BOSTON -- I walked three miles along the railroad tracks from Groton to Ayer, took the Boston and Maine Railroad train to North Station for 75 cents, took Charlie's MTA to Kenmore Square for a nickel, and sat in the bleachers for another 75 cents for a doubleheader against the expansion Washington Senators. It was 1961, and it remains unforgettable; the Senators led 12-5 in the first game of the doubleheader with two outs and one on in the ninth inning, but the Red Sox scored eight runs to win the game. Then they won the second game in extra innings on a Jim Pagliaroni home run.
It didn't matter that they were the expansion Senators or that, for more than a decade, the Red Sox were hardly any better than that. It was another day when I saw something I'd never seen before -- and have never seen since.
As I was walking out onto Brookline Avenue early Friday morning, the day flashed back. It was at the end of a night when the Red Sox had been down 7-0 with seven outs to go and won, a night when the Tampa Bay Rays found themselves in the runaway truck lane. Ghosts. They exist, or the Red Sox believe they exist the way the Yankees always believed they existed in The Stadium.
The Rays' story is remarkable, and in all likelihood, they deservedly will get to play the Phillies in the World Series. Camden Yards and Pac Bell and all the new ballparks are wonderful and brilliantly conceived theme parks, but on nights like Thursday, baseball owes John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino thanks for preserving, restoring and bettering the oldest ballpark, Fenway Park, and giving generations a feel for the history in what has become in many ways a psychiatric museum, a place where every day we have a chance to see something we've never seen before.
"To experience this place, this tradition is breathtaking," Jed Lowrie said. "There is so much history, the way the fans get involved. It is the ultimate baseball experience."
Many years ago, the Montreal Expos came to Boston for an exhibition, and then-coach Tommy Harper stood in left field with Brad Fullmer. "This place is old," Fullmer said. "Did Ted Williams stand here?"
"Brad," Harper replied. "[---] Ty Cobb stood here."
Where we interviewed J.D. Drew after the game, Babe Ruth had crossed the base line after pitching the Red Sox past the Cubs in Game 4 of the 1918 World Series. Williams ran to his position here. It was near where Carlton Fisk waved the ball off the foul pole. It's where Carl Yastrzemski had to walk back after popping up against Goose Gossage, and where Dave Roberts ran out to pinch run for Kevin Millar.
On Thursday night, it was 7-0 in the seventh inning with Dustin Pedroia at bat against Grant Balfour, and minus the pink hats, the 30-something-thousand fans were still chanting the derisive "BAL-FOUR, BAL-FOUR …" Two batters later, David Ortiz had homered and it was 7-4, and the night was filled with tens of thousands singing Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" the way they did when Bill Mueller singled in Roberts in 2004. And the ghosts were out. It was Derek Jeter who, in the seventh game of the 2003 ALCS with Boston winning 5-2 at Yankee Stadium said, "Don't worry -- right about this time the ghosts always come out."
Yankees people will tell you now that Fenway is the home of the ghosts, the toughest final nine outs in baseball. "It's smaller than Yankee Stadium," one Yankees official says. "And all those fans lean over banging the padding around the boxes. There's a tension there that's almost unbearable."
The Rays had taken that tension out of Fenway for 24 innings, pounding 10 homers and running up a 29-5 advantage. As B.J. Upton and Evan Longoria bashed their postseason home run total to 12 and Carl Crawford and Carlos Pena mashed and the Red Sox limped, there was a clear sense of the passing of the torch from the two-time world champions to this young, intrepid, athletic team that was arguably the best in baseball in the regular season. Oh, Terry Francona did the only thing he could do and brought in Jonathan Papelbon in the seventh inning, but although that recharged the crowd, the score became 7-0 when Upton hit a 97 mph fastball off the Green Monster. Scott Kazmir had thrown six gutsy, shutout innings. Still …
"We don't go easily,"said Coco Crisp, and when the door opened, the ghosts of Roberts -- who is in the Red Sox Hall of Fame without having a postseason at-bat -- appeared.
Should Pedroia's ball, an RBI single to right field, have been caught? Why did Balfour throw Ortiz a fastball down in the zone? Fine, if you're a Rays fan, you can wonder because once the door opened, they kept singing "Don't Stop Believin'" and pounding the padding; one fan down the right-field line pounded so hard his right hand was bleeding, but he kept it up, screaming, "J.D.'s coming, J.D.'s coming," and, on call, Drew drilled his two-run homer. Then came Crisp's heroic 10-pitch at-bat capped by his game-tying single. Then the throwing error by future Gold Glover Longoria, and Drew ripping the winning hit over Gabe Gross' head.
