ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – They keep coming at you in unexpected ways, with pieces of the puzzle you never see coming. One night it is Coco Crisp, left for dead on the Red Sox roster, who delivers one of the most epic at-bats you’re ever going to see, who caps the greatest postseason comeback in over 75 years with a rope to right field that officially brings the Sox all the way back from 0-7 to 7-7.
And two nights later it is Jason Varitek, one of the few Sox who still goes back to that comeback for the ages against the Yankees four years ago, one of the core components of this remarkable Red Sox renaissance, a catcher whose best days don’t only look behind him, but lost forever in the fog of memory.
So here is Varitek in the sixth inning last night at Tropicana Field, two outs and nobody on base in a 2-2 ballgame. Here is Varitek, lugging an 0-for-14 batting average to the plate with him, and a bat that has looked like it weighs 90 pounds in his hands.
James Shields is on the mound for Tampa, “Big Game James” to the locals, and while he hasn’t exactly made anyone forget Jack Morris in this, the latest Biggest Game in Rays history, he is young, he is aggressive, with the kind of big, live arm that has made Varitek look like he has one step in a retirement home lately.
Shields delivers. Varitek swings.
Boston lives. Again.
“I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate than that,” manager Terry Francona said after his Sox had cheated the Reaper one more time, beating the Rays 4-2 and evening this ALCS at three games apiece. “Our whole dugout went crazy. That wasn’t just a big run but a huge run.”
Of course it would be Varitek rising from the ashes, in the same way Crisp did in the eighth inning Thursday night in Game 5, in the same way David Ortiz did an inning earlier, turning that game – and this series – upside down with a three-run home run after the ingrates at Fenway Park started booing him.
They’d booed Varitek plenty too, watched in frustration as the captain kept stranding runners, popping out and striking out and looking as if he were playing Old-Timers Games. It is remarkable the short memory of Sox fans, who adopted Big Papi when he was nothing more than a Twins castoff, who have always revered Varitek for his old-school manner and his throwback ways.
“He wears the ‘C’ on that jersey for a lot of different reasons,” Josh Beckett said. “We were all pulling for the guy. It was huge for him to do that.”
We can avoid the waiting period and start calling these Red Sox what they are, regardless of how Game 7 shakes out tonight. We can laud them for the kind of stubborn, resilient edge the great Yankees teams of recent vintage owned. In truth, it wasn’t until the Yankees finally lost a Game 7 to the Diamondbacks in 2001, effectively ending their dynasty, that we could fully appreciate what they’d accomplished.
No need to wait for tonight, no need to see the Sox lose gallantly or win gloriously. What we’ve seen, already, is more than enough. So much about this team is so very different than it was in 2004, and the only true links left are Ortiz and Varitek, and the way they’ve moved across this ALCS it sometimes looks like they actually go all the way back to 1918 with the Red Sox.
Yet there was Papi on Thursday, reaching back to 2004 and hitting one over the night. There was Varitek, who hit four homers and drove in 10 runs and hit over .300 in those epic ALCS collisions with the Yankees in 2003 and 2004, channeling that Varitek.
And there were the Red Sox. Still breathing. Still standing. Still refusing to hand over the Commissioner’s Trophy. Still the champs, for at least one more night.