Hardball Hyperbole: Chapter 29

In today’s edition, the Red Sox vaunted offense was muted by surprisingly effective Jon Lieber and the Yankees opened a two games to none lead.

No one could have blamed the Red Sox for oozing confidence from every pore in their collective bodies as they strutted into Yankee Stadium for the first two games of the AL Championship Series.

They may have finished second in the AL East standings behind the Yankees for the seventh consecutive season, but deep in their core the self-proclaimed “idiots” believed they were the better team. Hell, Las Vegas agreed and made Boston the favorite before the proceedings began.

Imagine that. The franchise that hadn’t won a World Series since 1918 was favored to beat the Yankees who had won 26. And beyond that ridiculous disparity, there was the history between these two teams that was simply unavoidable. When it came to Red Sox vs. Yankees, it was always the Yankees flexing their bigger muscles and looking down at the stepchild Red Sox, the most recent example being the previous October when Boston was three runs ahead and five outs away from slaying its forever nemesis, yet still found a way to blow Game 7.

But the oddsmakers don’t care about what has happened in the past, they focus on the present and in 2004, you could certainly make the case that the Red Sox were the better team, thanks mainly to an absolutely destructive machine of an offense. They led MLB in runs (949), doubles (373), average (.282), on-base (.360), slugging (.472), OPS (.832) and total bases (2,702), and they were second in hits with 1,613 just one behind the Orioles, they were third in walks (659), and fifth in home runs with 222.

This was one of the most frightening offensive teams in history, and given the season-long inconsistency of the Yankees’ starting rotation which compiled a cumulative ERA of 4.82 that ranked only 18th in MLB, yeah, it was easy to understand what the wise guys in Vegas were thinking.

Couple that with the fact the Red Sox were starting the ALCS with two of the greatest pitchers of the generation, Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez, and you’re damn right they were puffing out their chests, fully believing this was finally their time.

And then in the span of two nights, both Schilling and Martinez faltered, the dynamite-fueled bats never detonated with the exception of the seventh inning of Game 1, and the Red Sox were down two games to none, wondering how the hell they had dug themselves into this unenviable predicament.

“I’m very disappointed,” said Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein following the Yankees’ 3-1 victory. “We haven’t played well yet, but the series is far from over. We just have to get back to the things we do well. Going home to Fenway and getting a boost from the crowd is much needed right now.”

“You don’t ever really want to tip your cap to somebody because you want to win, but they have pitched very effectively,” said Red Sox manager Terry Francona. “And when they have made mistakes we have not made them pay for it. We haven’t had a whole lot of opportunities to do that. We haven’t had a lot of baserunners.”

Being shut down by Mike Mussina in Game 1 was perfectly understandable, even for an offense as powerful as Boston’s. He had endured some postseason struggles in the past since joining the Yankees, but this was a guy who would eventually be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. However, being shut down by Jon Lieber was an entirely different matter.

Vegas must have cleaned up on this matchup because who would have put down money on Lieber beating Martinez, another future Hall of Famer? Well, the scant few who did were counting their Benjamins because Lieber had the Red Sox off balance all night.

“Once he settled in, he was just locked in,” Joe Torre said. “The thing that makes this probably more impressive than it appears to be is the fact that he pitched against this same ballclub a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon and shut them down at that time, had a no-hitter going for six or seven innings, whatever it was. And to do that against a club of this caliber, you know, after they witnessed you a little bit and had a chance to hit against you, that makes it doubly impressive.”

Torre was referring to Sept. 18 when Lieber didn’t allow a hit until David Ortiz homered in the seventh which cut the Red Sox deficit that day to 13-1. That was part of a notable September when Lieber went 5-0 with a 3.12 ERA as the Yankees locked down the division crown.

And then a week earlier, Lieber made the first postseason start of his career in Game 2 against the Twins and as he did that night, Lieber stuck to his crafty game plan for seven innings and held the Red Sox to one run on just three hits and a walk.

“We had a lot of two- and three-pitch at-bats,” said Johnny Damon. “He was keeping the ball in the strike zone. Hey, he’s been around, he did his homework. But overall, we’ve got to get our game going. I’m 0-for-8 with five strikeouts. I’m better than that. They know that one way to beat our team is to stop me, and I just haven’t had good at-bats.”

Lieber made his big league debut with the Pirates in 1994 and stayed in Pittsburgh through 1998 when he was traded to the Cubs. There he enjoyed four solid years, pitching to a 4.04 ERA before he hurt his elbow in 2002 and underwent Tommy John surgery. Though he would miss the entire 2003 season, the Yankees signed him to a free agent contract, rolling the dice that he could return better than ever at some point in 2004.

