My last baseball thread until the Show starts. This sums it up perfectly.

[WilliamPitt]

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2004/10/21/story_is_too_good_for_words/

Story is too good for words

By Bob Ryan
Globe Columnist

October 21, 2004

NEW YORK -- Every once in a while an Oscar winner gets up there and wings an acceptance speech because "I never thought I'd win, so I didn't prepare anything."

That's me. Right now.

Excruciating Red Sox losses, I'm familiar with, as both a fan and a writer. Game 7, 1975? Oh, yeah, I was there. Bucky Dent's home run? Yup. Can't claim that I eyewitnessed the Buckner game. I watched the fateful 10th inning in a Houston bar. I had just befriended a couple of locals and promised that I'd be buying as soon as this inning was over. When the ball rolled through Buckner's legs, I just said, "Sorry, gotta go," and walked out the door.

And then there was Game 7 a year ago. When David Ortiz hit the homer, I said, "That's it. Can't lose now."

So that's why I sit here in journalistic shock. I am trying to digest the fact that I have just seen the greatest team feat in the 101-year history of postseason baseball as we know it. A team that fell behind, three games to none, has come back to win a postseason series. That team is the Boston Red Sox, and the team they have just victimized is the New York Yankees.

(snip)

Derek Lowe!

Derek Lowe is why sport is great. A Derek Lowe saga is what separates Sport from Entertainment. Sport is not scripted. There is no play list, no repetition. The great element in Sport is the unknown. We love these games because we do not know what to expect when they start. We also love them because we can never be sure where our heroes are coming from. Right now it's hard to imagine any more unlikely candidates for this kind of heroics than a guy who was bumped from the starting rotation prior to the Anaheim series and whose playoff role was fuzzy, at best.

Derek Lowe gets the win in Anaheim 3. Derek Lowe starts New York 4 and does a nice job. Derek Lowe starts New York 7 -- merely the most important task he's ever been given in his baseball life -- and he pitches as well as he possibly can. Go ahead, you explain it.

"He was so special tonight," said Terry Francona.

I can throw out the names who helped pull this thing off from now until Saturday night's first pitch. David Ortiz. Bill Mueller. Curt Schilling. Johnny Damon. Dave Roberts. Mark Bellhorn. Everyone in the bullpen. Jason Varitek, who truly is the rock of this team.

What they did as a group will now be toasted and recounted for decades to come, and it should be. What we just saw was a tribute to 25 athletes and a coaching staff that refused to acknowledge a 100-year history. Baseball teams don't come back from being down, 3-0, they were told. They didn't buy into it.

(snip)

One year ago the Red Sox lost a traumatic Game 7 in this very park. It was talked about incessantly. Last Saturday night, the team lost a 19-8 game in Fenway. It was another frustrating chapter in the great Yankee-Red Sox drama. Elimination was imminent. The entire relationship between the Red Sox and their greatest rival seemed fated to remain an endlessly repetitious story in which the dynamics would never change. Call it Groundhog Day. Call it Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. Call it Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill. They all apply. Down, 3-0, and having been humiliated in their own park (19 and 22 hits), the Red Sox were regarded as toe-tag material -- again.

There was only one place on earth where there was any hope, and that was inside the Red Sox clubhouse.

The single most alternatingly stressful and exhilarating week in Boston sports history is over. Now Red Sox fans can turn on their TV sets tonight to see a couple of Boston discards named Clemens and Suppan pitch in the other Game 7 to see who gets to play the Red Sox in the World Series.

I need a beer.

...more...

[flowomo]

1. Hey, Will, you see this?

http://www.michaelberube.com/EE/index.php

> After stunning reversal, Yankees take AL pennant

> In what analysts are calling a bold and decisive move, President
> George W. Bush today signed an executive order declaring the Boston
> Red Sox retroactively ineligible for post-season play, thereby
> awarding the American League pennant to the New York Yankees.
>
> I said it in 1993, and Ill say it again today, Bush told a group of
> admirers, each of whom had written a 2000-word essay on why they
> should be allowed to bask in the glory of his presence, the wild card
> is bad for baseball. I said that history would prove me right, and it
> has. It always does. Dont ask me about mistakes, young lady thats
> a trick question, and dont think I dont know it. The wild card is an
> exercise in folly, and it must be stopped now before it weakens our
> nation any further.
>
> Bushs remarkable, bold, and also decisive decision came only hours
> after the Boston Red Sox had scrambled back from a 3-0 deficit to
> defeat the Yankees in four straight games, winning the climactic game
> seven in a rout. The Sox dramatic rally was unprecedented in major
> league baseball history, as is the Presidents subsequent reversal of
> the outcome.
>
> People dont want to see a second-place team crowned League
> Champions, Bush explained. You cant send mixed messages. You cant
> flip flop and say, well, one team won one thing but another team won
> another. It doesnt show leadership. It doesnt show resolve.
>
> Asked by one timid, quivering supporter whether the executive order
> would also apply to the Florida Marlins, effectively stripping them of
> their 1997 and 2003 World Series victories, Bush replied that the
> playoff outcomes of previous years lay outside federal jurisdiction.
> I believe in freedom, and I think you have to leave those decisions
> up to the individual states, said a fiercely smiling Bush, who has
> longstanding family connections in Florida. The questioner was
> promptly led away in handcuffs and charged with criminal impertinence.
>
> In Sacramento, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger followed
> Bushs remarks with a press release stating that Republican stronghold
> Anaheim will be permitted to retain its World Series victory in 2002
> rather than cede it to the girlie-men of San Francisco.
>
> The Yankees will open the World Series on Saturday against either the
> St. Louis Cardinals or the Houston Astros. The National League
> championship series is not affected by the executive order.
>
>
> Posted by Michael on 10/21 at 06:30 AM
> (0) Comments " (0) Trackbacks " Permalink

[billybob537]

7. "Fans don't want to see

a second place team crowned winner", the pResident went on to say "It's OK for pResidents though!"

[arwalden]

2. Yet You Complain About The Folks Who Start Play-By-Play CNN Threads

SUBJECT: Hey can you believe what Judy just said?
SUBJECT: Turn on CNN now!
SUBJECT: Tucker Carlson is such a weenie! Watch him now!
SUBJECT: COMING UP ON CNN... They just announced it. Watch now!
SUBJECT: Look at that Karen Hughes. She's such a liar. Are you listening?

Sure, Will... there's no difference.

[ScreamingMeemie]

3. Stop. It.

;) Or I will be forced to plaster the lounge with Packer threads this Sunday.

[curse10]

4. Didn't you hear? We are all Packers fans next week!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x1854467

[ScreamingMeemie]

8. Yes! and I love it! I think I will post 100 threads on it for Allen!

:hi:

[curse10]

5. I still can't believe it's true

Like I'll wake up and discover it was all a dream and we never made it past game 4

[Phillycat]

6. Great story!

God, I started to sweat when they took Lowe out and then they started getting hits off Pedro. "WHY DID THEY TAKE LOWE OUT?" was all anyone said for a good 20 minutes.

They are right when they said Varitek is the rock of the team. That guy is just awesome.

By the way, Philadelphia loves you guys right now. :)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x1855443

[billybob537]

9. "HEY YANKEES"

Whos your DADDY now?