Things are getting more rational in the world of sports. But momentum exists, in all its abstract glory. Sunday night Detroit-Boston, Tigers vs. Red Sox. Utterly smothered by Detroit’s gas and sliders, the Boston hitters were gaining no traction against Tiger pitching. Down 5-1 with two outs in the bottom of the eighth, the Red Sox were four outs away from a 2-0 series deficit. Oh yeah, and Justin Verlander, conqueror of Kate Upton and Cy Young Award winner, was lined up for Game 3 to hammer the series to a close with his, well, hammer. In short, the playoff series was looking dire for the Red Sox.
Tigers manager Jim Leyland took out starter Max Scherzer after seven innings and 108 pitches. The only reason why Scherzer’s removal was warranted is if he was gassed. Passing an arbitrary triple digit threshold is not a good justification. Scherzer had been making Boston hitters look meek all night. Send him out to face the bottom of the order.
Granted, this would not be a topic of discussion if the Detroit bullpen tidily dispatched the Red Sox that inning, but it does seem curious why Leyland was so quick to give his starter the hook.
Five hitters into the eighth, the basses were loaded with two outs. David Ortiz, the last active Red Sox from the 2004 championship team, came up to the plate as the tying run. Leyland called in closer Joaquin Benoit to preserve the 5-1 lead.
This is the offensive cornerstone. The franchise. The aging yet still very effective legend may not be the best hitter on the team, though he is probably the one with the most power, but this was the perfect guy for the moment.
Big Papi whacked the first pitch change-up into the glove of one of the bullpen catchers out beyond right field. Game-tying grand slam. The game is tied 5-5. I could point to Boston’s walk-off RBI single in the next inning as a sign of momentum. It is true that if the Red Sox went down in order in the ninth, Big Papi’s grand salami would be considered much less epic.
Yet that bomb sent a jolt of shock to a team that was down and out, buried alive in a sea of K’s. The end result positions Big Papi’s slam as the turning point in the game, and, if the Sox beat the Tigers, the turning point in the series. The end result, overwhelmingly independent from one successful at bat in Game 2, gives added meaning to the grand slam. In other words, it seems the grand slam is fated to be over credited if the Red Sox win the series, or forgotten if the Tigers claw back. It is all so outcome dependent.
When Ortiz connected on that first pitch however, when that bat head dropped and led the rest of the bat in a sweeping arc, accompanied by that heartening, solid thwack of wood on baseball, a new picture was drawn, a brighter canvas plopped over the gloomy one. And that made all the difference.
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