Inside Baseball: The Best of Tom Verducci (34 page)

“My bullpen was tired,” Baker says. “[Mike] Remlinger’s arm was barking like a dog. [Antonio] Alfonseca wasn’t throwing the way he’s capable. [Mark] Guthrie wasn’t throwing like he usually does. [Dave] Veres wasn’t ready. And then there wasn’t a spot to take Prior out. It happened real quick.”

Prior could no longer finish hitters. He would throw 24 pitches in the inning and get the Marlins to swing and miss only once. He would get two strikes on three batters and retire none of them.

“That’s where the second wind comes in,” Prior says. “I didn’t have it.”

Castillo fouled off another pitch. And now it was time. The Cubs, the fans and Fox had enjoyed scads of dreamy fun—the Charlie Brown appeal of the Cubs and the Sox had prompted the other networks to scrap original programming and offer up sacrificial reruns for the ratings slaughter—but now it was time to start restoring order to the baseball universe. It was time for humility and poverty. It was time for the Cubs to be Cubs.

In a span of 12 pitches (not including intentional balls), the Marlins scored eight runs, the Cubs used three pitchers, Waveland Avenue fell as silent as a tomb and Steve Bartman, the
Sibley
Cubs fan, unintentionally created such infamy for himself that he would have to go into hiding.

The beginning of the end was a foul pop-up by Castillo. Alou drifted across the leftfield line to the padded side wall and jumped to make a backhand catch, his glove just above the green railing atop the wall. He had no doubt that he was about to catch the ball. Three fans seated in the first row, their eyes fixed not on Alou but on the falling baseball, also reached for the pop-up. It was Bartman who touched it. The ball clanked off his left hand. Alou came away with nothing but anger.

By sunrise Bartman’s life would become a nightmare. News helicopters hovered over his suburban home; his phone had to be disconnected; he could not go to the consulting firm where he worked; the domain names stevebartman.com, .net and .org all had been claimed; writers for Letterman and Leno were scribbling Bartman jokes as fast as they could; people were planning their Bartman Halloween costumes; and actor Kevin James was preparing a pitch for a movie titled
Fan Interference
. A Chicago alderman, Tom Allen, told the
Chicago Sun-Times
, “He better get a new address. He ought to move to Alaska.” Florida governor Jeb Bush offered Bartman asylum.

In a statement read by his brother-in-law, Bartman apologized the next day “from the bottom of this Cubs fan’s broken heart.” He never made a public appearance thereafter. He spoke with MacPhail and briefly maintained private correspondence with baseball commissioner Bud Selig.

“That’s not what lost it for us,” Baker says. “We had our chances.”

And then Baker utters what passes for the Nicene Creed of the Cubs’ and the Red Sox’ congregations: “Maybe it was just not meant to be.”

All hell broke loose. Not only did Prior walk Castillo with the next pitch, but the ball got by catcher Paul Bako, allowing Pierre to advance to third.

Rothschild visited Prior. Wrigley security officers visited Bartman. Both meetings concerned plots for emergency escapes. Only one succeeded.

Now fatigue owned Prior. He tried a breaking ball with his next pitch, to Ivan Rodriguez, but it had none of the snap or tight spin of those from the early innings. The pitch rolled more than it broke, and Rodriguez hammered it, but foul. Prior muscled a fastball past the Marlins catcher on his next pitch. Then he returned to the breaking ball at 0 and 2. Again, he did not have the arm strength to finish off the pitch with the proper snap. It hung over the plate, and this time Rodriguez drilled it fair for a run-scoring single.

“That’s what sticks with me,” Prior says. “The pitch to Rodriguez. I felt that I hung it. That pitch has got to be down in the dirt. If I get that pitch down maybe he grounds out. I think that’s the one pitch that bothers me. Late in the game it’s not your velocity that goes. It’s your location.”

Miguel Cabrera pounded the next pitch into the hardpan in front of home plate. Shortstop Alex Gonzalez moved to his backhand while thinking about starting a double play. The baseball bounced again on the infield dirt, only this time, propelled by topspin, it seemed to accelerate, and it was quicker than Gonzalez’s hands. The ball clunked off the heel of his glove.

“The ball just ate me up,” Gonzalez says. “I don’t think I hurried it as much as it was the ball got on me so fast.”

Even though Prior had induced a playable foul pop-up and an infield grounder, the Cubs still needed five outs. Now the score was 3–1, the bases were filled with Marlins and the air was filled with dread. Florida first baseman Derrek Lee, 3 for 25 in the series, was the hitter. The Cubs’ scouting report said to pound Lee on the hands with fastballs, and the pitchers had done so successfully almost without exception. Lee’s bat had not been quick enough against Chicago’s steady diet of power.

