Other Things Worthy of Your Time
"A Playoff Approach"
9/30/04
So maybe the Red Sox went down the stretch as the hottest team in baseball. It doesn’t matter--there’ll be no 100-win season this year. Maybe they won the season series with those kings of the hill in New York for the first time in years. It doesn’t matter--there’ll be no division championship. And maybe they’ve gone a whole season and haven’t proved to anyone that things are going to end any different than they did the last time around. That season is over now. It doesn’t really matter.
Sure, there’s still a chance that New York could trip and fall on their face in this final weeklong run left in the season. They still have games to win or ground to hold if they want to get away with their sixth straight division title, but they will, and if this Boston team is going to fair any different than any of the Boston teams that have failed before it, they’ll go right ahead and let them.
So what if it comes down to the final day and a half-game/one-game deficit deciding the AL East. Boston, still holding onto the hope of proving themselves over their longtime rivals, go with their flags unfurled and their guns blazing. They leap-frog themselves into a division title, even if it does cost them their energy going in, or maybe even a player or two completely. They get to celebrate their regular season resurgence turned dominance. They get to crack their champagne. But at what cost? How heavy is a trophy when it has to be hoisted on top of a battered pedestal? How much will it cost to do “what it takes” to come out on top in the bitter end?
That’s just the problem: it won’t be the bitter end, but it could certainly set up one that’s so much more distasteful.
These Red Sox, led by their first-year manager Terry Francona will leave their sights on proving themselves, when there hasn’t been a single Red Sox squad that’s proved themselves in eighty-six years. Ted Williams couldn’t do it. Roger Clemens couldn’t do it. And Pedro, Nomar, Manny, Trot, Varitek, Ortiz, Millar, so forth, so on, up and down the line, all year long, until it came to one fateful decision that might not have mattered anyway when it was over, in the end, they couldn’t do it either.
No matter who it was, when all was said and done, it didn’t matter.
Now is the time to focus on what’s been waiting two years, and might as well have been waiting the whole eighty-six. The regular season is over, even if there are still games to gain and days to be played. It doesn’t matter.
Rest your players--keep them sharp and getting work in, but let them rest and prepare. Straighten up your lineups--decide whether it’s defense, a hot bat, or a veteran player that you want when it comes time to play for keeps. And tend to problems--they’re can’t be any problems. Right now there’s a big question mark on whether this five-quality-starter rotation is even capable of making it past one quality start. And when the guy who’s in the position to make it is looking to face someone who just happens to be a proven Red Sox handler, at the very least, a regular season champion himself, a truly deserving Cy Young, and someone who has truly forgotten what it means to lose for the last two months, then there’s not a definitive point in time when there’ll be a playoff game these teams won’t have to fight for.
But that’s what the playoffs or for. It’s a fight from here on in, or you don’t deserve to go any further. And it’s not a fight for mindless ruffians, charging in blindly. It’s a test. It’s a strategy. Forget déjà vu or an eerily tragic decision made with eerily similar results last Friday. It’s using your head and making the right decisions from now on, when it matters most. It’s a game you win when you play it right. It’s baseball, and it’s October.
It’s not about pride at this point either. One precious championship won’t be worth twenty-six. It’s not about proving that you’re better than the Yankees, or the National League, or any other team in baseball. It’s about us. It’s about this city. It’s about this team. The Boston Red Sox need to win it for themselves, or nothing will ever change, and they’ll never be better than anyone. They’ll be just another supplement in history, never triumphant, and only noted because of their never-ending failure.
This isn’t just another season with high-hopes, it’s the chance of a lifetime, and one that might only be made for this one. There’s a reason why the same players that covered their faces in heartbroken disappointment last year when it was all over are all still here now: it’s not over. It never ended.
Now’s the time that you learn from mistakes.
Argue all you want, the postseason is no time for Byung-Hyun Kim to show he’s the worthy player we haven’t given him the chance to be. Now’s not the time to give him that chance. Maybe Scott Williamson isn’t ready to pitch at the caliber he’s capable of, or even to risk his very health, but let his arm fall right off as far as I’m concerned. This is the type of situation to bet your career on. Keith Foulke, possibly the best pitcher in the American League last year, still hasn’t seemed to figure out that he was elite. He needs to remember. And role-playing guys like Mike Myers, Curtis Leskanic, or the returning Alan Embree and Mike Timlin need to buckle down and rise to the occasion, just like the same type of guys did for this team last year.
So far, it would seem like the bullpen is the area with the most question marks. That’s far from the case.
Remember when Tim Wakefield was looking like an ace to start the season? Remember when Pedro Martinez wasn’t disgusting everybody who’s ever had any idea of what honor is and calling the Yankees his damn daddy? Remember when Derek Lowe had an ERA worthy of a big-league contract? Where have these guys gone? Are they coming back? Now might be a good time.
Besides a guy that would be Cy Young in Curt Schilling, if not for the guy he’ll be facing in Johan Santana, Boston’s fifth starter has been keeping the team in more games and there was a time when he wasn’t even a sure-starter himself.
Players have roles on a team, whether you’re a star, or a, as the name would suggest, role-player. These are your jobs, and what you bring to the team and the only way you affect the game. Hitters hit. Pitchers pitch. Players that play win.
It’s go for the gold, or go home. There is no “next time” this time.
Now’s when we stop watching, and start experiencing. We stop expecting, and start trusting. It’s the time when all enjoyment is taken out of being a fan of this team, and you have to just hold your breath and wonder if they’ll get it right finally.
The 200 million dollar, first-place Bronx Bombers bought their season of success just like planned. The revamped, all-or-nothing, second-place Red Sox fell short of reaching that sacred ground of being the true favorites going into the postseason. They’ll settle into the roles selected for them before the season began--before their careers began--hell, even before the game they play put it all into motion. They’ll buckle themselves in and prepare for what every team that’s ever donned the Boston uniform does this time of year, and made it this far: they’ll prepare for history.
You win or lose. The winners are the ones they write books about. The losers are the ones whose books need to be rewritten.
NOTES
I really need to get FrontPage again... This is such a damn hassle.