http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/sports/baseball/21chass.html?_r=1&ref=baseball&oref=sloginSeptember 21, 2007
On Baseball
Feeling More Like ’78, With a Bit Less Pressure
By MURRAY CHASS
Now can we talk about 1978?
I ask that question of the Red Sox fan who several weeks ago wrote in an e-mail message, after I had dared invoke 1978 in a column, that 1978 had nothing to do with this season and anyway this wasn’t going to be a repeat of that eventful year.
Well, maybe not exactly. In 1978, the Yankees overtook the Red Sox on Sept. 13, the 19th day before the end of the season, and slipped back into a tie for first with the Red Sox on the last day of the season. A one-game playoff ensued. (Can you say Bucky Dent?)
The earliest the Yankees can supplant the Red Sox in first place this season is tomorrow, the ninth day before the end of the season.
But who, as recently as a week ago, would have thought that even that statement would have been possible? The Red Sox were five and a half games ahead of the Yankees and seemingly in control of the American League East race.
They had fought off Yankees threats in the first few weeks of August, when the Yankees narrowed their deficit to four games from eight, and there didn’t seem to be much time for the Yankees to mount another threat.
Back on May 29, the Red Sox built their biggest lead over the Yankees, 14 ½ games, half a game larger than Boston’s biggest lead over the Yankees in 1978. But on the first three days of June, the Yankees won two of three games at Fenway Park, a warmup to a nine-game winning streak that slashed Boston’s lead to seven and a half games.
I wrote during that streak that if the Yankees continued lopping games off Boston’s lead at that same rate, they would overtake the Red Sox by July 4.
Obviously, I was premature. But lopping off games at a rapid rate is precisely what the Yankees have done this week, five and a half games down to one and a half in four days. The spurt has Red Sox fans reeling.
“The mood is suicidal,” a fan from Maine said in an e-mail message yesterday. “The Yanks are going to win the division.”
Another Maine fan wrote: “I am in a bad mood, I’m tired and I’m angry. Too long a season, too many series with the Yankees, too much trick or treat with these Red Sox.”
A woman from Boston said there was “lots and lots of disappointment,” adding: “Something happened to this team in the last two weeks. It’s almost like they don’t want to win.”
A Boston lawyer said he listened to Red Sox games and asked: “Why am I doing this? This is a waste of time. I know the Sox will blow it at the end and the Yanks will win. And every night lately that premonition comes true.”
He added, “There truly is a foreboding sense that this is the arrival of the inevitable collapse and that they are gagging like they did in ’78.”
Ah yes, the unmentionable 1978. The lawyer was only 9 years old in 1978, so he didn’t feel the full agony of the collapse. He’s feeling it now.
“There is definitely the overriding sense that this race is over, the Yankees will win the division and the proper world order will be restored,” he wrote.
Another lawyer, this one a Red Sox fan in New York, expressed that view about 10 days ago, perhaps anticipating the Red Sox’ collapse.
But he also adopted a defensive position — arguing that all that really mattered was getting into the playoffs and that in that regard, Boston was still in good shape.
He wrote, “To me there is no independent importance to winning a crown before the real crown.”
But the Boston lawyer rejected that view: “People are already saying, as long as they get into the tournament, anything can happen. But I and we all know in the deepest and truest parts of our brains that if the Sox and Yanks meet up in the playoffs, the Sox will get their butts kicked because they have been treated by the Yanks lately as the bully might treat the puny punk on the corner.”
Still, there is that big difference between this season and 1978. In 1978, it was finish first or go home. Now the Red Sox have a safety net, the wild card.
Their won-lost record is seven games better than Detroit’s. Any combination of Boston victories and Detroit losses totaling three would, if nothing else, clinch the wild-card playoff spot for the Red Sox.
It’s also possible that the Red Sox could watch the Yankees overtake them but still have the last laugh. If the Red Sox were to take the wild card and the Cleveland Indians finished with a better record than the Los Angeles Angels, the Yankees’ first-round opponent would be the Angels, the team they least want to play.
The Yankees won all six of their games with the Indians this season, but lost 6 of 9 to the Angels. The Red Sox were 5-2 against the Indians, 6-4 against the Angels.
Unlike 1978, a first-place tie between Boston and the Yankees would not be played off. Assuming the Tigers are out of it, the Yankees and the Red Sox would be assured of a spot in the playoffs. And just as in 2005, the Yankees would be declared the division champions because they won the season series with the Red Sox, 10 games to 8, to the dismay of all New England.
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