Lee told himself to look for something hard inside. Prior wasn’t about to deviate from the report at a time like this. Bako called for an inside fastball, and Prior unleashed a 95 mph screamer. Again, however, Prior missed slightly with his location. It was a decent pitch, just not far enough inside, especially to a hitter looking in that area. Lee smoked a line drive into leftfield, good for a game-tying, two-run double. Baker was out of the dugout to pull Prior even before the baseball was returned to the pitcher.

The bullpen could not stem this mud slide of a rally. An intentional walk, a sacrifice fly to break the tie, another intentional walk, a three-run double, a run-scoring single … and it was 8–3 before you could say 1908. The next night, in Game 7, the Marlins would rake Kerry Wood for seven runs (“I choked,” Wood would say) in a pennant-clinching 9–6 win, a score that seemed to mock the Cubs’ congregation. Year 96 of the wait had officially begun.

BACK IN New York for the final leg of the ALCS, Martinez did not leave his hotel room. He finally got some sleep before Game 7, and not long after he woke up, he ate lunch in his room. A friend brought Dominican food to him. He watched some television to kill time, then made sure to take the team bus to the ballpark. He wasn’t comfortable taking a taxi. “People said I should be in jail because of the Zimmer stuff,” Martinez says. “The fans were saying they were going to bring rocks and batteries. Ramon [Martinez, his brother] wanted to come, but I said, ‘Stay in Boston. Anything could happen.’”

Burkett, knowing this was likely to be his final season, had toted a video camera throughout the playoffs. The tape was rolling in the clubhouse before Game 7. One of his favorite images, taken unobtrusively, is of Martinez, sitting alone, facing into his locker, his face taut with concentration and anxious anticipation.

Clemens and Martinez had combined for 476 wins, second most ever for two Game 7 starters. Clemens would be gone in the fourth, down 4–0 and leaving a no-outs and first-and-third mess. Mike Mussina, having never pitched in relief in his 400-game pro career, escaped with a strikeout and a double-play grounder.

Out by out, Martinez drew Boston closer to the finish. The Red Sox paradox is that each out brings the club as close to infamy as it does to fulfillment. “As Game 7 was going on, the drama kept building,” Burkett says. “You have people on our team thinking, I don’t want to be the one to make the mistake. You know, the Bill Buckner thing. I’m sure it entered people’s minds.”

After Johnson popped up for the first out of the eighth, Martinez jumped ahead of Derek Jeter, 0 and 2, with fastballs. Catcher Jason Varitek called for another fastball, wanting it so far out of the strike zone that he was nearly standing when he gave the target. Martinez threw to the spot, up and away, but Jeter smacked the pitch to rightfield on a line. Rightfielder Trot Nixon misjudged the ball, and it sailed over his head for a double.

In the immediate aftermath of the game, one of the Red Sox coaches would grab a reporter and ask, “Was Jeter’s ball catchable?” Told that it was, he sighed, crestfallen, “I thought so.”

Embree still was throwing in the bullpen, but with switch-hitting Bernie Williams at bat and the lefthanded Matsui on deck, no help came for Martinez. Fox analyst Tim McCarver noted, “You get the feeling [Embree] will be the pitcher against Matsui one way or the other.”

Martinez worked to a two-strike count again, this time 2 and 2, and again could not finish off the hitter. Williams drove home Jeter with a hard single off a 95-mph fastball that caught too much of the plate. As expected, Little left the dugout and walked to the mound. Unexpectedly, he returned without Martinez. Writers in the press box above the field howled, “What is he doing?”

Little had left the decision to Martinez.

“He came out, and he asked me, ‘Can you pitch to Matsui?’” Martinez says. “I said, ‘Yeah, of course. Let me try to get him.’ He didn’t ask me about anybody else. Just Matsui.”

Martinez seized control of the at bat with another 0-and-2 count, getting called strikes on a fastball and a curve. Varitek called for a fastball up and in. “We’ve probably thrown Matsui 80 pitches up and in,” Martinez says, “and he’s never hit that pitch.”

Again, Martinez missed slightly with his location. The pitch wasn’t far enough inside. Matsui blasted a line drive that bounced into the rightfield stands for a double. The Yankees had runners at second and third. Now Martinez thought for sure he was out of the game. He had thrown 118 pitches, a number that he had reached only five times that year. But Little didn’t move.

