Is Boston Tea Party Over? : Red Sox Faithful Are Used to Fast Starts--and Faster Falls

Darn those Red Sox, they’re at it again. They just can’t let bygones be bygones, can they? They just can’t resist unearthing the old carrot and dangling it out there again, right in front of New England’s oft-tweaked nose.

Have they no heart, no empathy for their weary legion of fans, who have reluctantly come to live by the famous words, “One if by land, two if by sea and third place by the end of September”?

The Red Sox had to go out and kick tail for half a season. Again. They had to go out and build a big lead in the American League East.

Their current slump may have some long-time Red Sox watchers saying, “See! See!” but they still have a fearsome stopper in Roger Clemens and a three-game advantage over the dreaded Yankees going into the last weekend of July.

And they’re still talking World Series championship. They’re trying to pass off 1986 as something completely different. A new breed of Sox. A team for atonement.

Pardon those doubting Thomases in the Fenway Park bleachers who are not quite ready to lapse into Soxmania. Boston is, after all, a town that knows its history.

How the Red Sox have tripped down memory lane:

--1967: The Sox end a 20-year drought and wind up in the World Series, where they lose a seventh game to the St. Louis Cardinals . . . just as they did back in ’46.

--1972: The baseball strike lops seven games off Boston’s schedule and six off Detroit’s. Boston finishes with an 85-70 record, Detroit with an 86-70 mark. Boston misses the playoffs by half a game.

--1974: The Red Sox lead the East and the Baltimore Orioles by seven games on Aug. 23. On Oct. 1, they trail Baltimore by seven games.

--1975: Another Red Sox World Series; another Red Sox loss in seven games.

--1978: The all-time crusher. Leading the Yankees by 14 games on July 19, Boston loses every inch of that advantage as New York forces a one-game playoff at the end of the regular season. Bucky Dent makes like Bobby Thomson, and the Red Sox plunge into an eight-year funk.

That the Sox are finally back on top is no consolation for those Edgar Allen Poe finishes of the past. Not yet. If Missouri reigns as the Show Me State, Boston at least holds the city rights. The paying customer wants to see something tangible before risking another October heartache.

“Red Sox fans are the most loyal fans around,” says Larry Whiteside of the Boston Globe, who has covered the Red Sox for 13 years. “But they’re very cynical. People here are conditioned to something always happening to the Red Sox.”

As in something bad. And despite all the victories of 1986, Boston’s track record continues to hang over the heads of the Red Sox like an asterisk.

“So far, so good, but let’s not get excited, OK?” is the prevailing feeling.

The fall of ‘78, in particular, hangs heavy.

“I’m reminded of it almost daily,” Manager John McNamara said.

Dwight Evans and Bob Stanley, both members of that ’78 team, hear the same kind of talk. People ask them about the ghosts of yesteryear.

“I don’t talk to ghosts,” Evans said. “We have some fair-weather fans and fair-weather sportswriters, but I really don’t care what they have to say. Why not have some fun?”

Said Stanley: “The fans are tough here. They like winners in all sports and they do not like to lose. They’ve had the Celtics and the Patriots this year, but Boston, believe it or not, is a baseball town. If we win it, the reaction will be so much different.”

If, of course, is the operative word here. If, if, if.

What is there to suggest that the ’86 Sox are any different from their foundering fathers? What, if anything, sets this ballclub apart, could enable this group to go where no Red Sox team has gone since 1918?

The Red Sox say they can think of a few things. So, let them count the ways:

PITCHING

The Red Sox tried it one way, the long way, for a long time. They staked their name, and their occasional pennant bids, on the home run. From Foxx to Williams to Yaz to Tony C. to Petrocelli to Evans and Rice, Boston had always been known as a boomtown.

Fenway Park, of course, had something to do with it. The Red Sox built team after team with the idea of attacking the Green Monster.

Trouble was, they also had to play 81 games a year outside of Fenway.

After a fourth-place finish in 1984, the Red Sox hired a new manager, McNamara, whose pitching-first philosophy paid off in a division title for the Cincinnati Reds in 1979 and a second-place finish for a .249-hitting California Angel team in 1984. McNamara didn’t need much time to trouble-shoot.

“I’m pitching oriented,” McNamara said. “I have been all my life. When I came to Boston, more emphasis was placed on pitching.

