 
字體：小 中 大 |
|
|
||||||||
| 2005/12/14 00:46:06瀏覽765｜回應0｜推薦1 | ||||||||
I just moved another article from my PC Home site. It was an article I spent some time writing after the 2004 MLB World Series..
And, how could this happen, and why do people still have hard time to believe it actually happened? Considering the fact they got beat by Yankees in 2003, by Aaron Boone’s 11th inning walk-off homer, in the deciding Game 7, especially it was a game Boston carried a 5-2 lead into the 8th inning. Few teams could recover from such a devastating loss right back next year. After sweeping Angles in the first round, they quickly fell behind 0-3, considering no baseball even came back from such a deep hole in a 7 games series. Yankees seemed to break Boston’s hearts the day they broke many offensive record in the game 3. Boston was so flat in game four, and was pushed to only three outs away from elimination. Suddenly, everyone came to the batter’s box became Rocky, the one who never backed down. They started to played fundamental baseball, approach one pitch at a time, one at-bat at a time, one base at a time, and finally took the ever-longest ALCS game with Ortiz’s walk-off homer. Then the Ortiz RBI single in 14 inning sent series back to New York for Game 6, which Schilling showed up and won. His domoinating pitches with blood on his socks, and the homers from the taunted Bellhorn, tied the series at 3-3. Finally the curse was half over, while Bosox crushed Yankees’ pitcher, especially with the self styled idiot Johnny Damon hitting two homers on the only two pitches he saw, after been tagged out at home in the 1st inning. The rest is history. Let’s take one step back to see who make it happened. In 2002, John Henry bought Boston Redsox. It was not a big surprise since rich people bought professional sports team, wait until you hear about Larry Ellison sitting in the owner’s luxuary box in 49ers, or SJ Shark, or even Warriors. All the good thing started when he hired Theo Epstein** from San Diego Padre in the end of 2002 season. At 28, theYale graduate became the youngest General Manager in the major league history. He brought home the World Series Trophy to the team he grew up with. This could only happen in American. Spending only a few years in Major League, couple years of intern, and one year in PR, one year as director of baseball operation in San Diego, Epstein was the alternative of Billy Beane. How could people trun from the A’s general manager, and the star of the famous book “Money Ball”, to an 28 years old? People was wondering about how this suddenly turned prodigy would get the position to decide the future of Redsox’s stars, like Pedro Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra. Most people look at the game, and hope their team just go ahead to accumulate star players. Redsox did it, by getting Curt Schilling at the end of 2003 season. They got their new coach in Terry Francona from A’s. They addressed their closer in committee problem by signing A’s closer, Keith Folke, who actually signed my gloves when he was visiting A’s with Chicago White Sox . Redsox went ahead cruising into division leader, but suddenly went into speed bump. They fell from the division leader to 10 ½ game behind Yankees in no time. People started to write them off. I remember one morning when I picked up my newspaper, it said “Nomar gone, Cabrera, Mientkiewicz, Roberts to Sox”. I started to admire this Epstein kid. He solved the problem not by adding another star, but by letting one of their franchize player go. Cabrera was one of the most unappreciated gold glovers. His smart hitting actually fit into the Redsox line up. The speedy Dave Roberts eventually came up with couple crucial steals in the Yankees series. In this, Redsox addressed the team chemistry, saved some money, and actually solve their weakness in defense.“ When we looked at our club heading into the final months of the season, defense was the area we felt we most needed to address as we giht not only to reach the postseason but also to win in Octorber.” Epstein said “ Today we have acquired two outstanding defenders and all-around players. We have dramatically altered the composition of our club, turning this into a stronger defensive club”. It was proved to be right. Without the defense, Redsox had no chance to win back to back extra inning games with Yankee. Redsox won’t be able to stablize the game when they commited four error apiece in the first two World Series games. Epstein is a guy who immersed himself into the depth chart of each team when he was with Padres. After he got to Boston, the whole mangement team stressed the decipline of Sabermetrics*** This is what they believe and this is how they build the team with. I couldn’t say enough about this Redsox team, but this is the team built to win. ** To get off from baseball a little bit. For those of you feel the name Epstein sounds familiar, you are probably a movie fan. Theo’s grandfather and great-uncle won Academy Awards for the screenplay of Casablanca. ***An analysis of basebal through objective evidence, like OPS(on-base plus slugging), DIPS(defense independent pitching statistics), Win shares, etc. You could refer to "The Bill James Baseball Abstract in 1977." |
||||||||
| ( 興趣嗜好｜運動 ) | ||||||||