“I was actually shocked I stayed out there that long,” Martinez says. “But I’m paid to do that. I belong to Boston. If they want to blow my arm out, it’s their responsibility. I’m not going to go to the manager and say, ‘Take me out.’ I’m not going to blame Grady for leaving me out there.”

Yankees closer Mariano Rivera was throwing in the bullpen. The next batter was Posada. One more duel between the arch enemies.

Posada had loathed Martinez even before the Game 3 fracas. The two had exchanged heated words that afternoon, and according to Martinez, “Posada started screaming at me in Spanish. He made a comment about my mother. Posada is Latin. He should know, if you don’t want to f--- with someone, you don’t say anything about their mother.” Martinez had turned to Posada, pointed to his head and, he claimed, yelled to him in Spanish, “I’ll remember what you said.” (Posada denies making any such comment.) The Yankees interpreted Martinez’s actions as threatening to hit Posada in the head with a pitch.

Martinez is a renowned bench jockey who enjoys riding opposing players when he is not pitching. He takes particular delight in ribbing Posada, calling him Dumbo, in reference to the catcher’s prominent ears. Posada tries so hard to get back at Martinez in the batter’s box that he typically fails. He entered last year’s postseason 9 for 48 (.188) against Martinez.

Once again Martinez forged a two-strike count: He missed with a cut fastball before throwing three straight curveballs, getting a called strike on the first, missing with the second and getting a swinging strike on the third. Varitek called for a fastball. And for the fourth consecutive time the Yankees jumped on a two-strike fastball for a hit. Posada did not hit it well—the 95-mph pitch jammed him—but he did hit it fortuitously. As if by parachute, his little pop fly drifted onto the grass in shallow center.

Williams and Matsui scored to tie the game at 5. No one covered second base as Posada chugged into the bag easily for a double. A tremendous wall of sound rose up, the kind of roar that comes not just from the throat but from the soul. “That,” Posada says, “was the loudest I have ever heard Yankee Stadium.”

Suddenly, Rivera ran off the bullpen mound. The Yankees’ bullpen is a two-tiered arrangement. The throwing area is at field level, behind the left-centerfield wall, and up a short flight of stairs is a sort of staging area, with a small dugout and bathroom. Without a word of explanation, Rivera climbed the steps, ran into the bathroom, closed the door and, with the joyous music and noise shaking the walls of the stadium, starting crying. “It was just too much,” Rivera says. “I needed to be pitching, yes, but that’s how awesome the moment was. I didn’t want people to see me standing there with tears coming out of my eyes.”

At that moment, Little was walking out to the mound. He signaled for Embree to replace Martinez. In Boston, where more people were watching than would see the New England Patriots win the Super Bowl four months later, those who did not weep cursed.

After a combined 324 games—a record 26 against each other—the Yanks and the Sox were tied. Each team had won three games in the ALCS and scored 29 runs. The next run would be the last.

Rivera, the sixth pitcher for the Yankees, threw three scoreless innings, a courageous marathon for a closer and his longest outing in seven years. “Every inning we thought that was it for him,” Burkett says, “and every inning we were like, ‘Oh, s---, he’s still pitching.’”

Tim Wakefield of Boston threw the last pitch, a knuckleball that Boone walloped. Boone wasn’t yet to second base on his home run trot when Rivera sprinted to the pitching mound and collapsed atop it in supplication, crying once more. This time he didn’t care if the whole world saw the tears falling from his eyes.

The Red Sox slunk wordlessly back to their clubhouse. Several players were crying. Once inside, Little spoke briefly, telling the players they should hold their heads high with pride. Relievers Timlin and Todd Jones also spoke, making a similar point.

Sometime later, amid the profound sadness in the Boston clubhouse, Little and Martinez shared a hug in a brief, private moment. Then the manager, a different kind of twinkle in his eye, looked at the pitcher he trusted more than anyone. “Petey,” Little said, “I might not be here anymore.”

“Why?” Martinez said. “It’s not your fault. It’s up to the players. Any other situation I get the outs, and you’re a hero.”

And then Martinez spoke the creed. “It wasn’t meant to be.”

PRIOR PITCHED in September and October last year with pain in his right Achilles tendon. After a winter of rest, it was no better in spring training. His throwing elbow throbbed too. He missed the first two months of this season. He finished 6–4 with a 4.02 ERA. When he looks back on Game 6, he likes to think the Marlins won it as much as the Cubs lost it. “They had a good team,” Prior says. “What happened out in leftfield, you wish it didn’t happen. But they’re not getting the respect they deserve as world champions. They played extremely hard. They kept coming at us with tough at bats.