“Most of all, our bullpen needed shoring up. Last year, out of 59 save chances, our bullpen saved only 29. Most contending ballclubs are in the 40s.”

So during the winter of ‘85, McNamara and General Manager Lou Gorman drew up a shopping list. Relief pitching headed it.

Gorman traded shortstop Jackie Gutierrez to Baltimore for right-handed reliever Sammy Stewart and signed New York Met castoff Joe Sambito, a left-hander, as a free agent.

Stewart allowed a two-run homer to Kirk Gibson on opening day and then did not yield another until May 31, when he injured a muscle in the right forearm. Sambito has become McNamara’s left-handed specialist, compiling nine saves.

“Sambito has been a tremendous shot in the arm,” Gorman said. “Our scouts did a tremendous scouting job on him, looking him over in winter ball after the Mets let him go.

“And Stewart has given us something we didn’t have last year. When he’s healthy, he’s a big addition, another right-hander to go with Stanley (14 saves). Our bullpen improvement has been a great factor in our overall improvement.”

But it was a subtle improvement. There is another reason why, until just recently, the Red Sox had gone from 8-7 losses to 2-1 victories.

His name is Roger Clemens.

Clemens had a 3.29 earned-run average in 1985 but almost nobody knew it because a bum shoulder sidelined him after his seventh victory. He had two stints on the disabled list and eventually had shoulder surgery Aug. 30.

So far, surgery has been a rousing success. In 1986, Clemens sprang out of the pack as dramatically--and surprisingly--as the Red Sox. He struck out 20 Seattle Mariners April 29, which caused a few ears to perk up. On May 25, he had a no-hitter through 7 innings against the Texas Rangers. By the end of June, he was 14-0.

Clemens has a 16-2 record going into tonight’s start against the Angels at Anaheim Stadium and a virtual lock on the American League Cy Young Award. He has out-Goodened the New York Mets’ Dwight Gooden in almost every department and has given Boston the kind of stopper it has lacked since at least Luis Tiant.

“In ‘78, the Yankees had the big stopper in (Ron) Guidry,” Stanley said. “This year, the stopper is Clemens. That’s been the difference.”

But it hasn’t been Clemens alone, or at least that was the case until a week or so ago. Dennis (Oil Can) Boyd won 11 games for the Red Sox before his recent departure, and his absence obviously is not doing the team any good. Unfortunately, the rest of the staff has also slipped recently. Bruce Hurst was 5-2 with a 2.79 ERA before suffering a groin pull and has not won since, and Al Nipper, trying to regain his form after a May spiking incident, has slipped to a 4-7 mark.

Even Tom Seaver, the fifth starter the Red Sox worked so hard at getting, has been no better than a .500 pitcher since he was obtained at the end of June.

Seaver pitched for McNamara when both were in Cincinnati, and the manager sought a reunion from the minute he penciled in his first Red Sox lineup. “We pursued Seaver for a long time,” McNamara said. “I knew what his experience could mean to a young staff like ours.”

At the moment, though, McNamara is more than a little concerned about getting that young staff back together again.

CHEMISTRY

Evans has this theory about the 1978 Red Sox:

“We had a great abundance of talent, the best in the game. It was an All-Star team--a healthy Rick Burleson, Butch Hobson batting ninth and hitting 30 homers, Fisk, George Scott, Yastrzemski, Rice, Lynn, myself and Jerry Remy. We won games 10-8, 9-7. We had no ‘brainers.’ All you had to do was lay the cards out.

“But that team was not a team. They were not together. From 1974 to 1980, I thought we’d be in about five playoffs and win two or three world championships. But we were never together. We had 25 guys, pulling 23 different ways.”

In the years that followed, the Red Sox locker room would never be mistaken for a bastion for brotherly love. It wasn’t a fun place. Writers entered at their own risk.

But then Boston traded for Stewart and designated hitter Don Baylor. Stewart had been to the World Series with Baltimore, and Baylor had appeared in four playoffs. They knew how to win.

They also knew how to have a good time.

Baylor had been the captain of the Angels’ only two division champions and was regarded as the undisputed clubhouse leader in New York. Trying to maintain some sense of sanity in the Yankee nuthouse, Baylor instituted a “kangaroo court” in which players were fined for such transgressions as wearing the wrong color wristbands and missing bunt signs.

