9/20/13: Ten Years Gone — Revisiting the 2003 Boston Red Sox
The 2013 Boston Red Sox are winning with contributions up and down the lineup. Back in April, however, fans weren’t exactly trumpeting GM Ben Cherington’s offseason haul.
Ten years ago, new hire Theo Epstein didn’t make a real splash on the free agent market either. His assembly of unheralded veterans at spring training vaguely resembled a Dan Duquette-era scrap heap alongside well-compensated stars like Garciaparra, Martinez and Ramirez. But Epstein had an idea about how the pieces would fit together. The guys had upside and could get on base. By the end of the 2003 season, the Boston offense ranked first in the American League by a mile; every batter in the starting lineup produced double digit homers and everyone save for leadoff hitter Johnny Damon was north of 80 RBI by season’s end.
The result was one wild ride.
One of the first things Epstein did was trade for Todd Walker, a capable second baseman from Cincinnati. He then rolled the dice on some low-cost vets. Kevin Millar started his career in the Northern League, was a replacement player during the 1995 strike and toiled a few years for the Marlins, where he was proficient at getting on base and hitting for power in limited at-bats. When Boston came calling, Millar was headed to Japan to play for the Junichi Dragons. Epstein also scooped up Bill Mueller, a scrappy third baseman who hadn’t been healthy in three years, and took a chance on David Ortiz, a lumbering 1B/DH type who’d been up and down with the Twins in parts of six seasons.
The Sox also broke camp with Jeremy Giambi and Ramiro Mendoza, who, to be kind, didn’t have much of a role in the team’s success. And then there was the infamous “closer by committee.” Epstein let expensive free agent closer Ugueth Urbina walk and instead planned to use Alan Embree, Bobby Howry, Chad Fox and Mike Timlin to close games. The quartet had varying degrees of experience in the role, and Epstein was praised by his peers for his brash innovation. Then Fox gave up a walk-off homer the first day of the season; within a month, Brandon Lyon was closing, and by the end of May, Epstein flipped third baseman Shea Hillenbrand, an All-Star the previous year, to the Diamondbacks for Byun-Hyun Kim.
The experiment was over. Kim saved 16 games for the team but blew the lead his first opportunity in the playoffs; the Sox wound up relying on Scott Williamson’s duct taped shoulder in the ninth for what became the team’s deepest postseason run since 1986.
Pedro was Pedro, Wakefield’s knuckler got past hitters more often than it got belted over the fence, and Derek Lowe wasn’t the 20-game winner of the previous year, but he was okay. The offense was downright punishing. One June night, my buddy Pun and I wandered into Fenway with two Standing Room Only tickets, plopped down in the bleachers (this was before the infamous sellout streak), and watched incredulously as the Sox pounded Carl Pavano and the Marlins to the tune of 14 runs in the first inning. It’s hard to believe, but the beating could have been worse had Bill Mueller not been thrown out at home plate to end the frame.
Boston held on to win 25–8.
While the Sox were near the top of the American League all season, the Yankees were also at the height of their powers. A 2001 Major League Baseball rule change to promote division rivalries meant the two teams met 19 times during the regular season. Ortiz, who started the season in a DH platoon with Giambi, quite simply made his name against the Bombers in 2003. One of his first major contributions to the team was a key two-run double in the seventh inning of a May 20th win over the Yankees at Fenway. He then bombed four homers in two games of a 4th of July weekend series in the Bronx, hit a walk-off single against them on July 26th in Boston and cleared the bases with a huge seventh inning triple (!) the following night. In sum, Ortiz hit .327 with six homers and 14 RBI in just 55 at-bats against the Yankees during the regular season.
At the trade deadline, Epstein had a hole in the starting rotation and needed a capable lefthander for the bullpen. He responded by flipping infielder Freddy Garcia, a future All-Star, to Pittsburgh for Jeff Suppan and Scott Sauerbeck in what wound up as one of few good trades for the Pirates in the last 20 years. Suppan proved to be ineffective in his return to the American League and Sauerbeck couldn’t get lefties out, which had kind of been the point.
No matter. The offense kept mashing at video game levels. I even picked up a copy of MVP Baseball 2003 for Playstation 2 just to play as the Red Sox lineup. It was fun, but the real-life Sox even outdid their pixilated projections.