It wasn't noise for the sake of noise, someone telling fans when to "scream" or how to rattle cowbells. It was the intensity passed down for generations at The Fens, the way it is at Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium or at Notre Dame, the way it was at the Montreal Forum. It was this way in the 1999 ALDS with the Indians up 2-0 in games and 2-0 after the fifth inning when Dave Burba's elbow blew and the Red Sox drove the Indians back to Cleveland for a final game, after six no-hit innings by Pedro Martinez and a home run by Troy O'Leary. Yes, O'Leary was at Fenway this week to be honored, as was Trot Nixon for his home run in the 12th inning of the 2003 ALDS that began a three-game comeback against Oakland, and Dwight Evans, for being Boston's best player in the 1975 and 1986 World Series.
No one knows whether Josh Beckett can build back his velocity and command after his oblique injury and win Saturday. No one knows whether Jon Lester, who threw more than 60 innings over his previous career high and hit the wall in Game 3, will muster it again if there is a Game 7. "We love our chances with Josh and Lester," Alex Cora says. "They are people teammates believe in."
The Rays are the best home team in baseball, and the Red Sox have won two games at The Trop all season. The Rays crushed Beckett, Lester, Tim Wakefield and Daisuke Matsuzaka in four straight games, and now that Crawford says he "finally feels right for the first time all season," the lineup has dominated Boston's pitching. "Big Game" James Shields is rested and lined up.
If the Rays win at home, it will be reminiscent of 1975, when Fisk's homer became the opening for October TV broadcasts, yet Ken Griffey and Joe Morgan created the final run to bring Cincinnati a World Series title. Still, for all the disappointment there might be across New England if the Olde Towne Teame doesn't win three World Series in five years, there was one more glorious, heartfelt night, with thousands of fans left standing in Fenway Park at 1 a.m. singing along with Loverboy, "Everybody's Workin' For the Weekend."
Look, the Rays' management doesn't want to play in The Trop. They hate the catwalks more than anyone from out of town does. It is unfair to contrast and compare playing fields and traditions; the Red Sox had already gone 80 years without a world championship before the Rays ever took the field. What's important is that the Rays are really good.
Beckett and Lester will throw their hearts out; Papi might get another couple of pitches down in the zone; Drew is capable of anything and everything; and Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis and Crisp will never stop fighting. "Just remember," one Red Sox player said, "if we get to a seventh game, anything can happen. We know that." If there is a seventh game, you might see the Red Sox start bunting on Matt Garza to try to exploit his occasional problems throwing to bases.
If there is a seventh game, then there is theater of another kind because the longer a series goes, the greater it gets. If there isn't a seventh game, the spectacle of the team formerly known as the Devil Rays ousting the defending world champions has at times been awesome.
For baseball, the mix of its history -- embodied in Fenway -- with the tremendous young players has been a welcome step away from the recent history captured on the pages of the Mitchell report, a history so close that one player claims he has been tested three times in the postseason. Upton? He's another Eric Davis. Crawford? Scary. Pena? Pedroia? Youkilis? Papelbon? Beckett, Lester, Shields and Kazmir?
Longoria might be somewhere between Mike Schmidt and Scott Rolen, brilliant on both sides of the ball, and as cool with playing at Fenway Park as he was at Long Beach State or at Chatham in the Cape Cod League. "When I put in my credit card for plane tickets or purchases, it leaves off the 'n' on my first name," he said. "It doesn't hurt. A buddy of mine and I got tickets for the premiere of 'Charlie Wilson's War,' and we're sitting in the theater and a woman asks us what we're doing in those good seats. I told her I purchased them online. She said, 'Eva Longoria's supposed to sit there.' I get some pretty good perks."
During the off day in Boston, Lester was told that Red Sox farmhand Anthony Rizzo -- a slugging 19-year-old first baseman who was diagnosed with lymphoma in April -- had his first comeback at-bat in the final game of the Instructional League and roped a hit. Lester went to the clubhouse and texted Rizzo congratulations.
Pena hit three home runs 1½ miles from where he played college baseball at Northeastern -- right around the corner from Mike Dukakis' house -- and in front of his family. Upton and Longoria crushed balls that evoked memories of Jimmie Foxx and Jim Rice, and Crawford's five-hit, three-Web Gem effort in Game 4 was one of the greatest displays The Wall has ever had before it.
Perhaps now the good people in Florida will focus on the fabulous talent of the Rays more than on cowbells and gimmicks. They might have been done in by the Ghosts of Dave Roberts in Game 5, but the fact remains that the Rays went into Fenway in September and beat them two out of three to win the AL East. And they went into Fenway in October and -- amid the blare of Journey and "Sweet Caroline" and "Everybody's Workin' For the Weekend" -- did what Joe Maddon calls "a Meatloaf."
Not only is two out of three not bad, but it leaves the Rays one out of two from the Philadelphia Phillies and the World Series.
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