There are no champagne corks popping yet as players view videos of opposing the opposing team and watch poker on ESPN prior to the start of Game 3 last night.

01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, October 27, 2004

BY JIM DONALDSON
Journal Sports Writer

ST. LOUIS -- Among the literally thousands of questions being asked in the Red Sox clubhouse before the scheduled start of World Series Game 3 last night, by far the most pertinent was posed by Manuel Aristides Ramirez.

"What the [heck] is going on in here?" he asked -- with a smile and surprise on his face -- as he walked into a clubhouse overflowing with media.

What, indeed?

Typically, the media are not admitted into the teams' clubhouses prior to postseason games. But this was not a typical night. With rain pouring down outside, the media, with the permission -- indeed, with the encouragement -- of Major League Baseball, poured into the clubhouses of the Red Sox and Cardinals.

The Red Sox, accustomed to dealing with such hordes, handled it better than the Cards, most of whom retreated to the safety and quiet of the training room.

"Having just come off the ALCS with New York makes this less overwhelming," outfielder Gabe Kapler said. "Besides, we get almost this many reporters even for our regular-games with New York."

It was business as usual for Boston, particularly for Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe, who sat engrossed in front of laptop computers, seemingly oblivious to all the people with pens, pads, microphones, and cameras milling around them.

Varitek was intently studying video of Jeff Suppan, the Cards' starter last night, pitching in the NLCS against the Astros. With a notebook in his lap, Varitek jotted down notes after each pitch, sometimes stopping the action, then re-running it.

Lowe, meanwhile, was watching video of the Cardinals batting against the Dodgers in the NLDS.

"We do a lot with video," said Ron "Papa Jack" Jackson, the Red Sox' hitting coach. "At home, we have video on TV screens where we watch the starting pitcher. It's just that, usually, you don't see it. Now, it's all out in the open."

One of the amusing things on view was Varitek's screensaver -- a picture of him sticking his catcher's mitt in the face of Yankees' third baseman Alex Rodriguez, an incident credited with helping to spark Boston's second-half surge.

"We can pull up any pitcher, any pitch, in any situation we want to look at," Jackson said. "A batter can check his feet, his hands. He can check it all out. We also look for tendencies, for patterns, among pitchers -- what they like to throw in certain situations.

"Some guys want to look at that stuff, some don't. Manny, for instance, just wants to see the ball and hit the ball. He doesn't look at a lot of video."

"You've got some guys," Boston pitcher Mike Timlin said, "who watch video of every at-bat. And then there are guys who don't look at any at all."

Timlin is one of the guys who doesn't want to overanalyze things.

"We're a fun-loving club," he said. "I wouldn't call us a bunch of idiots, like Johnny [Damon] did. But, once you get your mind out of the way and let your body take over, you can do a lot of things as an athlete you didn't know you could do."

There also was some studying going on in the St. Louis clubhouse, where Larry Walker and Reggie Sanders sat in oversized, dark-brown, leather recliners, watching Pedro Martinez -- Boston's starter last night -- on two television screens. On one set, Pedro was pitching against the Angels in the ALDS. On the other, he was pitching against the Yankees in the ALCS.

"We like to check out what kind of stuff a pitcher has," Cardinals' outfielder So Taguchi said. "What pitches he throws on what count."

While the American League has designated hitters, it appears the Cards have designated talkers.

While most of their teammates were incommunicado, catcher Mike Matheny and lefty reliever Ray King held court.

"Being in a World Series -- winning a World Series -- is a goal every baseball player sets out to attain," Matheny said. "A lot of guys don't get that chance. When you do, you realize how fortunate you are."

While this event is, indeed, special, Matheny stressed that it was important for a player not to try too hard to do something special.

"If you try to do something different," he said, "you're setting yourself up to not be as good as you can be. If you've been goofing off for 162 games, then you've got to change what you've been doing. But, if you've been playing the game the right way, there's no sense changing your approach."

With the stakes high last night, the television set in the Boston clubhouse was tuned to a poker game on ESPN.

Meanwhile, music was playing in the St. Louis clubhouse, an eclectic selection of songs ranging from Nelly to an upbeat country tune with the lyrics: "She's got the rhythm, I've got the blues."

Who picks the music, one of the clubhouse attendants was asked.

"Whoever gets here first," he said.

In the case of the Cardinals, the early "bird" apparently catches the tune.