Chapter 16: The Red Sox

Boston had recaptured third place in our Division during August, with the hapless Devil Rays fading down the stretch, but the Sox were only a pale memory of what they'd been, a few years back when they'd won it all. Like the Yankees, the Red Sox management had learned, expensively, that money wasn't everything, and that it took more than an open wallet to keep a club winning.

God knows the wealthy clubs had a huge advantage. But — happily for the health of the game, competitiveness somehow seemed to be maintained by the miracle of a few clubs who hired smart baseball people who could win — consistently — without a giant outlay of bucks.

The Oakland A's were a prime example. Minnesota was another, and the Marlins in the National League. These relatively small-market teams managed to win with payrolls that wouldn't adequately compensate the Yankee bullpen alone.

I knew a little history of the game, and I knew that for a long time — about a 15-year run in 60's and 70's — my club, the Orioles, had been the best-run franchise in the game. More recently, not so much. With the coming of the Washington Nationals a few years back, the Orioles had essentially moved from a "middle-market" franchise to just-another small market team. They still drew well, but the Nationals definitely had a negative effect on Oriole attendance, income from radio and TV, and on ancillary income sources.

The Orioles, now, had to do it with brains instead of dollars. That made winning harder. Being in the same division with the Yankees and Boston — two of the richest franchises in baseball — made success even more of an uphill struggle.

But it could be done. Under the current regime, with Paul Warren as field manager, the signs were all there that, maybe, the Birds were back.

Boston was up to third again, but they trailed us by eight games and the Yankees by seven. We had less than a month to play in the regular season and the Red Sox were unlikely, to say the least, to overcome that kind of deficit and win the Division. Still, they remained, at least mathematically, in contention for the post-season.

Anyway, the Red Sox were always tough. Not for the first time, I wished that the schedule makers would stop arranging things so that we seemed always to have to face these two clubs back-to-back. It might make sense, geographically, but it sure made life a trial.

We had kind of handled the Sox in the first half, both at home and away, but that caught up with us during this series and they left Baltimore having swept us in our own park. Not good. As always, there had been almost as many Red Sox fans in the stands as there were Baltimore faithful, so it was hard to tell, from the crowd noise, who had won.

But it hadn't been us. This time Paul Warren wasn't so unhappy with his pitching staff. We had given up only nine runs in the three games.

But our offense had been shut out twice, and scored only two runs in the other loss. Awful!

The Yankees were limping a little, too, having dropped two out of three to Toronto before coming in for our series. But even that was good enough to set up the series with the two teams in a flat-footed tie.

I don't think very many players will admit it, but there's something about those damned Yankees that is really intimidating. I mean, sometimes they've just got overwhelming talent on their side, and there's nothing anybody can do. But even in their "off" years, when they have to scuffle like everybody else, they're still the Yankees, and their opponents can't seem to forget it.

There's a tendency to stand on the mound and look in at the hitter, and instead of seeing Joe Blow, their journeyman second baseman up there, you see the Ghost of Joe Gordon. Their currently mediocre outfield takes on the images of Ruth, DiMaggio and Mantle.

They look a little bigger, a little stronger, than they probably are. And, damn them, they expect to beat you! They're used to winning, they've found out that they enjoy winning, and they want winning to continue.

The Orioles? Are you kidding me? We're the New York Yankees!

Maybe the most irritating thing about the Yankees was the way they could acquire new players and, somehow, immediately imbue the new guys with the same mystique. Some perfectly ordinary utility infielder could come to New York in a trade, put on his pin-stripes, and suddenly, he, too, had the invisible Superman cape on his shoulders. Soon, New Guy would hit a home run in some key game (maybe his fourth homer of the decade) and become an instant Legend in the Bronx.

It was enough to make you want to throw up.

But the flipside of the Yankees' tremendous psychological advantage is, when you did manage to beat them, the adrenaline rush was fantastic! Here again, it didn't matter all that much if you'd beaten one of the classic Yankee power clubs or whether you had merely whipped up on them during one of their down periods. Who cares? —You'd beaten the Yankees, and that always seemed as if it ought to count for a little extra in the standings.

Anyway, it was nitty-gritty time for us. We'd been the frontrunners for virtually the entire season, but that would be nothing more than an extra source of humiliation if we couldn't sustain it in September. Already, the more faint-hearted fans were checking out the Ravens' prospects for the coming NFL season. Already, supporters of more than half the clubs in both leagues knew that their locals were going nowhere. Time to check the TV Guide, read up on the shows planned for the Big New Fall Season.