King Kaufman's Sports Daily

The Red Sox come back from 3-0 down to beat the Yankees and win the pennant, and everything you've ever known is false.

Oct. 21, 2004 | One of the things you grew up simply knowing is true is now false. A baseball team that falls behind 3-0 in a seven-game series can come back and win it after all. It's been done.

And it's been done by the Boston Red Sox, geniuses at finding ways to lose in October. And it's been done to the New York Yankees, who don't suffer epic collapses but cause them, who collect championships like pennies.

Drop a glass of water today and see if the ceiling gets wet. Ask a question to a brick wall and see if you get an answer. Try fighting City Hall.

It's all very simple and rational if you look at it a certain way. The Boston Red Sox won a baseball game over the New York Yankees Wednesday night, something they'd done 897 times before if you count the Yanks' days as the Baltimore Orioles. Derek Lowe, who had won 74 ballgames in his eight-year career with Seattle and Boston, pitched six innings of one-run, one-hit ball to pick up another victory.

The Yankees sent aging, aching, Kevin Brown to the mound and hoped for the best, and the Red Sox scored twice in the first inning on a home run by David Ortiz, who had already homered 44 times this year, playoffs included. Then they loaded the bases in the second inning and the Yankees sent in Javier Vazquez, a starter who had pitched poorly for much of the season.

Vazquez, unused to coming out of the bullpen and needing to throw strikes, threw a fastball over the plate to Johnny Damon, a good hitter who'd been in a terrible slump. Damon figured Vazquez would be looking for Strike 1. Makes perfect sense. He pounced on the pitch and lifted a fly ball down the right-field line. It plopped into the front row 315 feet away. Grand slam, 6-0 Red Sox.

What would have been an out in most parks was a home run because Yankee Stadium has a "short porch" in right, a configuration that favors left-handed sluggers. That's because it was built in 1923, a time when 10,000 was a pretty spiffy crowd, but the Yankees had Babe Ruth, a left-handed slugger whose drawing power made the construction of a 70,000-seater seem like a sharp idea. The Yankees wanted to accentuate the positive.

You may have heard Babe Ruth's name come up in connection with this series. Stop me if you know this but the Red Sox haven't won the championship since 1918, see, the year before they sold Ruth to the Yankees for a mess of pottage or something. This caused a curse to be brought down on the franchise, according to the type of folks who also believe in goblins, fairies, clutch hitting and monsters under the bed.

Next page: A choke job for the ages or just a beating? Plus: Astros and Cardinals finally get center stage