Schilling continues playoff dominance for Red Sox
BOSTON - Curt Schilling didn’t need a bloody sock to win the bloody game. These Red Sox are Idiot free, devoid of curses, and liberated from the burden of providing redemption for their long-suffering nation of fans.
The Red Sox, and their fans, have moved on to a more mundane persona, transforming from lovable underdog to a ruthless October machine.
Now they are just another big-market power chasing another World Series title, and halfway to their second in four years, after waiting 86 tortuous years for the last one.
With their bullpen and drum corps providing background percussion, and wild-eyed closer Jonathan Papelbon providing the victory fist-pump, the Red Sox held on for a 2-1 win in Game 2 of the World Series at Fenway Park.
The Red Sox nearly frittered this one away, blowing innumerable chances to break it open while stranding 12. But Rockies pitchers have walked 15 in two games, including seven Thursday, making it far easier for the Red Sox to win on a night when Kevin Youkilis, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz had one single to show for 10 combined at-bats.
They beat a Colorado team that lost its magic touch somewhere during its eight-day layoff between pennant and World Series. And its magic bats, scoring just two runs in 18 dismal innings at Fenway.
“Maybe you can blame it on the eight days,” said Rockies outfielder Matt Holliday. “Pitch recognition, timing. Hopefully, our crowd in Denver will be fired up, and we’ll use the energy from them to get our bats going.”
Holliday could have used a burst of energy in the eighth inning when, in a crushing blow to the Rockies’ chances, he was picked off first base by Papelbon.
And it wasn’t close, leading one to wonder what the heck Holliday was thinking out there on the basepaths.
Maybe he was pondering the intricacies of his National League MVP race with Jimmy Rollins. Maybe he was contemplating the offensive woes of the Denver Broncos. Maybe he was trying to figure out who the heck Wally Madison was.
A day earlier, the official transcript of Clint Hurdle’s pregame news conference had referred to a pitcher named Wally Madison. It turned out the stenographer had misheard the name “Ubaldo Jimenez,” the starter for Colorado on Thursday who held the Red Sox hitless for 3-1/3 innings before ultimately yielding the game-winning RBI single to Mike Lowell in the fifth.
Turns out Holliday was thinking about stealing second against Papelbon, reasoning that the closer’s electric stuff made the chances minimal of Todd Helton getting an extra-base hit to drive him home with two outs.
Despite a cautious lead, Holliday proved vulnerable to the pickoff move that was signaled to Papelbon by wily catcher Jason Varitek.
“That probably will go down as one of the biggest outs of my career so far,” said Papelbon.
“I was trying to go,” Holliday said. “I know he’s slow to the plate from the stretch. I was trying to make something happen. They must have been thinking along the same lines I was.”
As for Wally, aka Ubaldo, he was game, but no match for Sockless Curt. The Rockies lost, for the second straight night, to a postseason monster. Schilling, at age 40, may be a mere shell of the fireballer that pitched Philadelphia into the 1993 World Series, and Arizona to the 2001 title, but he’s still a lean, mean postseason machine. Even with a healthy ankle tendon.
OK, not so lean anymore, but the rest goes.
Like all the successful older power pitchers who lost the sizzle from their high hard one, he has learned to compensate with craft and guile.
“The frustrating part of it is gone,” Schilling said. “Part of getting to the point of using the stuff effectively was getting past the frustrating part of it, accepting the fact that I’ll go out and get loose and whatever it is, it is, and whatever I have has to work.”
The Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, but Schilling’s postseason dominance is here to stay. He is 11-2 in his career after his strong 5-1/3-inning effort Thursday in Game 2, in which he gave up four hits and just one run.
The Red Sox went into the eighth clinging to a 2-1 lead, which is precisely the situation for which they acquired Eric Gagne at the trade deadline.
But Gagne has been mostly horrid (a 6.20 earned-run average in 20 games) since arriving from Texas, losing the trust of manager Terry Francona. Which is why it was Hideki Okajima, who in the sixth had become the first Japanese pitcher to appear in a World Series, was still on the mound in the eighth.
Okajima left a hero after striking out the first two batters in the eighth, giving him four whiffs to punctuate a flawless, hitless, base-runnerless 2-1/3 inning effort.
“Okajima was perfect, just absolutely perfect, every single pitch,” Schilling raved. “And that’s a hell of a lineup to go through.”
Hey, at least the Rockies led this game for three innings. They’re one up on the St. Louis Cardinals, who never led once when the Red Sox swept them in 2004.
That was a magic carpet ride by an endearing team that tugged on the heartstrings.
This is cold-hearted business.
Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists