2004
THURSDAY. OCTOBER 21, 2004
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
SPORTS
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Boston socks it to New York in Game 7
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Boston blew away decades of defeat with four sweet swings.
Believe it, New England, the Red Sox are in the World Series. And they got there with the most unbelievable comeback of all, shaming the New York Yankees, the Evil Empire to the south.
Just three outs from getting swept out of the AL championship series three nights earlier, the Red Sox finally humbled the dreaded Yankees, winning Game 7 in a 10-3 shocker yesterday to become the first major league team to overcome a 3-0 postseason series deficit.
Red Sox fan Danny Arelo, of Pawtucket, R.I., right, jumps up from his table at a bar in Boston as the Boston Red Sox score in the first inning against the New York Yankees in American League playoff action yesterday. For the second straight year, the Red Sox and the Yankees pushed the championship series to a Game 7.
Cursed for 86 years, these Red Sox just might be charmed.
There is no torture this time, no hour of humiliation. Better yet to Boston fans, it's the Yankees left to suffer the memory of a historic collapse.
Steven Senne/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Boston didn't need any of the late-inning dramatics that marked the last three games, leading 6-0 after two innings.
David Ortiz, the series MVP, started it with a two-run homer in the first off broken-down Kevin Brown, and Johnny Damon quieted Yankee Stadium in the second inning with a grand slam on Javier Vazquez's first pitch.
After Derek Jeter sparked hope of a comeback with a run-scoring single in the third, Damon put a two-run homer into the upper deck for an 8-1 lead in the fourth.
Dereck Lowe, pitching on just two days' rest, silenced the
Yankees' bats and their boasting fans, who just last weekend assumed New York's seventh pennant in nine years was all but a lock. He allowed one hit in six innings, then Pedro Martinez started the seventh, his first relief appearance in five years, sparking chants of "Who's Your Daddy?"
Three hits and two runs got the crowd going, but the rally stopped there and Mark Bellhorn added a solo homer in the eighth for a 9-3 Boston lead.
Cheering of Red Sox fans could be heard in the ninth, and when pinch-hitter Ruben Sierra grounded to second baseman Pokey Reese for the final out, Boston players ran on the field and jumped together in a mass huddle to the first-base side of the mound.
Yankees players slowly walked off, eliminated on their home field for the second straight season.
On a cool, crisp night in the Bronx, the historical pattern was broken, and the World Series will start at Fenway Park on Saturday night against St. Louis or Houston.
Now that the Babe's team has been beaten, Boston can try to reverse The Curse, win the Series for the first time since 1918 and bring happiness to the Hub which can scarcely believe the tumultuous turn of events.
Just because they won it over New York, in Yankee Stadium, site of the Game 7 meltdown when the Red Sox were five outs from winning last year.
This was for Williams and Peskv, for Yastrzemski and
From Fenway Park to Faneuil Hall, from Boston Common to Beacon Hill, the 11th pennant for the Red Sox, the first since 1986, will be remembered as perhaps the sweetest.
Yawkey, for Fisk and Rice and even Buckner and Nomar, just a few of the hundreds who suffered the pain inflicted by their New York neighbors in a rivalry that has become baseball's best.
None of the previous 25 major
league teams to fall behind 3-0 even forced a series to seven games. The wild-card Red Sox became only the third team in the four major North American leagues to overcome a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series and win.
New York, which dropped to 10-2 in the LCS, will no doubt face a bitter winter, with owner George Steinbrenner likely to take charge of overhauling a roster that has been short of starting pitching since the spring.
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