Thursday, October 20, 2005

The Boston Red Sox make baseball history and they do it at Yankee Stadium...

After losing the first 3 games of the ALCS to the Yankees, the Red Sox would become the first team in baseball history to win a best-of-seven series after trailing 3 games to none and they did it with authority. Johnny Damon's 2 home runs (one a grand slam), 2 by Mark Bellhorn and one by Big Papi, David Ortiz left little doubt as to the outcome of this game. Add to that, 6 innings of 1 hit, 1 run pitching by Derek Lowe and you have a convincing 10-3 win by the team that was forever under the 'Curse of the Bambino'. That curse was annihilated forever by this decisive victory...

Boston joined the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs and the 1975 Islanders as the only teams in professional sports history to overcome a 3-0 series deficit to win a 7-game series and they did it in 'The House that Ruth Built', Yankee Stadium. With Alan Embree pitching with 2 out in the 9th inning, pinch-hitter Ruben Sierra's ground ball to Pokey Reese at second base put the Red Sox in the record books...

Not even Bucky ("bleepin') Dent throwing out the first pitch and putting Sox management in the Babe Ruth Suite could deter these Red Sox who would celebrate on the field, on the hallowed grounds of Yankee Stadium...

More October 20 Memories...

1956) Bill Haley & the Comets and Elvis Presley perform on the same bill at Brooklyn High School in Cleveland...

1960) Ralph Houk replaces Casey Stengel as Yankee manager...

1960) The Elvis Presley film, "G.I. Blues" premieres...

1961) Bob Dylan's self-titled debut LP is released...

1962) The Four Seasons release "Big Girls Don't Cry"...

1968) Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy & Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis walk down the aisle...

1973) The Steve Miller Band releases "The Joker"...

1973) Special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox is fired by President Nixon. Attorney General Richardson, Deputy Attorney General Ruckelhaus and Solicitor General Bork resign in protest...

1976) The Nets sell Julius "Dr. J" Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers...

1977) 3 members of rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd die in the crash of a chartered plane...

1978) The Police perform at their first U.S. concert at CBGB's...

1979) The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston is dedicated...

1981) The Knicks beat the Nets in the first NBA game played at Meadowlands Arena...

1987) Subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz is sentenced to 6 months in jail...

1991) Clint Black and Lisa Hartman say their "I do's"...

2004) The Red Sox beat the Yankees (feature story)...

Happy Birthday To...

1925) Newspaper columnist Art Buchwald...

1937) Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Juan Marichal...

1939) The Tokens' Jay Siegal...

1946) Connie Chung...

1950) Tom Petty...

1953) Ex-Met Keith Hernandez...

1971) Snoop Dogg...

Commentary...

Red Sox fans waited a long time to beat the Yankees so October 20, 2004 is and always will be a day of infamy and may have been a bigger victory than the team's eventual sweep of the Cardinals in the World Series that would follow. Not only did they win, they won convincingly and made baseball history in doing it...

While the 'Curse of the Bambino' wouldn't finally be lifted until the Sox won their 1st World Series in 86 years, mark October 20th as the day it really happened...