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Five Years Ago Tonight... by Jared Carrabis
An excerpt from One Fan's Story: If This Hat Could Talk

The following is an excerpt from Jared Carrabis' debut book, One Fan's Story: If This Hat Could Talk

I felt like I was living in a dream, it all happened so fast. I didn’t have any time to soak in the significance of each game one by one. One second I was staring up at my ceiling trying to figure out where this team went wrong as we stared an 0-3 deficit in the face, the next I’m celebrating an American League pennant. Then it felt like less than a day later that the Red Sox had a 3-0 series lead against the Cardinals in the World Series. It was just all too much to take in at once. I had just seen a slugfest of a World Series opener, the bloody sock part II and my dream of seeing Pedro pitch in the World Series and dominate. Putting things into perspective, I had to come to terms with the reality that my team was one win away from winning a World Series title. Even the slightest thought of such a thing could not process in my mind. Game 4 of the World Series was scheduled to be played the very next night. Boston had now won seven straight postseason games, tying a Major League record. The anticipation for this next game was a feeling that to this day is beyond indescribable. Eighty-six years worth of frustration, suffering and agony was just one game away from being erased and I could not wait to get a taste of what it was going to feel like to have the heaviest burden known to a Boston sports fan lifted from my team.

October 27, 2004. It was Game 4 of the World Series with a lunar eclipse poised high in the sky. On the mound for St. Louis was Jason Marquis, a sinkerball pitcher similar to his pitching opponent for the night, Derek Lowe. The Red Sox leadoff hitter, Johnny Damon, who had a .250 batting average for the World Series and just one RBI, dug in to start the game. Ahead in the count with two balls and a strike, Damon got a 92 MPH fastball over the heart of the plate and hammered it into the St. Louis bullpen to put the Red Sox on top 1-0, just one batter into the game. The solo blast doubled Damon’s RBI total for the World Series, but most importantly, it drew first blood against St. Louis in what could be the clinching game. The Red Sox scored the first run in nine of their last thirteen postseason games, winning every single one of them. D-Lowe took the hill for Boston and gave up a leadoff base hit to Tony Womack. It gave me the gut feeling that, if we were going to win this thing tonight, the Cardinals certainly weren’t lying down for us, even after being down 0-3. After all, it has been done before…

The leadoff single proved to be nothing more than some big game jitters that Lowe shook off immediately by retiring the next thirteen consecutive Cardinal hitters. The Red Sox pitching staff did a masterful job of mowing down the lethal bats in the St. Louis lineup. Going into Game 4, Boston starters held the Cardinals four, five and six hitters to just one hit in 31 at bats. That’s a .032 average and it’s even more impressive when you consider that the one hit was a bunt single. The way that Lowe was pitching, it looked like one run would be enough, but that didn’t stop the Red Sox from giving D-Lowe a little more cushion to work with in the top of the third.

With one out, Manny Ramirez ripped an inside fastball on the ground into left field to extend his astounding postseason hitting streak to seventeen games. Manny’s partner in crime, David Ortiz, came to the plate next. Ahead in the count 1-0, Big Papi got a 91 MPH fastball on the inner half of the plate about knee high and tattooed the ball into the right field corner as Manny hauled his way to third base to set up a second and third situation for Jason Varitek. The Boston backstop grounded sharply to Albert Pujols at first as the first baseman quickly snapped a throw back towards home plate to gun down Ramirez, who tried to sneak in the back door with the second Boston run; two outs. With runners at the corners, Bill Mueller worked a four-pitch walk to load the bases for Trot Nixon.

