The Boston Red Sox have done it again. They have won their second World Series in four seasons.
Right after home umpire Chuck Meriwether called the strike, Jonathan Papelbon’s eyes got wild and Jason Varitek charged the mound and clobbered him with a hug. Tears and champagne filled the visitor’s clubhouse at Coors Field, as the Sox celebrated the seventh time the club has won the World Series.
The Sox closed their season with a seven-game winning streak, with a 4-3 victory over the Colorado Rockies on Sunday night. The Rockies were spanked with the old-fashioned broom treatment. The Rockies and the St. Louis Cardinals now have at least one thing in common, they both have been swept by the Sox in the World Series.
And to think, that just seven games ago, the Sox were losing in the ALCS, 3-1 to the Cleveland Indians. But true to Sox form, they caught fire and never looked back.
In 2004, during the ALCS, the Red Sox were trailing 3-0 behind the New York Yankees. Things looked pretty bleak, as no team had ever come back to win the next four games in a best of seven game series in major league baseball history. That is until the Sox.
The Sox won their next eight games; recovered from the 3-0 deficit to the Yankees, swept the Cardinals, and won their first World Series after having waited 86 years. Only this time they didn’t have to wait that long.
Credit should be given to where it is due. The Rockies put up a good fight, except for game one of the series (see Beckett). In game four in the bottom of the eighth inning, Garrett Atkins belted a two-run homer to left, making it a 4-3 game. Atkins’ homer was off Hideki Okajima who struggled against the Rockies, giving up three runs in his 3.2 innings over three games.
In game three the Rockies also tried coming back. The game was 6-0, up until the bottom of the sixth inning when the Rockies scored two runs, and then three more in the bottom of the seventh to make it a 6-5 game. But the Sox responded with three runs in the top of the eighth inning and one in the top of the ninth. 10-5 Sox.
But the Sox had the pitching, the hitting, the experience and arguably the momentum. Josh Beckett made 35 strikeouts and only two walks this postseason in four games. That’s an average of 8.75 strikeouts and 0.5 walks in one game. His 2007 postseason ERA, 0.174 in 30.00 innings pitched.
Not to mention that eight of the guys who were on the 2004 world championship team were on this 2007 world championship team, including Big Papi, Manny Ramirez, Varitek, and Curt Schilling (with his bloody sock).
Coming back from a 3-0 deficit has only been done by one team in the postseason, the 2004 Red Sox. But it has never been done in the World Series. Of the 22 teams that have found themselves 3-0 in the World Series, 19 of them went on to be swept, and the rest lost in five games.
Not only that, but the Rockies put the series in the hands of Aaron Cook, who hadn’t made a start since Aug. 10 because of an oblique injury. You want to talk about the eight-day momentum diffusing delay for the Rockies between the NLCS and the World Series, talk about a more than two-month delay for your starting pitcher.
After the game, when asked about how he felt about the series, Clint Hurdle responded by telling reporters that a lot of things had been checked off the list in regards to season goals and accomplishments. And as the fans always say, “there’s always next season.”
