The Boston Red Sox swaggered into town for the American League playoffs oozing charisma from every pore. Even in batting practice it was overwhelming: mountain man Johnny Damon, cap off, hair flying, ripping line drives from foul line to foul line; David Ortiz, “Big Papi,” bareheaded as well but affecting wraparound sunglasses, smashing long flies into the seats; Manny Ramirez, “ManRam,” braids sticking out from under his cap, the fluttering fingers of his right hand held high on his long, left-handed follow-through; Trot Nixon lashing liners with that flat swing; Jason Varitek, the no-nonsense catcher, the captain, the glue. These were the self-proclaimed “idiots” familiar from last year’s heroics, when they fell behind the Yankees three games to none only to rip off eight straight wins, sweeping the Saint Louis Cardinals in the World Series and ending the 86-year-old “Curse of the Bambino”–a feat Chicago fans on both sides of town could only envy. If they came into Chicago as the wild-card entry, well, they’d been that last year, too.
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Over the season I came to identify three players as the core of this year’s team. Bullnecked Aaron Rowand patrolled center field with an elegant grace, and even if his power numbers were down he could turn on the ball with a quick twist of the waist and Popeye forearms. Japanese import Tadahito Iguchi looked like a crab at second base, but like Rowand he was fundamentally sound, with deceptive power at the plate. Guillen would proclaim him the team’s most valuable player after his homer won the second game: “Dis kid does everything for me,” he said.
Those three players best reflected this Sox team’s calm competitiveness, but they weren’t alone in that. Paul Konerko, who led the team with 40 homers and 100 RBIs, projected a lunch-bucket mentality, and the entire pitching staff emphasized guile over pure stuff (in marked contrast with the Cubs’ Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, and Carlos Zambrano). It wasn’t that the individual players didn’t have their backstories–Jenks once lived in an Idaho shack without electricity; pitcher Jose Contreras, a Cuban emigre, finally reunited with his family. But these didn’t compete with what the Sox were doing on the field.
“Gooch! Gooch!” the fans chanted, then greeted each Graffanino at-bat with calls of “Buckner! Buckner!” Mark Buehrle settled down to hand the 5-4 lead to the bullpen in the eighth, but not to the setup man everyone expected. “Oh my God, it’s Jenks!” shouted a fan to my right in the center-field bleachers as he emerged from the pen. “Give ’em the gas, Bobby!” shouted a guy behind me. And he did, working through the eighth and stranding Graffanino in the ninth after Graffanino tried to absolve himself with a one-out double. Damon and Edgar Renteria went down to end the game as the crowd cried, “Bobby! Bobby!”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jonathan Daniel–Getty Images.
