture of the last half century. The gut punches of 1975, 1978 and 1986 giving way to … let’s just call it the history you know. It all ended with what felt like the perfect two-year story arc, on a life-affirming night in the Bronx and a rainy night in St. Louis.
Except it never really ended. It was 14 years ago, but it’s never been far away from our fan conscious. It washed over 2007, a truly dominant team never entirely savored on its own merits. Even 2013, the rare champion we never saw coming given the debacle of the year before, still felt like that plucky upstart we’d built our regional identities around.
It’s finished now. A national audience would roll its eyes even to that, pointing out that this fable ended sometime far earlier into this 11-titles-in-17-years run, but there is no question that 119-57 from a $230-million juggernaut retired this underdog idea until we’re well gray and old.
So embrace it. Be the ones who suddenly got everything they always wanted and live happily ever after. It will never, never feel this good as this morning again.
We will try and fail to capture the feeling of those 119 wins in due time, but let’s take a moment to remember how it began. After the firing of John Farrell, after the hiring of everybody’s choice Alex Cora, after the signing of (most) everybody’s slugger J.D. Martinez and — not for nothing — a 22-9 spring training.
On a midweek March afternoon in St. Petersburg, Fla., with a game they were 96 percent to win going up in smoke. A game against a Rays team perceived to be tanking. A four-run lead bigger than any they blew the previous season.
“Welcome back to Boston, Alex Cora,” wrote Eagle-Tribune sports editor Bill Burt, no doubt speaking for plenty. “It’s going to be this way a lot this year.”
“It may not be ‘Why didn’t Malcolm Butler play,’ but it’s a start,” wrote Steve Buckley, still of the Herald, after Alex Cora didn’t turn to Craig Kimbrel — who’d not had a full spring training due to being in Boston as his newborn daughter fought for her life — during that six-run Tampa eighth.
Cora wore it that day, as his old manager Terry Francona did on his first day in 2004. (Pedro Martinez left Camden Yards before the 7-2 loss was finished and Francona took the fall, his 12-year veteran apparently needing it explained to him that such things are poor form.) Asked why he let double, walk, walk, pitching change, walk, strikeout, triple, infield single go on against less than his best, Cora held firm. Kimbrel was getting a clean ninth or nothing at all, one game be damned.
“It’s not fair for him. It’s just not. … We have 162 games, so we’ve got to think about our players and take care of them. I think that’s the best way to take care of him right now,” he told reporters. “For what we’re trying to accomplish here, we need him for the long run and not just for one out on Opening Day.
“Turn the page and show up tomorrow.”
That next page revealed nine straight wins and 17-of-18. A week later, Cora’s team won its home opener against those same Rays despite trailing 2-0 entering the ninth, then three days after that erased a 7-2 deficit with a six-run eighth of its own. It beat a 100-win Yankee team and 19-win Luis Severino 14-1. They went to L.A. to face a rampaging Angels team and obliterated them 27-3 with 11 home runs.
“From Day 1, I told them the circumstances around us, the people around us, they’re not going to dictate who we are and what we do in the clubhouse,” Cora told reporters after that three-game sweep. “For whatever the record is, you read about it and you’re like, ‘Wow this is impressive.’ But they’re not getting caught up in it. We go to Oakland and it’s the same goal, try and win the series.”
Two days later, they were no-hit for the first time in 25 years. And yet, we just kept seeing the same thing. On April 24 in Toronto, they lost, but they erased a 3-1 deficit in the ninth before falling in 10. They played a “horrible game” in Cora’s words and lost a ninth-inning lead against Kansas City to start May, but retied it in the 12th and nearly again in the 13th when the Royals scored three.
“That’s the beauty of this game,” Christian Vazquez said after the four-error, four-plus hour parade of mental lapses. “Turn the page and get it tomorrow.”
It just kept turning and it just kept turning right side up. A blown four-run lead in New York immediately forgotten by a game-winning Martinez homer. A 10-5, fifth-inning deficit turned 14-10 win in three trips through the order. A blown six-run lead to those above-mentioned Angels flipped back in a half-inning. Roller coasters like July 27 against Minnesota: Up 2-1 entering the ninth, then down 3-2, then tied, then a winner in 10. The capper to that four-game sweep of the Yankees in August: Three with two out in the ninth, winner in the 10th.
We could go on all morning. The game in Chicago that looked just like Game 4 against the Dodgers. The game in Atlanta that might’ve topped all the first 108 in sheer incredulity. The 2018 Red Sox used 20 non-pitchers at the plate. Want to know how many of them delivered a go-ahead RBI in the seventh inning or later of a game?
Fourteen of them.
Andrew Benintendi – 5
J.D. Martinez – 4
Hanley Ramirez – 4
Mookie Betts – 4
Brock Holt – 3
Xander Bogaerts – 3
Mitch Moreland – 3
Blake Swihart – 2
Rafael Devers – 2 (plus his pinch-hit ninth-inning single in Game 4 vs. L.A.)
Jackie Bradley Jr. – 2
Eduardo Nunez – 1 (plus his pinch-hit homer in Game 1 vs. L.A.)
Brandon Phillips – 1
Tzu-Wei Lin – 1
Sandy Leon – 1
They released Ramirez and didn’t miss a beat. They signed Phillips and he won them that game in Atlanta. They traded a Double-A infielder for World Series MVP Steve Pearce — who’s not even in that list of 14! — and a “back-end starter” (to use SoxProspects’ words) for Nathan Eovaldi, a guy they threw in six postseason games. Five wins, plus one where he arguably authored the best losing relief appearance in the history of the postseason.
I’ve written 1,000 words on this championship team to now, and I could write 1,000 more. “New York, New York.” Benintendi’s catch. Pearce’s yoga at first. Alex Bregman. The greatest GIF in baseball history. 16-1. 17-2 after 19 games. Four games to obliterate the rival, five games to dethrone the reigning champs, five more to leave the Dodgers runners-up again.
We needn’t rush. We need to enjoy the view. We’ve got a lifetime to savor this.
Which we will, because history’s written by the winners. And no one short of Alexander the Great ever won quite like this.
Called it.