Led by Curt Schilling's seven innings of four-hit pitching and Mark Bellhorn's three-run homer, the Red Sox beat the Yankees again last night, 4-2, to square their American League Championship Series at 3-3. Tonight at Yankee Stadium they will attempt to conquer the Evil Empire on enemy soil. They will try to become the first team in big league annals to recover from a 3-0 deficit, busting ghosts that have haunted them in this venerable baseball theater for more than three-quarters of a century.
In that spirit, Derek Lowe is tentatively scheduled to get the start for Boston. With the Red Sox it's always about redemption and history, and with the exception of Tim Wakefield (who also could get the ball), no Sox pitcher embodies both elements more than Lowe. Yankees manager Joe Torre said he had both elements more than Wakefield.
It would be fitting, almost fictitious, if it came down to yet another seventh game (could we have a Game of the Century two years in a row?) after all that has happened in the last 12 months, not to mention the 100 years of bare-knuckle brawls and front-office squalls that preceded last October's stunning Yankee comeback against Boston.
The Sox responded to their awful 2003 autumn in New York by trading for Schilling during Thanksgiving break. At his introductory press conference, Schilling said, "I guess I hate the Yankees now," and when he arrived in Fort Myers he'd already circled an April date on which he figured would be his first regular season start against the Yankees. Then he did a car ad in which he said he was going to Boston to "break an 86-year-old curse."
Everything went according to plan. Schilling won 21 games, more than anyone in baseball. He won his only start in the first round against the Angels. But then he was routed for six runs in three innings in Game 1 against the Yankees, and the Sox announced that he needed surgery to repair a dislocated tendon in his right ankle.
The Red Sox and Schilling were done, it seemed. More buzzard luck for Boston.