As soon as Baylor arrived in Boston, Evans asked him to start another kangaroo court.

“Some guys had problems with it at first, but I thought it was a great thing,” Evans said. “It’s a nice way of taking care of mental mistakes, like not moving a runner over or missing a cutoff man. You know you screwed up, and it makes you think.

“I can’t say the kangaroo court is why we’re in first place, but it’s a positive step in what we’re trying to do.”

Said Stanley: “Don Baylor is the enforcer. We call him that and it’s easy to see why. He’s always keeping things going, he’s helped Jim Rice to become more of a team leader. Don never lets anybody get too down.”

Stewart, too, has added some personality at Fenway. “He’s the closest thing we’ve had to Luis Tiant in years,” said Evans, referring to the outrageous cigar-chewing El Tiante of the 1975 pennant winners.

Because of his forearm injury, Stewart hasn’t pitched much, but he still has the Red Sox smiling. He brought a radio out to the bullpen and introduced a little wagering circle--relief pitchers trying to call home runs. Stewart also gave the Red Sox bullpen its nickname, the savings and loan. “we get some saves and we loan out some occasional starts,” he explained.

KARMA

The Red Sox figure this is their year because:

--They lost shortstop Glenn Hoffman because of dizzy spells caused by a heart condition, which prompted the Red Sox to force-feed rookie Rey Quinones into the lineup. The Red Sox view this as a find, sort of a poor-man’s version of the Mariano Duncan story. Quinones has been erratic in the field but displays more range than Hoffman and, after outgrowing an early kid-in-the-candy-store relationship with the Green Monster wall in left field, has settled down to become a .260ish spray hitter.

--They win weird games.

There was the fog game in Cleveland, which the Red Sox won, 2-0, after play was suspended in the sixth inning. It was right out of John Carpenter--the fog eerily rolling in, first engulfing the scoreboard, then the outfield fence, then second base.

The Indians, being behind on the scoreboard, or at least the last time they could see it, wanted to keep playing, so they sent coach Bobby Bonds up to the plate to hit fungoes and show that visibility wasn’t all that bad. But those balls, too, disappeared into the mist.

“They got what they deserved,” commented Oil Can Boyd in his now legendary postgame summation. “That’s what happens when you build a stadium on an ocean.”

Then there was the base-running clinic in which Boston’s Steve Lyons and Marty Barrett both wound up on second base, waiting to see if Texas’ George Wright had caught a ball hit by Barrett.

Wright hadn’t, but he scooped up the ball and fired to second, hoping to get one of the runners. He got neither as the ball sailed into the third-base dugout, enabling Lyons and Barrett to score the tying and winning runs.

And then there was midnight madness, July 10, at Fenway Park. The Red Sox trailed the Angels, 7-4, in the bottom of the 12th before Bobby Grich dropped a line drive, Rice hit a two-run homer, Rick Burleson dropped a pop fly, Rich Gedman singled in the tying run and Angel rookie Todd Fischer balked home the winning run.

“This club has definitely won the type of games that they lost in other years,” Baylor said. “The pendulum has swung.”

Or has it?

The Red Sox remain confronted by several potential oil slicks. Clemens has never made it through a major league season in full health. Pennants are won by teams strongest up the middle, yet Boston starts an unsteady rookie at shortstop and platoons two other first-year players, Kevin Romine and LaSchelle Tarver, in center. Tony Armas is still bothered by thigh problems. And who knows when Boyd will be back?

The task at hand is stopping the current slide. History is not on the Red Sox’s side.

Stanley does know one thing for certain, though: If the Red Sox do that and win the division title, the Boston Tea Party will have been nothing compared to what’s in store for the Red Sox should they alter history in October.

“Oh my God,” Stanley said, trying to picture the moment. “We might have to sleep over at Fenway if we clinch it at home. Quincy Square will be hopping for days.”

DOWN MEMORY LANE

1967: The Red Sox finally get in the World Series, only to lose in seven games.

1972: In a strike-shortened season, Boston goes 85-70. Detroit goes 86-70.

1974: On Aug. 23, the Red Sox lead by 7 games. On Oct. 1, they trail Baltimore by 7 games.

1978: Boston loses a 14-game lead to the New York Yankees, then loses a one-game playoff.