Weblogs: Off Beat by Jack Perry

06:18 PM EST on Friday, February 20, 2004

It's Oct. 4, 2004 -- a crisp early-fall afternoon at Fenway Park, and the Red Sox are squared off against the hated Yankees in a one-game playoff to determine which team would advance to the American League playoffs.

The Sox were clinging to a 1-0 lead with one out and Derek Jeter on second base in the 9th inning. Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez was tiring. And, if there wasn't already enough reason for Sox fans to worry, the hitter striding to the plate was Alex Rodriguez, the star shortstop whose February trade to the Yankees had ruined New England's Super Bowl party.

As everyone from Jeter to celebrity fan Ben Affleck had feared, Rodriguez had had a monster year for the Bronx Bombers, hitting .380, smacking 75 home runs and knocking in 199 runs.

When news of the Rodriguez trade broke over Valentine Day's weekend, Sox fans felt like jilted lovers. Only seven weeks earlier, these same fans had anticipated the Rodriguez's arrival in Boston.

Who would have guessed that Rodriguez, the league's MVP at shortstop, would agree to move to third base in a trade to the Yankees? They never saw it coming.

All the shell-shocked Sox fans could do was whine across talk-radio airwaves and into Internet chat rooms. They put a pathetic, desperate twist on the trade. Few suggested that veteran ace Martinez or newly-acquired star Curt Schilling could actually shut down A-Rod and the other studs in the Yankees lineup. Instead, they argued that the Yankees had gotten too good, that all the big egos on this modern day Murderer's Row wouldn't fit in the Yankees clubhouse.

Instead of chanting, "We're Number One," it was as if the Sox fans were shouting, "You're better, but we're nicer."

Jeter would feel threatened by Rodriguez, the Sox fans claimed. Rodriguez would want to grab the shortstop's job and his share of the spotlight. The New York press would compound the problem because Rodriguez truly is the better shortstop with far more range than Jeter.

Jeter's nose would be out of joint, they said. After all, wasn't he the big star who'd won all the World Series rings? Wasn't he the guy who'd danced in the commercial with owner George Steinbrenner? And now Steinbrenner was luring Rodriguez with perks such as his own hotel suite for road games and a link to the team's Web site.

Throw in a few prickly characters like Gary Sheffield and Kevin Brown, the fans said, and the Yankees would become Team Dysfunction incapable of even peacefully negotiating their Bentleys and Rolls Royces out of the team parking lot.

Now, at Fenway on this fall afternoon, it didn't look good for Red Sox fans whose team carried the burden of history on its back. The autumn sun slipped low in the sky, leaving long shadows across the Fenway grass and helping to remind many in the crowd of another one-game playoff 26 years before that had been ruined by a little Yankees shortstop named Bucky Dent.

A few fans were even seen leaving their seats in the hopes of avoiding another painful punch in the stomach from the hated Yankees -- as well as to avoid the post-game lines at the Baseball Tavern.

Still, Sox fans had reason to be thankful. The Yankees would have won the division outright except for a bizarre play on the next-to-last game of the 2004 season.

It was the kind of play that had bedeviled the hard-hitting Yankees all season. They shattered every offensive record imaginable, but this team of Warren Buffett-rich all-stars had been haunted all year by defensive lapses, most of them on the left side of the infield, the contested patch of dirt inhabited by Rodriguez and Jeter.

Ancient scouts with gnarled catcher's hands who can remember Ted Williams' rookie year say they've never seen a play like it. It happened in the 9th inning of a game against the Toronto Blue Jays. The Yanks were up 12-9, but the Jays had the bases loaded with one out when a ball was hit two steps to Jeter's right, a perfect double play ball that should have ended the game.

In the time it took Jeter to take two steps to his right, Rodriguez had dashed some 45 feet to his left. The two megastars reached the ball at exactly the same time, both somehow grabbing a share of it with their gloves. Neither would give in and hand it to the other. As the two wrestled for the ball in the infield dirt, four Blue Jays rounded the bases.

