Drama All Around

Give that team a cigar. Indeed, give them a lifetime supply. For Red Sox fans it almost doesn’t get any sweeter than this. Four more wins and the curse will be exorcised. Four more wins and Red Sox nation will have to find something else to obsess about. Four more wins and the nectar will flow.

To have come back from the dead and take the American League pennant in game seven in Yankee Stadium soothes a lot of long-standing wounds and some recent ones. The battle to sign Alex Rodriguez pales now in comparison to the signing of Curt Schilling. After all, it was Schilling, wounded and stitched, who saved the season with his brilliant outing in game six. It was Schilling who more than anyone refused to abandon hope when the Yankees held a commanding 3 – 0 lead in the ALCS. And it will be Schilling whom the Sox will depend on heavily once or twice more as they try to erase 86 years of frustration.

The other hero on the Red Sox roster and the series MVP was David Ortiz. Not only did he produce dramatic back-to-back game winning walk-off hits in extra innings in games four and five, he did so in less than twenty-four hours, surely a major league record. And his two run homer in the first inning of game seven gave the Sox a lead which they never relinquished.

Over in the National League the Astros and Cardinals will conclude their seven-game series tonight. While it may not have received as much attention as the American League series, the NLCS has been just as tense and riveting.

Yesterday the Astros broke out to a first inning lead only to see it disappear on the wings of another Albert Pujols home run in the bottom of the inning. The Cardinals seemed poised to slug their way into the World Series, but the Astros refused to succumb. Jeff Bagwell’s rbi single in the top of the ninth tied the game at four apiece and Houston reliever Brad Lidge, my candidate for series MVP, held the Cardinals hitless over three innings before Dan Miceli surrendered a two run walk-off home run to Jim Edmonds in the bottom of the twelfth.

Tonight’s finale will feature Roger Clemens against Jeff Suppan. The Astros may not have 86 years of frustration and ghosts to erase this evening, but they have never been to the series in their 43 year history and sentiment if not the odds will clearly be on their side.