Jason Marquis continued to struggle heavily with his command as he quickly fell behind Nixon three balls, no strikes. With nowhere to put the Boston right fielder, Marquis had to deliver a strike or a run would score. Looking fastball all the way, manager Terry Francona gave the green light to Nixon, being the notorious fastball hitter he was. The pitch was a fastball (big surprise) away that Nixon connected the meat of the bat with and drove out to deep right-center before it banged off the wall, missing a grand slam by less than five feet. When the bat met the ball, I immediately sprang up from my couch, because on contact it looked like it was a no doubter of a home run. Just to give you an idea of how close it was to being a grand slam, if you could put a horizontal line directly in the middle of the outfield wall, the baseball would have hit above that dividing center line.

Lowe continued to pick apart the St. Louis hitters into the seventh inning where he, just as Pedro had done before him, held the team that led the National League in runs scored to just three hits and zero runs on the night. Lowe was also on the long list of Red Sox free agents to be and it was very possible that I was watching Derek Lowe face his last batter as a member of the Red Sox. As he was pitching in the seventh inning, I didn’t really have time to recap his career with Boston in my head, as I had done with Pedro. I was more focused on getting the next seven outs and winning a World Series title. Just as Pedro had done the night before, Lowe struck out the last batter that he faced to conclude a seven-inning, three-hit, four-strikeout, shutout; an almost mirror image to the performance turned in by Pedro Martinez in Game 3. In fact, between Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe, the Games 2-4 Sox starters had held the St. Louis Cardinals to a whopping zero earned runs in a combined 20 innings. On the other hand, no Cardinal pitcher had lasted longer than six innings against the relentless Boston offense.

As the outs slowly began to pile up, inching closer and closer to the bottom of the ninth, I began to picture that beautiful World Series trophy in my head. Six more outs…five more outs…four more outs and then it was time for the closer, Keith Foulke, to start getting loose for the bottom of the ninth. During the commercial break leading up to the bottom of the ninth, I don’t know how I managed to refrain from passing out from all the heavy breathing I was doing. Just three outs away; my emotions were raging with anticipation, excitement and of course nervousness, because this game was by no means in the bag. This was a three-run game with Pujols, Rolen and Edmonds guaranteed to get an at bat. It was certainly possible that the tying run could get to the plate in this inning, but this was no time to think that far ahead. One pitch at a time, one at bat at a time, one out at a time. All Foulke had to do was protect a three-run lead. It shouldn’t be too hard of a task, considering the Red Sox and Cardinals were three outs away from completing four World Series games. Those were four World Series games in which the St. Louis Cardinals had never had a lead.

Albert Pujols led off the inning by putting a nice swing on a two-strike fastball for a base hit back up the middle. I couldn’t distinguish the two feelings in my stomach at that point. Was I nervous because the lead runner was on first? Or was I anxious to get this ninth inning over with before the Cardinals could score three runs? I’ll go with option number two. Foulke recovered nicely by getting Rolen to fly out to Gabe Kapler standing in right field; two outs away. The man who hit a walk-off home run to force a Game 7 in the National League Championship Series came to the plate looking to ignite a comeback against the Red Sox. Foulke erased that idea and anything like it from the mind of Edmonds by retiring him on three straight pitches while Edmonds waved at strike three. “Two down. The Red Sox are one out away!” FOX announcer, Joe Buck exclaimed. The words sucked the air right out of my lungs. This is it…it’s really happening. I didn’t know how to brace myself for the amount of joy and excitement that was about to course through my body. My mother, my father and I all got up from the couch and stood just inches away from the TV for what we hoped would be the final out of the 2004 World Series. I turned up the TV to a blare as the surround sound turned my downstairs into a virtual Busch Stadium. I could hear the fans chanting, “Let’s go Red Sox! Let’s go Red Sox!” from all corners of the room, just as if I were really there.

