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Rivalries and storybook finishes Posted: Monday June 03, 2002 10:09 AM
NEW YORK -- Taking a break from waiting, breathlessly, for the post-June 1 NFL salary-cap cuttees, I absorbed the following sights, sounds and smells of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry with 55,601 other devotees at The Stadium Sunday afternoon: Park in the lots adjacent to the Bronx Fruit Terminals for the $8-$10 fee, $2 for the palm-greasing so I can get a favorable spot near the front and won't get stuck for 30 minutes in bad traffic after the game ... (Question: What exactly is "good" traffic?) ... Walk the footbridge over the Metro North railroad tracks to the ballyard, serenaded by a good saxophonist working for dollar bills ... See a 30-ish woman in Red Sox road jersey with 30-ish man wearing a Yankee home jersey, holding hands ... Asked by seven scalpers before hitting Stadium property some variation of: "Who needs two? Got any to sell?" ... In lap around the stadium, New Englanders seem desperate to get in. Man in Woonsocket (R.I.) FD T-shirt negotiating with street scalpers, gesturing agitatedly. My guess is he wants something for $35 and the wiseguys have nothing for less than $75. My small carry-on-type bag is searched thoroughly at the left-field gate, and I'd told to take off my hat. What I could hide in there I do not know ... In $6 beer line, guy in front of me orders Smirnoff Ice. I say to him, "How is that?" He says, "Don't know. My wife drinks it." I say, "Must be hard to drink a beer, or whatever it is, that looks like a Sprite." ... Yes, 12 ounces of Heineken costs $6. I am having my head examined this morning ... Glorious, beautiful, 78-degree cloudless day and I'm sitting 14 rows behind the Sox dugout in seats procured by buddy Ken Fost ... We ask a Sox fan in the front row to take our photo with the field in the background. I know he's a Sox fan, and an MMQB fan, when he says,"Hey, you're Peter King. I read your stuff. Loved your column on CMGI Field. Can't wait to go there." And then this: "Your daughter's the New Jersey high school softball player." Well, just wait until you get to the bottom of the column this week, pal ... Nomar Garciaparra emerges from the dugout 15 minutes before the game to run sprints is left field. "Booooooo!" Rickey Henderson emerges a couple of minutes later to do the same. "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" ... Crowd is 80-percent Yank, but the other 20 percent is not afraid to be very Sox-ish -- "B" hats and Nomar jerseys. There is even an "El Guapo" blue T-shirt, honoring Rich (I Can't Get a Soul Out) Garces worn in the lower deck.
Rickey walks on five pitches. Johnny Damon slices double to left. Shea Hillenbrand, batting third, lofts a short fly to center. Henderson tags. Decent arm will get him. Bernie Williams' arm is something south of decent. Henderson slides home with the first run. A Carlos Baerga groundout makes it 2-0 ... Baerga, a Long Island Duck last year, bats fifth for the team with the best record in baseball. Only in America ... Girls in our section shriek when Derek Jeter leads off. "Marry Me, Derek!" is a sign held by a teenage-looking girl with "2" painted on each cheek ... Jeter singles hard to center, steals second, and scores on Williams' first of four groundouts to second ... Jiggly model-type three rows in front of us screams in Beatles-esque fashion each time Jeter does anything ... Re: Williams -- Ever seen that before? Four at-bats, four ground balls to second base? ... And now Frank Castillo, throwing two speeds -- slow and glacial -- goes to work. K's Giambi, Posada, Vander Wal and Coomer over the first five innings. Except for Giambi, they're not hitting loud fouls off him ... Server gets $37 from our row for three beers, three dogs and peanuts ... In fifth, reliable Ramiro Mendoza (reliable, I guess, except for today) enters, and with two out, Hillenbrand doubles. Nomar's up. From the back of the lower deck, we hear a few bright oafs start the old "Dar-ryl" drone. Except now it's "Meeee-aaah!" As in Mia. Mia Hamm. Nomar and Mia are an item now, of course. Does he hear? Don't know. But he does hit a shot into Monument Park in left. It's 6-1 now. Ballgame ... The crowd can never get into the game because the Red Sox don't let them. Weird crowd. I've been to 30 of these religious Civil Wars, I'd guess, over the years, and this was one of the mildest I've seen ... "Boston Sucks" T-shirts ($10) and visors ($5) sold on the footbridge on the way out. Crazy world out there. Glad there's some normalcy somewhere.
