If I live to be 100 — and with my meat-and-beer diet, it’s not bloody likely — I don’t think I’ll ever see a ballgame stranger than game 3 of the 2003 ALCS. This thing had more twists and sub-plots than a Raymond Carver story. First things first, you had Sox vs. Yankees in the playoffs, which is reason enough to booze up and riot. Then you had Pedro vs. Rocket, so I pretty much went into this thing with visions of that similar match-up in the ’99 ALCS dancing in my head. But then it all veered off into a mash-up of Karim Garcia [who, for my money, looks like the fat, older brother of The State’s Thomas Lennon] getting pegged and threatening Pedro. And that bit where Pedro pointed at Posada then pointed at his head [he claimed he was telling Jorge “he’d remember this” but to the rest of the free world, it looked like “get ready for some extensive dental x-rays, son… yer goin’ down.”] Then the now classic Zimmer-goes-batsh#t-and-charges-Pedro-not-unlike-The-Rhino-tacking-Spider-Man thing. And Manny taking exception to a high and tight Clemens pitch. And that Jeff Nelson vs. everyone in the bleachers and especially a Fenway groundskeeper thing.
We didn’t win the game, or the series. But jeebus was that one for the vaults.
