Friday, October 17, 2014

10 years ago today: The greatest stolen base in baseball history

October 17, 2004.  ALCS Game 4.  New York at Boston.  Bottom of the 9th inning.  Yankees lead 4-3.  Dave Roberts.



These Kevin Millar quotes from earlier in the evening are absolutely chilling in retrospect.



Yesterday I read a great article from Boston.com about the 10th anniversary of the 19-8 Game 3 massacre, and the role Tim Wakefield played that day in the Red Sox eventual comeback.  Wakefield sacrificed his Game 4 start by offering to do mop-up duty in Game 3 to preserve the bullpen.  But his story of how it came about is amazing:

"So I got up and I went down to Tito [Terry Francona] and I said, ‘Do you need me to do anything, tonight? You need to go to the bullpen? What do you need to do?’ And he hesitated for a second, and he said, ‘Go ask Derek [Lowe] if he can start tomorrow. And Derek was still on the roster, but he wasn’t slated to do it. He wasn’t in the bullpen. He wasn’t going to be one of our starters. So I went down and I asked Derek, I said ‘D, um, Tito wants to know if you can start tomorrow,’ and he got this big grin on his face and he said, “Yeah,” I’m like ‘alright.’ So I ran in and I got my glove and took off for the bullpen..."

Lowe stayed in the rotation after that, and ended up winning the deciding ALCS Game 7 and the World Series clinching Game 4 as well.  Unbelievable.

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