West Coast Nation
ANAHEIM --To steal a phrase from an old friend making a pretty good name for himself out here, they are “jacked and pumped” on the Left Coast. The Lakers, with enough offseason drama on their plate to rival “All My Children” opened camp today, and still, all anyone wanted to talk about on Los Angeles sports radio was the Major League Baseball postseason.
And heck, why not? For the first time in baseball history, both the Los Angeles Dodgers and Anaheim Angels have stamped tickets to the postseason, making Southern California, yes, Southern “arrive in the fourth, leave in the sixth” California, the regional hotbed of this 2004 postseason.
Last year, that boast was heard eight hours to the north, where both the Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants went one series and out, and failed to make the party a year later by floundering down the stretch. The Dodgers open in St. Louis this week, where the Kansas City Royals are asking, “Hey, what about us?” The Angels, of course, host the Red Sox in Game One this afternoon at Angel Stadium. The Boston Braves are in too if you want to look at it that way, but other than their Atlanta offspring, the Sox are on their own as Massachusetts’ lone entrant.
Excuse me, Red Sox Nation’s lone entrant.
This, after all, is surely not a Massachusetts, or even a New England thing. If there is a place where Red Sox Nation is at its strongest aside from Boston, and perhaps New York at times, it may be Anaheim, where many a displaced Los Angeles resident makes the 38-mile drive to the OC every season to watch the Sox. I remember my first trip to Angel Stadium in 1990, watching Roger Clemens and Jim Abbott go head-to-head, the thing that hit me, besides being able to stretch my legs, was the sheer number of Boston fans on hand. Nowadays that overwhelming Boston support is everywhere, from Tampa Bay to Seattle. It wasn’t so prevalent 14 years ago.
Now, with the name Sonny McLean’s etched into the docket of Red Sox supporter lore, it’s well known what kind of support the Boston nine have 3,000 miles away from the Fens. Undoubtedly there will be a busload or two heading to the Big A from the most famous West Coast Red Sox saloon for today’s matinee. How much noise they and other Sox fans will be able to muster as their team and the Angels tangle in Game One of the ALDS remains to be seen amid those aforementioned keyed up Angels devotees.
Those annoying Thunderstix and the Rally Monkey will be in full effect when Curt Schilling takes the mound to begin a mission for which he was brought to Boston last Thanksgiving. Boston manager Terry Francona said at yesterday’s workout that it could be something as benignly special as bobblehead day, and the Red Sox ace would ratchet up his performance a notch.
“The higher the stakes, the bigger the stage, he doesn’t shy away from that,” he said. “They’re going to have to beat him at his best, and he’s at his best the bigger the game.”
Surely the Red Sox hope there are bigger games than this down the road this month. Schilling said his goal is to take the ball on the mound in Fenway Park in October. If this series goes that long, Schilling is tentatively scheduled as the Game 5 starter, a deciding game that would be played here in Anaheim. In order to reach that aspiration, his team would have to advance to the ALCS, no small task against a team that just two years ago took home the World Series trophy the Red Sox have been chasing for 86 years.
Folks around here are convinced that these first two games are going to be akin to a home run derby. Perhaps they can be forgiven for that considering the presence of one Vladimir Guerrero in the Angels lineup, following a week when the one-time Expo may have solidified the AL MVP. Guerrero hit five home runs last week as the Angels took the AL West away from the A’s.
“He is one of those guys that I can remember being a young pitcher, and a lot of times guys would try and water down the great players, saying ‘This guy can be pitched,’ because they didn't want anybody to feel nervous or anxious, and he is just one of those guys that it's black and white,” Schilling said. “You have to go and make great pitches to get him out and you have to do that in different locations and different spots with different velocities on a consistent basis, and keep the barrel and bat away from the baseball.”
Yet it’s not like Anaheim starter Jarrod Washburn won’t have his hands full with Johnny Damon, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz and the gang. Boston and Anaheim finished the 2004 season with identical .282 batting averages, while the Sox did score 113 more runs than the Angels. The teams finished three-four in ERA, with Boston holding the slight advantage, 4.18 to 4.28. On paper, this series looks about as even as Bill Belichick’s lips the day after winning 18 games in a row.
Curt Schilling’s numbers are of course part of those aggregate stats. But tonight he takes the mound for Boston looking to give his team a 1-0 lead in the best-of five series. With Pedro Martinez going in Game 2. His recent struggles aside, that is no small factor.
Schilling is widely regarded as a big-game pitcher, it’s the reason Theo Epstein chased him all the way to Arizona. Today he pitches the biggest game of his Red Sox career.
And Red Sox Nation hopes the addendum to that statement is, “so far.”
Calm, cool, collected…
He didn’t lean back in the seat donning a bathrobe, light a pipe and check out the latest issue of Playboy, but there was something to be said about the relaxed demeanor portrayed by Terry Francona at yesterday’s press conference. If only for the instance where he looked nothing like the boss of a year ago.
Whereas Grady Little would go through these question and answer sessions prior to each playoff game looking around the room as if he were dreading the next question (and frankly, nobody really knew if they were going to get an answer or have to witness him hiccupping madly), Francona answered each query definitively and unashamedly. There was nothing you could truly put your finger on, but let it be said, going into his first playoffs as a manager, Francona seemed in a solid mind frame.
Holding McCourt
Dodgers owner Frank McCourt was on TV following Monday Night Football on a sports show out here, and one of the questions he was asked, as a Boston native, was how much joy he took in seeing Dodger fans stay past the seventh inning much of this season. These are the same fans McCourt’s wife just seconds earlier had called, “The absolute best in baseball” mind you.
Anyhow, as McCourt is going on about how it’s been great to see Dodgers fans stick around finally after so much has been said about their fickleness, the station goes to B-roll of Saturday’s NL-West clinching game and Steve Finley’s ninth inning grand slam. And the bleachers are half-empty. Or, half-full if you want to look at it their way.
Which brings up the question, if John Henry’s Sox and McCourt’s Dodgers meet in the World Series, will Bud Selig just award the title to Boston? 