By September, it became apparent Manny Ramirez would be battling Derek Jeter and his own teammate, Bill Mueller (!) for the 2003 batting title. Mueller had a career year in ’03, including a .326 average (good enough to take the crown on the last day of the season) and a crazy August night in Texas where he connected on grand slams from both sides of the plate, the first and only player in history to do so.
Nomar Garciaparra, the face of the last Red Sox playoff team in 1999, had another monster year in his last full season with Boston. What’s telling is that it took this long to get to Garciaparra. Fastidious about his preparation and more insular than gregarious newcomers Millar and Ortiz, who helped Damon and Ramirez come out of their shells, Nomar was portrayed in the media as a square peg. As the season wore on and Millar implored the team to “Cowboy Up,” with several players shaving their heads and/or growing ugly beards, Nomar kept his usual stubble and continued to rake to the tune of 28 home runs and 105 RBI.
The playoff stage was set as the Sox met the Athletics in the Division Series, Boston’s first postseason appearance since bowing to the Yankee Dynasty in 1999. The A’s were the darlings of baseball with their homegrown talent, shrewd veteran signings and dominant pitching, and they bounced out to a 2–0 series lead.
In Game 3, the Sox barely coaxed the contest into extra innings as the A’s lost at least two runs complaining about calls instead of running the bases. Trot Nixon capitalized and sent the fans home happy with a blast to center field off Rich Harden. The Sox took Game 4 at Fenway and rolled Oakland in the deciding game with a demonstrative Derek Lowe closing out the series.
Fever Pitch may have started as a Nick Hornby novel about the beautiful game, but it made total sense, regardless of your opinion on Jimmy Fallon, as a screen adaptation about the Red Sox at this particular point in history. I recently watched a YouTube clip of a big Ortiz double in Game 4 of the Oakland series and Fenway actually appeared to have more seismic activity than the Bay Area.
After 85 years, Sox fans were desperate to see their team win it all, and to do so, they had to go through the Yankees.
Thus began a classic ALCS. The teams split the first two games as Wakefield and Andy Pettitte turned in quality starts.
Game 3 was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. Pedro drilled Karim Garcia between the shoulder blades; Garcia proceeded to take out Todd Walker on a dirty slide at second. Manny overreacted to a high fastball from Clemens, the benches cleared …all the bile comes right back as I think about it.
My jaw dropped when Don Zimmer, 72 years of age, inexplicably charged Pedro, who promptly sent him hurtling to the turf like some combination of a sack of potatoes and Tommy Lasorda at the 2001 All-Star Game. It was like a bad night at a bar. By the time a groundskeeper got into it with Yankees reliever Jeff Nelson in the 8th, I needed a taxi. And an ibuprofen.
The circus overshadowed the fact that the Yankees had regained control of the series. The Sox rallied in Game 4 behind Wakefield in another fine performance, but dropped Game 5 to David Wells, putting them on the brink of elimination. For Game 6, I had a pivotal flag football game and we watched on a portable black & white TV with an antenna on the sidelines during breaks in the action.
John Burkett got a four-run cushion, which he promptly surrendered because, well, he’s John Burkett. But the offense carried the day, and Boston forced a Game 7.
It was one of the greatest days in the history of sports radio. I carried my Walkman (remember those?) around campus listening to sports radio’s giddy anticipation of Pedro vs. Clemens and the biggest game in the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry to date. That night, I gathered in a dorm with about 25 people to watch: Clemens didn’t have it, and the Sox were two innings away from the World Series. Then, you know what happened.
Wait ‘til next year.
I was a junior at Stonehill College. The Sox would win their first World Series championship in 86 years my senior year. It was a great time to be a student in New England: reading, writing, illegally downloading music, developing winning pickup lines, and crowding into a dorm room with your friends, nobody talking, to watch every pitch of a baseball game. But when Aaron Boone’s 12th inning homer in Game 7 jumped off the bat and into the Gotham sky and our generation finally understood what Bucky Dent felt like, it brought about a different kind of silence.
This post was originally published to The Fox Hole on WordPress, September 20, 2013.
