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I was surprised when they brought Pedro back out to pitch the 8th. He had started to look vulnerable at the bottom of the 7th, with the Yankees nicking a run and putting men on base. And wasn’t his pitch count already over 100 at that point? The Sox have a bullpen that’s been strong all post-season, and I had thought we were going to see Timlin (who had almost strung together a perfect game through a half dozen relief appearances) and possibly Wakefield coming in for the 8th and 9th. Why not use them? There’s an off day before meeting the Marlins on Saturday.

Even given his starting the 8th, why did he continue to pitch after Jeter and Williams got hits, and the left-hander Matsui coming up? The Fox sportscasters noted that Pedro told his manager that he could get the next guy out, and the manager listened. And maybe it was in that moment, on the mound and between at-bats, that the Red Sox lost.

We missed the beginning of the game when Clemens got pounded. Thankfully, we missed the beginning of the game: it would have been depressing with the Yankees down three or four and Martinez looking sharp and unrattled. In some sense, the ALCS loomed larger than the World Series, at least in New England and possibly New York. For Sox fans, winning two in Yankee Stadium would have meant slaying the dragon in his lair, and what came after, good or ill, would have been a mere coda. And for New Yorkers, well, the Times phrased it: “YANKEES PROLONG RED SOX MISERY”. No, this rivalry isn’t a disfunctional relationship.

The Yankees, more desperate at the beginning of the game, and perhaps with more control over the yes’s and no’s of its star pitchers, pulled Clemens early and threw in any pitcher Torre could find. When we finally turned on the game, the Yankee on the mound looked a whole lot like Mussina, and, by golly, it was Mussina. Where the hell was Clemens? And there was this sinking feeling, though the score wasn’t that bad. It may have been a memory of the last time I recall the Yankees throwing in starting pitchers as ad hoc relievers in a desperate game, when they faced Seattle in 1995, with Cone faltering to let the Mariners tie, and then Jack McDowell coming in to lose it after the Yankees took the lead (what a great game that was) in the 11th. But Mussina, Wells and Nelson held them, and Rivera went for three and shut them out until Boone homered on the first pitch in the 11th of this game. A great game last night. Not the best, but a great game.

All the Yankees starters are spent. Who’s starting on Saturday? Clearly Torre doesn’t trust anyone in the bullpen.

Oh, Gothamist had a link in the comments to a better angle on the Martinez-Zimmer incident last Saturday. From this angle, Martinez looks far more justified, since you can see how quickly Zimmer was rushing him. Before, with the angle that Fox had during the broadcast, the scene could have been interpreted as Zimmer walking up to Martinez, possibly trying to push Pedro’s right shoulder, and getting grabbed around the head and thrown on the ground for his troubles. With the extra video, Martinez, well, got out of the way while giving Zimmer a bit of help to get to the ground. The aikido people say it was kokyunage.

I just have to point to Slate’s article by a Sox fan talking about a Sox-Cubs World Series. It’s a historic artifact, but entertaining:

I have previously suggested that I feel toward the Yankees as I would toward someone who’d shot and killed my dog. Given this, what would it feel like if the Cubs beat us in the big one? It would feel as though some pleasant, absent-minded guy had accidentally run over my dog in the street and not really noticed, and then clumsily reversed back over the dog as it yelped in its death throes. Then he started whooping and guzzling beer with friends, while still standing over the dog corpse. And all the while he still seems like a really nice guy who was hard to blame or dislike.

Please don’t be that guy. Please.

As a side note, I’ve heard it pointed out that the most likely outcome of a Red Sox-Cubs World Series would be that, during the decisive game, moshiach would come and history would end.

Posted on Friday, October 17th, 2003 at 8:33 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.