I watched as members of the Red Sox were getting ready to storm the field from the top step of the dugout. All the sights and sounds were so surreal. Edgar Renteria came to the plate representing the only thing standing between the Boston Red Sox and a World Series title. You didn’t know how it was going to end, it could have been on the first pitch. You literally had to brace yourself and take deep breaths as the ball left Foulke’s hand and cruised towards home plate. The first pitch was a ball that missed inside. Tek threw the ball back to Foulke as I geared myself up for the second pitch…

Foulke got his sign, came to the set position, paused, then lifted his leg and fired towards home plate, and the rest…is history. The sound of the bat hitting the ball was quickly followed by the voice of Joe Buck as his famous call filled my entire house. "Back to Foulke!" he yelled as Renteria hit a sharp one-hopper right into the mitt of Keith Foulke. “Red Sox fans have longed to hear it!” Buck continued as Foulke turned and took six steps towards first base before under-handing the ball to Doug Mientkiewicz. My eyes widened to the size of the ball itself as the baseball traveled in the air from Foulke’s hand to Mientkiewicz’s glove. The next sound to enter my ears was pure ecstasy, "The Boston Red Sox are World Champions!!" I threw my arms in the air and fell to my knees with tears coming from my eyes. I looked up and watched something that I thought I would never see. The Red Sox were celebrating a World Series championship. The emotional roller coaster of not just the month of October 2004, but of my entire life and the lives of each and every living and breathing Red Sox fan had reached the point of utter bliss. Words cannot describe the extreme sense of happiness that I felt hugging my mom and dad with tears in our eyes as we watched that team celebrate as champions. That’s right, I said it and I’ll say it again. At 11:40 PM on October 27, 2004 the Boston Red Sox celebrated as champions of the baseball world. To this day I can’t watch that final out being made without tears building behind my eyes. I can’t watch that team celebrate without waves of chills descending down my spine. It was truly a moment and a feeling that I know I will never forget for as long as I live.

The World Series MVP was really any fan’s guess at this point. Why? Because it took every single guy on that 25-man roster to win this World Series championship. No man in the Red Sox clubhouse carried a load that was heavier than the guy sitting next to him and that was what made this team so special. They were a team. In the end, the World Series MVP trophy was presented to Manny Ramirez, who ended the World Series on a 17-game hit streak to account for a .412 average with a home run and 4 RBI. And to think, almost a year before, Manny was the centerpiece of a trade that would have brought the most hated man in Boston to the Red Sox, but instead, Alex Rodriguez ended up in pinstripes and Ramirez remained in a Red Sox uniform. There he stood, the most valuable player of the 2004 World Series, but more importantly, he was a champion.

The images being shown on TV just weren’t registering in my head; it was all too surreal. The realization of what had just happened all came full circle in my brain when Red Sox Nation caught their first glimpse of the 2004 World Series trophy. The commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, presented the Commissioner’s Trophy to the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, Mr. John Henry, the Chairman of the Boston Red Sox, Mr. Tom Werner and the President and CEO of the Boston Red Sox, Mr. Larry Lucchino. The three owners of the team that ended an 86-year World Series drought were the first with Red Sox blood in their veins to place their hands on the trophy that the city of Boston had dreamed about for generations. I watched all the post game interviews and celebrations and I tried my hardest not to blink. I tried to soak it all in the best I could knowing that the Red Sox were only going to end an 86-year “curse” once in my lifetime.

Speaking of the Red Sox winning a World Series in my lifetime; there were some, actually many, who were not as fortunate to have seen what I saw that night. That championship meant so many things to so many people. It transcended baseball being "just a game." What that championship did for the city of Boston and the millions of fans who for almost a century gathered in flocks to Fenway Park, huddled in front of their TV sets to watch a game, or sat next to their radios to follow this team went above and beyond anyone’s wildest dreams of what it would actually feel like when they finally won it all. The 2004 World Series championship was dedicated to every Red Sox player to ever wear that jersey with a sense of pride and it was to every Red Sox fan in the world; but most importantly it was for the fans who had waited their entire lives for this night, but sadly did not live to see the day. The wait was finally over and a Nation rejoiced.

-Jared Carrabis

To order Jared's debut book, One Fan's Story: If This Hat Could Talk, click HERE!