BOSTON – This is why the Red Sox are never going to catch the Yankees this year, why the tortured congregants of Fenway Park are doomed to an 86th year of waiting for Next Year to arrive. This is the evidence, hard and irrefutable. This is the proof.
It’s the sound you heard in the top of the seventh inning, as the Yankees peeled away another layer of Pedro Martinez’ bulletproof veneer: the quiet pall of inevitability. Or the bursts of despair you could feel at the end, as the Yankees walked off the field with another victory, another game added to their lead in the AL East, another Sox season soon to be tossed onto the heap.
“You guys are going to kill me when I say this,” Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek said when this 4-3 Yankees victory was over. “But it really is only one game in a long, long season.”
As hollow as that argument would sound in any circumstance, it rang positively ludicrous on this night, in the quiet of the Red Sox clubhouse, in the aftermath of a game this city had targeted and circled on its calendar, right from the instant the last Yankees-Red Sox series had ended, right as George Steinbrenner’s eyes had begun to well, right when it looked, one more time, like this might be a legitimate chase into October.
Especially the way the pitching rotation worked out.
That’s the problem with the Red Sox, the flaw in their delicate chemical balance. Martinez isn’t their only star; technically, you could argue he isn’t even their most important star, since it’s Nomar Garciaparra and Manny Ramirez who supply the rest of the Sox’ pedestrian pitchers with enough runs to keep their lungs filled with air.
Yet it is Martinez who is their Yaz, their lightning rod of hope. It’s Martinez in whom they invest so much of their belief, this curious quagmire known as Red Sox Nation. Martinez makes them feel invincible. Martinez makes them feel unbeatable. Martinez makes them dream, even in a city schooled to believe that only heartache is likely.
“When he’s on,” Johnny Damon had said before the game, “you think he’s capable of anything.”
And so, by extension, do the Red Sox. Which is why this one will sting for a while. Sox fans are used to the familiar way this game played itself out – close game into the ninth . . . bullpen door opens . . . and banana peels come tumbling out. They have grown numb to the cumulative effect of so many late-inning follies.
What was harder to watch was the way the top of the seventh inning played itself out. Pedro was in trouble, but that’s generally when he’s at his best, at his feistiest. After home plate umpire Dana Demuth squeezed him on ball four to Derek Jeter, he threw a quality diva fit right there on the mound, offering his glove to Demuth as if to say: “Here. You pitch.”
“I don’t know how many pitchers get away with that,” Joe Torre correctly observed later.
Of course Martinez bounced back from that, blowing away Jason Giambi for the second out. His powers were alive. They were real. Every one of the 34,873 inside Fenway knew what was coming next. Bernie Williams, an old Sox tormentor, worked the count to 2-and-2. Martinez had thrown 127 pitches to that point. The 127th was clocked at 93 miles per hour. Fenway was fixing to explode.
But Martinez went with a curve on pitch No. 128. He hung that curve and Williams practically burst out of his spikes, slamming the ball to right, driving in the go-ahead run.
That was it. That was all. You could see the spark of life flicker in the grandstand, in the bleachers, all around Fenway Park. The Yankees had gotten to Martinez. The Red Sox were in full retreat. They wouldn’t get around to losing the game until a little later on, but everyone – players, fans, everyone – knew full well: they’d lost something else, something worse. Once hope dies, can the season be far behind?