New York Times, October 21, 2004, Thursday

The New York Times

October 21, 2004 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section D; Column 1; Sports Desk; On Baseball; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: A Wise Decision Brings Boston Home

BYLINE: By MURRAY CHASS

BODY:
SOMETIMES even future Hall of Fame managers get it wrong. And journeyman managers get it right.
The Boston Red Sox -- yes, the Boston Red Sox -- are going to the World Series, and the Yankees aren't, because Joe Torre, their manager, selected the wrong pitchers last night, and Terry Francona, the Boston manager, chose the right pitcher.
Between Kevin Brown, the starter, and Javier Vazquez, who relieved him in the second inning, the Yankees gave up eight runs in three innings plus two batters in the fourth. Torre opted to start the veteran Brown over Vazquez and Orlando Hernandez.
Francona had a choice of Derek Lowe or Tim Wakefield, chose Lowe and lived to tell about it, as Lowe limited the Yankees to one run and one hit in six crisp innings.
The 2004 Yankees are now dead, extending to four years their streak without a World Series championship.
The Red Sox, meanwhile, made baseball history by becoming the first team to win a best-of-seven-game series after losing the first three, and they gained a chance to win the franchise's first World Series title since 1918, if anyone can remember such ancient history.
The seventh and deciding game wasn't even suspenseful, unlike Game 7 last year between the teams, which Aaron Boone won for the Yankees with an 11th-inning home run. This game was essentially over after two innings, unless the Yankees thought the Red Sox would, typically, self-destruct.
For once, the Red Sox didn't.
''It's too bad it happened,'' Torre said of the early onslaught. ''We go out there, and all of a sudden you give up a two spot and a four spot and that's a helluva hill to climb.''
Torre, who has presided over the Yankees' surge of success, World Series triumphs or not, has probably not made decisions that turned out as poorly as choosing Brown and Vazquez.
David Ortiz, who is more accustomed to ending games with home runs and other hits, began this game with a two-run homer against Brown in the first inning.
Johnny Damon, who batted .103 in the first six games, slugged Vazquez's first pitch in relief of Brown for a grand slam in the second inning, then swung at Vazquez's first pitch to him in the fourth inning for a two-run homer.
Torre said before the game that he went with Brown, who lasted two innings as the Game 3 starter, once he determined that he was healthy.
''Brown satisfied me that he feels well enough to do this,'' Torre said. ''That was my only consideration last night, that he was physically fine. And then the mental part -- he's had as much practice at readying himself for big games as anybody. That weighs big for me.''
The runs Brown gave up early and the batters he put on base, two with consecutive walks in the second, weighed even more heavily on Torre, who had eschewed the use of Vazquez and Hernandez as the starter.
Explaining his thinking on Hernandez, the Game 4 starter, Torre cited his recent tired shoulder and said, ''We won't push the envelope on him, just because of his recent problem.''
When Torre brought in Vazquez in the second inning with the bases loaded and Damon coming to bat, he ignored the events of a June 29 game in which Damon hit two home runs against Vazquez.
Lowe, whom Francona had initially dropped from the series rotation, surpassed his effort in Game 4. Lowe wound up starting twice because of developments during the series.
He made the second start with only two days' rest after pitching five and a third solid innings on Sunday. Wakefield, who was originally scheduled to start Game 4, pitched six and a third innings in relief in Games 3 and 5.
''We think Derek can give us more innings, more pitches than Wake could, if they are throwing well,'' Francona said before the game. ''Whoever is pitching for both teams isn't going to have a big rope, but if Derek can get outs, we think he can stay out there longer. Derek is a little younger, he's a sinkerball pitcher, and I think that works to his advantage a little bit.''
Lowe certainly worked to the Red Sox' advantage. So might have the ex-Cubs factor.
A Cornell professor named Ronald Seeber raised the ex-Cubs factor in an e-mail message to friends yesterday, and one of them forwarded it here.
The ex-Cubs factor was brought to light years ago to explain why some teams won and some lost in the World Series. If a team had at least five players who had previously played for the Cubs and had more former Cubs than its opponent, that team would lose the World Series.
The barometer has since been expanded to other postseason series. Applying the factor to this series, the Yankees were in trouble. They had five ex-Cubs, the Red Sox only two.
On the Yankees' roster were the ex-Cubs Tom Gordon, Jon Lieber, Miguel Cairo, Kenny Lofton and Felix Heredia. On the Red Sox' roster were Bill Mueller and Mark Bellhorn, whose three-run homer was the decisive blow in Boston's 4-2 victory that tied the series.
'' At a critical moment last night,'' predicted Seeber, a professor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, ''look for Cairo or Lofton to do something so ridiculously stupid that baseball fans will talk about it for decades. You will know why it happened.''
He was wrong on that prediction, but there was an ex-Cubs moment in the eighth inning. Bellhorn hit a home run against Gordon, making the score 9-3. In the end, it was 10-3, and Francona, who once played for the Cubs, too, had shed his journeyman status for good.