| Scott Essman. 22nd October, 2007 - 11:35 am
 When you think about it, when the Boston Red Sox went down three games to one in the American League Championship Series to the Cleveland Indians, they had Cleveland right where they wanted them.
How can that be? Well, their next game, facing triple elimination, featured their ace, Josh Beckett, followed by two games at Fenway Park, with Curt Schilling, one of the best big-game pitchers of all time, then the x-factor, Daisuke Matsuzaka, on hand to close it out.
Like clockwork, Beckett, Schilling, and Matsuzaka pitched as brilliantly as expected, but each of the last three games was a total blowout, with the Red Sox offense exploding as it hadn’t for games two, three, and four.
Admirable as the Indians’ ascent to being one win from the World Series was, it was probably too much to expect a young inexperienced team to close out the Red Sox in five games. Even more so, the pressure was squarely on the young, mostly unknown team in games six and seven. How can one rightly feel confident about the Indians marching into the hallowed grounds of Fenway in such clutch circumstances and performing ably?
Yes, the Red Sox payroll is more than twice that of the Indians, but more to the point, throwing the trio of Beckett, Schilling and Matsuzaka would likely have beat any team; the Indians mustered a scattered five runs in those last three games. Coupled with the mighty Boston offense, who scored 30 in those games, an Indians victory was going to be nearly impossible.
One interesting side note to game seven: in must-win circumstances, in a one-run game in the seventh, with a single to left likely scoring the speedy Kenny Lofton from second base with the tying run, third base coach Joel Skinner mistakenly stopped Lofton at third. The next batter hit into an inning-ending double play. Not only did the Indians not score again, the Red Sox scored eight more runs in their next two turns at bat. That Indians blunder is the kind of thing that USED to happen to the Red Sox during their “cursed” years and still seemingly happens to the Chicago Cubs who are undergoing their own drought, now reaching a minimum of 100 years between World Series titles. |
