ST. LOUIS – You get it, right? You can tell a friend. If you have been away for a while, come back to the World Series. Because this one is C-L-A-S en route to classic.
First, we have to talk about the teams. The Red Sox and Cardinals each won 97 games during the season and now they have each won nine during the postseason. That is 106 together, if you do the math, and first to reach 108 wins the 109th World Series.
Then we have to actually talk about if someone is going to win this World Series. Because through the opening four contests, the games have been lost as surely as they have been won. Are they feeling the pressure from this time of year or the pressure they are putting upon each other?
Whatever chicken-or-egg theory you want, the reality is that the games have been ugly masterpieces. A rout in Game 1 – fueled by Cardinal malfeasance – and then three soap operas of tension and drama and twists and turns and, well, endings that make a left at unpredictable and head full speed toward unbelievable.
You know how there are prop bets in the Super Bowl for what the first score will be – which team, which player, how? Well, there should be the same for how these World Series games will end. Game 3 on – of all things – obstruction. Game 4 on a pickoff by Boston closer Koji Uehara with Carlos Beltran, one of the greatest playoff performers ever, at the plate as the tying run. If you can get money down somewhere on unassisted triple play to close one of these final games, go do it.
"That was wild," Red Sox catcher David Ross said of the play that closed Game 4. "It probably was for (the Cardinals) like it was for us the previous night where you are just stunned and wondering what happened."
Red Sox bench coach Torey Lovullo, whose job includes keeping track of such things, said Uehara had thrown fewer than 10 pickoffs to first all year. He had not done so since Sept. 27. He had not thrown over once during the playoffs. Now, part of this is that Uehara has been dominant and has few baserunners. But for a guy with what Lovullo calls "a great move" he just doesn't use it often and, Lovullo figured, the Cardinals were probably a victim of their own "great research" – Uehara does not try to pick guys off.
And he only deployed the move late Sunday night, with the count 1-1 on Beltran because "I wanted to change the rhythm." That's right, he wasn't even prioritizing actually trying to nail pinch-runner Kolten Wong, which he did to secure a 4-2 triumph.
"We call the pickoffs from the bench," Lovullo said. "And that certainly did not come from the bench."
It came from out of left field, which is where the hero of this game also came from. Jonny Gomes was not supposed to start. But Shane Victorino was scratched with a tight back. So suddenly Gomes was hitting fifth behind David Ortiz, who was unintentionally intentionally walked to put two on with two out in the sixth. Gomes followed with a three-run homer.
But let's return to Ortiz, who is a bit of a polarizing figure outside of Boston, especially in New York. Yankee fans, in particular, feel he skated when it was revealed that he had failed the PED survey test in 2003, though he has always denied ever using steroids. So it is a bit loaded to make this comparison now, but Ortiz is like Barry Bonds in the 2002 World Series — he just seems as if he can wait so long to make a decision, decipher every pitch, never be caught off balance, always square the ball up. And, like Bonds, he is worked around constantly, sees few hittable pitches, yet is always ready to hit.
He was 3-for-3 with a walk in Game 4. In a World Series in which hits are rare commodities, he is 8-for-11 with four walks and a sacrifice fly that would have been a grand slam had it not been caught by Beltran.
Ortiz also gathered his team before the sixth inning of Game 4 in the dugout and told them these opportunities don't come often, that it was important to seize the moment. Red Sox players described it as someplace between E.F. Hutton and Lombardi – he talked, they listened, winning was the only acceptable outcome.
"David speaks up quite often behind closed doors," Lovullo said. "But to do it like that was pretty powerful."
Gomes homered not long after. Felix Doubront and John Lackey, who combined for 56 starts this year, teamed for 11 key outs in relief to save a raggedy pen and help tie this series, set up two of the best big-game artists of this era – Jon Lester and Adam Wainwright – for Game 5.
And the storylines don't stop. St. Louis' Allen Craig could hardly walk, but boy can he hit. Beltran, who bruised his ribs on the grand slam-robbing catch, can hardly bend. But, boy, he can still hit, too. The Cardinals' genius rookie, Michael Wacha, who already turned this series once in Game 2 at Fenway, waits in Game 6. Lackey, not long ago a pariah in New England, is now a godsend and Wacha's opponent. Boston has the beards, St. Louis has The Cardinal Way. Together they are putting on an unforgettable show long on strategy, theater and angst that has opened up their managers to second guessing and ulcers, and left all the participants exhilarated and exhausted in equal parts. Attrition of bodies is becoming a bigger and bigger factor daily, but the baseball souls are fully engaged.
"It's not fun while it is going on," Boston third base coach Brian Butterfield said. "It is four games, but it has felt like a fistfight that has lasted four games."
Really, tell a friend – the 109th World Series is getting classic.
These days, the Frenchman plies his trade in the Big Apple Circus, which opens its 36th season Friday at Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park. The show is called "Luminocity," and it's set at the (well-illuminated) Crossroads of the World, Times Square.