That point wound up being May 1 when he pitched seven innings to beat the Royals. He would go on to make 27 starts and went 14-8 with a 4.33 ERA, helping to complete the rotation, first while Orlando Hernandez was out and then later when Jose Contreras was traded.

And one of the keys to this transaction was a phone call Brian Cashman received from Joe Girardi. The former Yankees catcher had moved on to the Cubs in 2000 and thus caught Lieber for three seasons in Chicago including Lieber’s 20-6 breakthrough in 2001. “I’ve seen him at his best. I know what he can be. I’m telling you that Jon Lieber is a Yankee,” Girardi told Cashman, who would later be his boss when he became the Yankees manager in 2008.

That was a weighty recommendation in Cashman’s eyes, and on this night, it certainly paid off.

Lieber admitted that one of the keys for him was that almost all of the focus was on Martinez, this being his first start in the Bronx since his infamous admission three weeks earlier that the Yankees were his daddy.

“There’s no doubt about it. It was perfect,” Lieber said. “But I knew coming into this game what Pedro has done in the past in situations like this. So there was no room for error, and I think it showed tonight. It was definitely a pitchers’ duel from inning to inning and just try to put up as many zeros as possible.”

Lieber needed only nine pitches to go 1-2-3 in the first, and then the circus began. It had actually started when Martinez made his way from the bullpen to the dugout, the sellout crowd serenading him all the way with a voluble “Who’s your daddy?” chant. And when he went out to the mound, it was back in all its leather-lunged glory.

“It actually made me feel really, really good,” Martinez said. “I actually realized that I felt like somebody important, because I caught the attention of 60,000, plus you guys, plus the whole world, watching a guy that is, you reverse the time back 15 years ago, I was sitting under a mango tree without 50 cents to pay for a bus. And today, I was the center of attention of the whole city of New York. I thank God for that, and you know what? I don’t regret one bit what they do out there. They make me feel important.”

Well, he sure didn’t seem to be enjoying the attention in the first inning. He walked Derek Jeter on four pitches, hit Alex Rodriguez with a pitch (he probably did enjoy that), and then gave up an RBI single to Gary Sheffield. He escaped without further damage, striking out Hideki Matsui and Bernie Williams and getting Jorge Posada on a grounder with men on first and second, and then he worked around two baserunners in the second inning before finding his groove.

The game sailed into the sixth inning still 1-0 as Lieber was masterful, and then came the fateful at bat for Martinez, of which there had been many over the past few years in losing starts against New York. With one out he walked Posada, and on a 1-2 pitch he left one over the plate and John Olderud lined it into the short porch for a 3-0 lead.

“In that situation I’ve got two strikes on me and against Pedro that’s a bad position to be in because he can do so many different things to get you out,” Olerud said. “So, you know, really I’m up there, I’m trying to protect the plate and just get the bat on the ball and got a fastball up and in and I just did a good job of getting to it.”

When first baseman Jason Giambi went down in late July and would go on to miss two months, the Yankees needed a first baseman and as luck would have it, that was right when the Mariners released the 34-year-old Olerud. The Yankees signed him on July 27 and in 49 games he hit .280 with four homers, 26 RBI, but this was clearly Olerud’s first true big moment in the Bronx.

“When Jason went down and we were looking around to get some help for Tony Clark, there were a couple of guys out there at the time,” Torre said, referring to Olerud and Fred McGriff. “I think the feeling in the organization was that Olerud had been more of a regular player at that time, and we just decided to pursue that. I told him that he would get every opportunity to be an everyday player and maybe sit occasionally, and that’s what we’ve done. He decided to come to us, which was huge, because to me, John Olerud is quality.”

Lieber put up another zero in the seventh, but then allowed a leadoff single in the eighth to Trot Nixon and that led to a walk to the dugout, a standing ovation ringing in his ears. Tom Gordon came in and created some angst as Jason Varitek greeted him with a double and Oswaldo Cabrera chased home Nixon with a groundout, but Gordon then retired Bill Mueller and Damon to end the threat and Mariano Rivera closed it out, though not without drama.

Manny Ramirez doubled with one out in the ninth, bringing Ortiz to the plate as the tying run, never a good thing. However, Rivera whiffed him on three pitches, then struck out Millar on five pitches to end it.

“We know we’re in a hole, but even idiots know how to dig themselves out of a hole,’’ said Damon.

That hole would get a whole lot deeper two nights later.

NEXT WEDNESDAY: The Yankees took what should have been an insurmountable 3-0 series lead with a stunning 19-8 beatdown at Fenway Park.

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