Shaky Red Sox Deal With Ghosts

As organizations go, anyone can have an off century.

A few injuries, a bare draft, a bad hop, a nodding manager, an occasional Mookie, the generations fly by. It happens.

One morning you wake up and it’s not a dry spell, it’s a curse, and the locals are getting desperate and the players are feeling a town’s apprehension and it all starts to feed on itself and, like that, you’re down 0-2 to the New York Yankees and a World Series title feels another 80-some years away.

The best pitcher’s ankle chooses October to go, the second-best pitcher chooses October to remind everyone about the run or two he’ll need to win a stinkin’ game, the third-best pitcher whiffs the October rotation entirely and, geez, if “the curse” isn’t real, how come everybody seems to believe in it again?

As the small things became October things in two misspent days in New York, the Boston Red Sox cleared out of Yankee Stadium late Wednesday, Major League Baseball officials having to nudge postgame interviews along because they’ve allowed television to turn every fall game into its own miniseries and Boston had a flight to catch.

They reported to Fenway Park on Thursday afternoon to prepare for tonight’s Game 3. They had left here three days before, amid the rapture of a wild-card berth and a three-game sweep of the Angels in the opening playoff round. They return to the suspicion that this team might not be so special after all, outside of its ability to get everyone’s hopes up and grow hair doing it.

Everyone will know soon enough. The Red Sox can’t lose tonight and have the series end well, making this the organization’s biggest game since Game 7 of the last American League championship series, which they ... lost, to the ... Yankees. Considering they’ve shown an ability to hit Mike Mussina only after two times through their batting order, considering they had about four good swings against Jon Lieber, considering they’d have to win four consecutive games against the Yankees, two of them at Yankee Stadium, they can’t lose tonight against Kevin Brown.

It’s a lot to beat back. The idiots, as they call themselves, have their hands full. It’s not just a game and it’s not just a series and it’s not just a season. By now, they all know it.

Dave Roberts, the Dodger outfielder turned Red Sox utilityman, is new to the team and the city. When he arrived in July, he found the relationship between the fans and the organization different from that in most big league towns, but surmised that the expectations of the former and the looseness of the latter “balanced it out.”

So, perhaps, he said, the Red Sox could go about the weekend without towing 85 other seasons behind them. “If you had a tight group, the pressure would mount,” Roberts said. “We understand their anxiety and expectations. But, we don’t let them affect us. If we did, it would drive us nuts.”

They are a great team at Fenway Park. Seven days ago, on another cool Friday in the Back Bay, they gave the ball to Bronson Arroyo and finished the Angels. The Yankees, it turns out, are not the Angels. But, for two games, neither have the Red Sox been the Red Sox and that is their hope, that they lost twice at Yankee Stadium because they did not extend counts and reach base and score early, and thus did little to pressure the Yankees.

Twice, a gasping and otherwise ineffective Yankee bullpen was just game enough to roll the ball to Mariano Rivera. Twice, Joe Torre went to Rivera in the eighth, an out before he’d thought sensible. The leads were there because Boston has had one hit before the seventh inning in the series. Leadoff hitter Johnny Damon hasn’t been on base. Mark Bellhorn, hitting behind him, has been on once.

So, together, most-valuable-player candidates Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz have three at-bats with a runner in scoring position. In a moment of promise, Ramirez lashed a one-out double in the ninth inning Wednesday against Rivera, bringing up Ortiz, who’d been seven for 13 against Rivera in his career, and suddenly nobody at Yankee Stadium was thinking about Pedro’s daddy. But Ortiz struck out on three pitches and the equipment guy started packing the bat bags.

On Thursday afternoon, the Red Sox sought shelter from a light rain at Fenway, dashing from the field and into a tunnel in their dugout.

As damp reporters gathered in their clubhouse, a loud debate could be heard from the showers. One Red Sox player insisted Derek Jeter was the best shortstop in baseball. Another, impatient, maintained Jeter’s brilliance was not position-specific, that he was the best player in baseball.

In front of his locker, Derek Lowe, who will start Sunday for Curt Schilling if there are no rainouts between now and then, cautioned reporters.

“We’ve got to get to Game 5 first,” he said, shrugging, “crazy as that sounds.”

Maybe not so crazy.