This week I have two: 1. The Red Sox are 13-7 since Manny Ramirez left the lineup with a broken finger. 2. The Red Sox have been in first place on June 3 each of the last three seasons and finished behind the Yankees each year.
1. I think the next controversial blip on the NFL radar screen could be human grown hormone, which smart players are using because it won't come up as a positive in steroid or ephedra testing. HGH has a lot of the same harmful side effects of steroids, and people I know in the league say they're noticing more acceptance of HGH by players. 2. I think the Cowboys are having some serious thoughts about trying to squeeze a decent year out of Jamal Anderson, even though he's now had two major knee surgeries. 3. I think the Rams are breathing a little easier today. Kurt Warner threw well in their minicamp over the weekend after hurting his thumb in the playoffs last winter. Warner would never say it, but there's no doubt his thumb affected how he played in a pretty weak Super Bowl performance. 4. I think I had to laugh when I saw Giants DE Kenny Holmes talking about what a struggle it was to renegotiate his contract down to help his team on the cap. After how you played last year, son, you'd have found yourself making a deal for near the minimum if the team had given up on you. Be happy. 5. I think the Chiefs need to stop ticking off their best player, Tony Gonzalez, even if it costs them a few more dollars. Gonzalez is a good guy and the best tight end of his era. He's a guy you need to have your side, mentally and physically. 6. I think Major Applewhite made the right decision in quitting the Patriots before investing time trying to make the team. Bill Belichick wasn't going to keep him, even on the practice squad, and now Applewhite can go back and be a grad assistant at Texas and start prepping for his life's work. He'll coach the Longhorns someday. 7. I think the hot breath of Chris Chandler is on Jim Miller's neck. 8. I think these are my personal thoughts of the week: a. Montclair (N.J.) High School Softball Note of the Week: When we last left your heroines, they had won their first New Jersey state tournament game in five years, 7-0 over Linden, and were prepping for a North Jersey sectional semifinal game against the Morris County champs, Morris Knolls, ranked 18th in the state by the (Newark) Star-Ledger, the local softball bible. The game was last Tuesday, at Morris Knolls, on an afternoon that threatened rain throughout and even spit a few drops. The Knolls' hurler was righty Erica Slavinsky , the best Morris County had to offer, while southpaw Mary Beth King toed the slab for the Mounties. Because our school had been down in softball for the last few seasons, each game on the tournament trail was the biggest ever for every player on the team. Our Mary Beth, a sophomore, was no different. But you'd never know it by looking at her. Mary was pretty serious in the pitching circle for the most part, though she smiled broadly a couple of times after mound meetings with her trusty catcher, Jess Sarfati. Tension? Never saw any. We nudged across a run in the second on first sacker Jess Giammella's bloop RBI single to right. The Golden Eagles tied it on an unearned run in the fifth. Then we settled in. Mary Beth got them 1-2-3 in the sixth, 1-2-3 in the seventh, and off we went to extra frames. Slavinsky got us 1-2-3 in the seventh and eighth. In their half of the eighth, an infield miscue and an infield single made it first and third with two out. Third hitter in the order up for them. One-one count. Humpback liner to right. It stayed up long enough for right fielder Heather Zaccone to snag it. Classic softball rally in the top of the ninth. Sarfati's third single of the day, courtesy runner for her because she's the catcher, followed by a passed ball, a perfect sacrifice by shortstop Kaitlin Giannetti and a hard single to center by third baseman Meg Mylan to plate the run. We're up 2-1. Bottom of the ninth. Every Golden Eagle at the fence, yelling and chanting for their 4-5-6 hitters to mount a rally of their own. Mary Beth peers in. Strike one. Strike two. Pop to first. Ball one. Grounder to third. Ball one. Strike one. Bouncer to first. Ballgame. The next moment was captured by the Montclair Times two days later -- Mary Beth leaping into the arms of her catcher, ponytail