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October 21, 2007
BY BILL REYNOLDS
Journal Sports Writer
BOSTON – All those people who say home field advantage doesn’t matter?
All those people who say winning the division doesn’t matter, that all that matters is getting into the playoffs, using the evidence that the Marlins, Angels, and Red Sox were all wild card teams that have won the World Series titles in the past six years?
This is why the home field matters.
This is why the Red Sox have climbed back from the near-dead to even this series at three apiece. This is why the Red Sox will be a favorite Sunday night to return to the World Series for the second time in four years.
Why?
Because they have the home field and the home field matters, that’s why.
Last night was a great example.
The Red Sox in Fenway Park are an appreciably better team then they are on the road, Fenway like a Red Sox version of a some child’s personal sandbox. They hit better. They feed off the incredible energy that’s as much a part of Fenway Park as the Green Monster. They have a swagger they don’t have anywhere else. They own the night in ways they don’t do anywhere else.
Or as Curt Schilling said afterwards, ''I hope this pooh-poohs the notion around here that home field advantage doesn’t matter.''
No doubt.
Last night was an example of how important the home field can be, a night when it became more and more evident that the Indians had their chance Thursday night in Cleveland, up 3-1, their ace C.C. Sabathia on the mound, the same C.C. Sabathia who is a legitimate Cy Young candidate, given that the voting is done before the playoffs started. But Sabathia imploded, the Red Sox climbed out of their casket, and got the chance to come back to Fenway.
If the Indians do end up losing this series, it will not be this weekend that did them in as much as it was letting the Sox off the hook when they were down 3-1 in Jacobs Field with their ace with the ball.
For last night the game got away from as early as the first inning when the much-maligned J.D. Drew, the same J.D. Drew who has been a colossal bust all season long, got some much-needed redemption with a grand slam. That got the Sox off to a great start, a huge message to the Indians, who once again, for the second straight game, saw one of their aces fall apart.
This time it was Fausto Carmona, whose performance was remarkably similar to the one he had in the second game of the series, ineffective, unable to throw strikes when he had to, putting the Indians into the kind of hole they weren’t going to be able to climb out of.
Sabathia on Thursday night. Carmona last night.
The two Indian aces coming up empty back to back.
One of the big reasons this series is now tied, down to a final game.
The key reason the Indians will point to if they end up losing this series is the fact that in four of the six games already played they’ve gotten nothing out of their two aces.
Or what would you said if someone had told you that before this series started?
By the end of the third inning the game the suspense was as gone as a movie you’ve already seen. The score was 10-1, and the garbage time was beginning. Schilling had been a little shaky in the third, giving up two quick singles, but he settled down to get out of the inning, the game still 4-1, and by the time he came out an inning later the score was 10-1 and he didn’t have to be great, all he had to was manage the game.
Which he did, giving up only six hits in seven innings.
''He pitched the way we needed him to,'' Terry Francona said,
No doubt about that either.
But in the end last night really wasn’t so much about the Red Sox, Drew’s heroics not withstanding, but about the failure of the Indians to make the game competitive on a night in which the Sox were facing elimination. Giving up 10 runs in just three innings does that. Having one of your aces, a guy who won 19 games, self-destruct, does that, too.
How much does this had to do with the magnitude of the game, and how much did it depend on being in hostile Fenway Park?
Interesting question.
The Indians are a young team, and now they have let two chances to end this series go by.
''How much do you worry about the momentum that’s been built up the last two games and sort of stopping that and having them go into tomorrow with their heads clear?'' Indians manager Eric Wedge was asked.
''Well, you said it,’’ Wedge replied. ''It just has to stop and it has to stop tonight. They need to go to bed tonight with clear heads and think good thoughts and come here tomorrow expecting to win.''
Easier said than done, of course.
For the Indians will have to battle more than Dice-K Sunday night, and even more than the realization that they had the Sox down 3-1 and now this series is tied, and that curious thing in sports called momentum now all but sits in the Red Sox dugout. They are going to have to battle Fenway Park, too.
And that’s no small thing.
So for all those people out there who still think the home field doesn’t matter?
This is why it does.
Posted by Art Martone 
at 1:17 AM | Permalink
