Monday, October 25, 2004, 5:36pm
Monday, October 25, 2004, 5:36pm
“Back Bay – Back Bay – Change he’h for the oh’nge line.”
Ah the old Boston accent – as local and unique and wonderful as any smoothly southern delivery in Montgomery.
I didn’t quite finish this morning’s baseball story – so here’s the rest so far.
The Boston Red Sox have played the St Louis Cardinals twice already in the World Series – defeating them both times at Fenway Park. And even though the Boston team has committed four fielding errors in each game (more than one is a lot), they have dodged a bullet to win 11-9 and 6-2.
The events of last night’s game began hours before cheering Boston fans greeted Curt Schilling heading towards the bullpen for pre-game warm up tosses. Like for his last pitching appearance, Dr. Morgan had inserted sutures to stabilize Schilling’s ankle tendon – this time with a last-minute adjustment that saved the day, and Shilling’s bullpen session was as much a test of that adjustment as any sort of warm-up. Earlier that day Schilling had climbed out of bed to discover that he could not walk much less stand on a pitcher’s mount to throw a baseball.
Something was very wrong with the latest set of sutures.
Dragging himself to his car he nonetheless began the long drive from Medfield to Boston utterly hopeless until something caught his eye along the way. First one and then another sign from local town supporters drifted through his field of view in the form of impromptu banners posted mile after mile against telephone poles and across fire station doorways and nailed to trees and held by hand – all wishing him good luck against the Cardinals – wishing him godspeed on his sacred quest. And by the time he had reached Fenway Park he’d resolved to pitch if there was any way he could pitch – even if this ruined his ankle and ended his career.
Although little was said officially, rumor was ripe with doubt. And closer to the situation Schilling himself knew as late as the mid-afternoon that he was not pitching without a miracle.
But there would be a miracle.
Upon examination, Dr. Morgan discovered a suture grazing a nerve, and once removed the pain and numbness Schilling had been feeling all day began to ease in proportion to his rising hopes.
After the game – after Schilling had pitched one hit, one walk, one unearned run, four-strikeout baseball for six solid innings – he faced the media to reflect upon those signs posted along his journey into Boston. If not for those fans, he said, he could not have found the energy to continue.
Energy indeed beginning in Medfield then onto the playing field with a thunderous ovation the whole way in from the bullpen to begin the game – pacing through a cold misting northeast wind hovering in the low 40s – drifting across the outfield as though the man had risen from the dead to pitch – as though the living ghost of Cy Young, the greatest of all Red Sox pitchers had been summoned to stand in the breach between our greatest fears and our highest hopes. Twelve hours earlier he could not walk, and now at 7:50pm October 24, 2004 Curt Schilling was walking across the Fenway lawn into the heart of the most amazing day of his life – to pitch and win the second game of the 2004 World Series.
“Natick. Station stop is Natick”
Returning from my trip to Virginia, all noticeable signs of track rework have since receded. The trains are running on time again. Leaves are falling in earnest, and nighttime darkness descends ever earlier and with greater ferocity each afternoon. But baseball in Boston has not yet ended for the year. And perhaps finally after 86 years we will not have to “wait again until next year” once the white snow begins to fall once more upon the fading green grass of Fenway Park.