flying, gleeful. The amazing thing, at least in the eyes of her nerdy scorekeeper father, was this: In nine innings, she'd thrown only 84 pitches, and of those, just 18 were balls. She went to a three-ball count once and walked no one. Nine innings, three hits, one unearned run. No time for laurel-resting. Our first trip to the sectional finals in six years came Thursday. "The sectional finals," I said to the senior second baseman's father, Larry Shapiro. "We're all dreaming, aren't we?" We were set to play Livingston, who had also gotten here by way of an upset, 3-0 over Belleville, but no matter which team we played the story would be our ascent from the depths. We'd won nine, six and nine games, respectively, over the previous three years. Now, thanks to the regimen established by new coach Tricia Sanchelli and thanks to some reborn players, we were 19-11. Livingston was 17-10. We journeyed 45 minutes away, to Morris Hills High in Rockaway, for the neutral-site game, and we were ready for a tight, tense game. Wrong. In the bottom of the second, two on and two out, our left fielder, Courtney Epps, hit one of the longest balls I've ever seen hit in the high school game. It went maybe 50 feet on the fly past where the left fielder played, and by the time she picked it up in another county, Courtney was rounding third. We led 3-0. And when Mary Beth retired the next six Lancers in a row, I started thinking to myself: "My God. Nine outs to go, and we're sectional champs." We added two in the fourth and two in the sixth, and in the top of the seventh, Mary Beth got three groundouts to end her second straight three-hit, complete-game win. It's almost too much to fathom: In three state tournament games, Mary Beth has pitched 21 and two-thirds innings, allowed eight hits and two walks, and given up one unearned run. Remember that NFL Films episode when Bill Parcells, exhorting his team in a big game, says, "This is why you lifted all them weights!" I was left to think, while watching the team swarm in celebration, that this is the fruit of six years of Tuesday night pitching lessons. This is what happens when you gut out a broken elbow and rotator cuff tendonitis. This is what happens when you walk nine in an inning-and-a-third during your last appearance in the summer of seventh grade, then walk off a dusty field in Virginia with tears swelling in your eyes and wonder why you're doing something you're so hopeless at -- but you don't give up. Enough of the violins. Now we're in the Group IV (large school) New Jersey Final Four, the only unranked Star-Ledger team left of the quartet, set to play formidable West Milford, ranked 13th in the state, Tuesday at Ramsey High. The winner plays for the state championship in Toms River Saturday. If you're in the area, stop by. b. Coffeenerdness: For these days when I'm nervous enough -- all pitchers' fathers are on game days -- I've taken to the decaf grande hazelnut latte. And I must say no one could ever tell the difference. c. A good Six Feet Under season finale Sunday night. Good emotion by Nate. Good getting-lost by Brenda the Weirdo. Good anger from David and Keith. The show set the table well for next season, with the operating-room doors closing behind Nate, in for his dangerous brain surgery with his irresponsible surgeon, and the screen fading to white. Now, let's not be Soprano-esque and skip a decade between seasons, Six-Footers. d. Go see Insomnia. Not the best murder-mystery/thriller ever, but very, very good, with great work by Al Pacino and Robin Williams. Great job, too, by Hillary Swank as the neophyte detective. Williams can really act, which we sometimes forget with the silly roles he takes on. I'm no Ebert, but I'd say this is the best work for Williams since Good Morning Vietnam. 9. I think the Nets will win two games, at least, against the Lakers. Jason Kidd is a transcendent player, and Keith Van Horn, finally, is clutch. 10. I think there's golf course in suburban St. Louis that ought to be pretty nervous right now. I'm coming in for a celebrity golf tournament Friday, and I'm bringing my 68 handicap with me. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the
magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Monday Morning
Quarterback appears in this space -- no kidding -- on Monday mornings.
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