The Blue Jays won, 13-12.

Riding a wave of good karma that crested only a week before when Pedro Martinez agreed to re-sign with the Sox for a mere $20 million per year, Boston had managed to keep pace with the Yankees despite scoring only half as many runs and securing only one-tenth as many endorsement deals.

The teams ended the season tied for first place, 95-67. And the stage was set for this Fenway showdown.

Watching the drama unfold on the field in front of him, a father said to his teenage son, "Pedro's tiring."

"How can you tell?"

"I always get suspicious when he starts throwing the ball underhanded."

"Where's Terry Francona? Why doesn't he pull him?"

"He's having a Grady Little moment."

"Didn't we fire Grady and get this guy just for a situation like this? Why doesn't he bring in a reliever?"

"It's easy to pull the trigger when you're sitting on your couch at home. You don't have to face the jackals in the Boston press. I'm sure Francona is still feeling the sting of that game in late April when his bullpen blew a three-run lead against the Devil Rays. Sometimes it's just easier to ride your ace and let the hits fall where they may. It's a philosophy that's kept managers on the coaching merry-go-round for years."

To be fair, Martinez had been his old, bold, overpowering self through the first eight innings. He threw inside to several Yankees batters, knocking a few on their backs. "He wouldn't try that BS if Zim were still here," manager Joe Torre mumbled in the dugout.

Concerned about breaking their $20,000 gold chains in a scuffle -- and not really liking each other all that much -- the Yankees players declined to confront Martinez.

As Rodriguez stared out at Martinez, he could hear Jeter shouting at him from second base. Rodriquez stepped out of the batter's box.

"George likes me best…," Jeter shouted.

A surprised Rodriguez was taken aback, but then his super-quick reflexes kicked in and he said, "Then why do you sleep in that tiny hotel room when we're on the road?"

"How many commercials have you and George done?," Jeter countered.

"He lets my Web site link to the Yankees' Web site…," Rodriguez replied.

The Web site crack hurt because Jeter's agent had just told him that he needed to be more of a multimedia guy if he wanted to be a big time star. Jeter dropped his head and sulked while Rodriguez went back to trying to decide how much arc Pedro would put on his next pitch.

Finally, Pedro threw the ball. Earning every cent of the $41,666 that Steinbrenner and Rangers owner Tom Hicks were paying him for this at bat, Rodriguez took a mighty swing and lined a shot off the Green Monster.

But Jeter hesitated at second base as he tried to decide whether he'd rather go to the playoffs or screw Rodriguez. "If I score, he gets his 200th RBI . I don't want to be his 200th RBI," Jeter thought before coming to his senses and heading for home.

The ball rocketed past leftfielder Manny Ramirez and thudded off the wall, but the gods must have been looking favorably on the Sox that day. Although Ramirez didn't see Rodriguez hit the ball, he was in perfect position to catch the carom because he had been looking up into the Monster Seats at a fan who had been waving something shiny at him.

Surprised when the ball dropped into his glove, Ramirez grabbed the orb and threw it to shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, then turned back to look into the seats.

Jeter's split second of hesitation gave Nomar enough time to catch the ball, tug on his shirt, pull up his pant leg, tap his feet twice and make a perfect throw to catcher Jason Varitek, who tagged Jeter out one step away from home plate.

The ever-alert Varitek didn't stop there. He noticed a red-faced Rodriguez charging home, only a few feet behind Jeter. Or wait, was Rodriguez charging for Jeter?

Varitek tagged out Rodriguez and then the two Yankees collided, with Rodriguez saying, "I'm gonna strangle you, pretty boy. That would have been my 200th RBI."

As the stars rolled around in a cloud of dust at home plate, the Red Sox mobbed each other in celebration. All except for Manny, that is, who was still peering up at the Monster Seats -- and giggling.