Lowe Ends His Year on a High

Although the St. Louis Cardinals had little fight left in them, there remained the matter of foot to neck.

The Boston Red Sox, in their long, rather doleful history, have had some issues there. Indeed, it rather defined the organization for 86 years.

Then they started giving the baseball to Derek Lowe.

Huh.

He began the postseason, just more than three weeks ago, somewhere on the fringe of the Red Sox pitching staff, somewhere between Bronson Arroyo and Ramiro Mendoza.

He’d end it as the winning pitcher in all three Red Sox clinchers: Game 3 against the Angels, Game 7 against the New York Yankees and, Wednesday night in Busch Stadium, with much of the world leaning in, with Boston unable to pry its fingers from its dread, Game 4 against the Cardinals.

He’d end it atop the pile of “idiots” who sprinted to the infield when their odyssey was over, Lowe the unlikely lead in the most unlikeliest of World Series championships.

Pedro Martinez won big games. Curt Schilling won big games.

None, however, as big as Lowe did. He pitched nightly against desperation, in the games that would allow them to go on, to fulfill this thing they started and actually came to believe in.

“They gave me an opportunity,” he said.

He gave them something back -- the baseball, with room to breathe.

“He gave up one hit to the Yankees in the biggest game in franchise history,” team owner John Henry said. “And three hits tonight? Those are the two biggest games in this franchise.”

By then, champagne fell through the scruff on Lowe’s face, in rivulets across his scarred nose.

He is imperfect like the rest of them, millionaires who somehow fit and then found their best game in September and October, different from anything anyone had ever seen.

He pitched 13 innings in eight days, six against the Yankees in the Bronx and seven against the Cardinals in their tidy little town. He gave up all of those four hits and one run. He threw only 154 pitches in those two games, flicking at the strike zone with his sinkers and sliders, carving a place in Red Sox history, such as it is, slashing at two of the premier lineups in the game.

Taken back into a rotation that once had gone on without him, Lowe outpitched them all. He was not undone by his demotion, and so was not overrun by the promotion.

Slightly goofy, maybe he didn’t quite get it. But, on the eve of his free agency, with their past and his future at stake, Lowe listened to his coaches and followed his catcher. When the clubhouse opened he was standing in the middle, the World Series trophy over his backward-facing cap, a Cohiba cigar stuffed into his beltline.

“I believed I could do it,” he said.

After the top of the third inning, when Trot Nixon’s two-run double gave the Red Sox a 3-0 lead, the Cardinals never brought even the potential tying run to the plate.

From the first to the fifth innings, Lowe got 13 consecutive outs.

In the fifth, after giving up a double to Edgar Renteria, he struck out John Mabry and got Yadier Molina to ground to shortstop.

In the sixth, with a runner at first base and two out, he had Albert Pujols pop up on a 3-and-2 sinker, one pitch after catcher Jason Varitek had jogged to the mound for a talk.

Lowe, like Martinez, pulls Varitek into games like no others. Varitek feels for them, unusually so, Lowe the forgotten starter whose numbers worsened in consecutive seasons since he won 21 games, Martinez fighting the decline of his career, the two of them going consecutive nights to finish the Cardinals.

“I emotionally dump into my pitchers, each and every one of them,” Varitek said as he returned to a wild, unending on-field celebration. “But, it seems they have to deal with a lot of scrutiny. And they don’t deserve that kind of scrutiny. Win or lose, they don’t deserve that scrutiny.”

It’ll come, of course. That kind of analysis once left Lowe out of the postseason rotation, a decision made from within his own team. And, still, Lowe just showed up, palled around with his friends, joked with reporters in the dugout, took batting practice and threw the game of his career, just when the Red Sox needed it.

Again.

“It’s just confidence,” he said. “Even coming to the park today, I really felt like we were going to win.”

It was his foot, their necks, and a Red Sox championship, one they’ll be retelling in every pub in Boston for decades. And this time, forevermore, no one will forget Derek Lowe.

“I can’t wait for next year,” he said. “I feel like I finally found a formula that will work all year.”

Ah, what fun would that be?