July 30, 1999: I Came, I Saw, I Conquered

July 30, 1999, 20 years ago: It was my greatest achievement as a sports fan.

I, a Yankee Fan, walked into Fenway Park during a Yankees vs. Red Sox Pennant race, saw the Yankees win, walked out still wearing my Yankee cap, and got out of New England in one piece.

It was a good time in America. Bill Clinton was President, the economy was booming, and the nation was at peace. New York City was safer and cleaner than it had ever been in my lifetime. And the Yankees were winning.

But, in the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry, it turned out to be a weird time. This was the year the rivalry, kind of dormant since the 1980s ended, picked up again. But it was also the time that the Red Sox were planning on building a new Fenway Park, while the Yankees were merely talking about building a new Yankee Stadium.

Plans were made to build the new Fenway across Jersey Street/Yawkey Way from the old one, with its "front door" on Boylston Street. Plans were made for it to have much more office, concession and restroom space than the original, but keep the same dimensions, including a new Green Monster. The old park would be torn down, except for the original Green Monster, and a new field put in place.

They were planning on having it open by 2003, and they got endorsements from Sox legends Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski and Johnny Pesky, as well as celebrity Sox fans like Stephen King and Doris Kearns Goodwin.

As it turned out, Massachusetts politics got in the way, as it so often does. When John Henry and his people bought the Sox from the Yawkey Trust in 2002, they decided building a World Series winner was more important than building a new ballpark. And so, since then, we have a new Yankee Stadium with 1 World Series win, and the same Fenway Park, modernized as much as possible, with 4 World Series wins *.

But in 1999, it was possible that this would be the last season with a Yankees-Red Sox Pennant race at the old Fenway Park. And this was one of those few Summers in which I had money. I had seen 3 games at Fenway (in 1991, 1994 and 1996), but not against the Yankees. I had seen a Yankees-Red Sox game, but at Yankee Stadium (in 1991). This could have been my last chance, or so I thought. So I went.

*

I made a reservation for a bed-and-breakfast in the Allston section of Boston, just off the Boston University campus. The game was going to be on WNYW-Channel 5 (for the 1st time since 1950, the Yankees'"free TV" carrier was not WPIX-Channel 11), so I set my VCR (remember them?) to record it.

I packed my backpack, walked to the bus station at Tower Center, just off Exit 9 of the New Jersey Turnpike, and took the bus into Port Authority Bus Terminal. I boarded a Greyhound bus at Gate 84, and made a leisurely, uneventful ride to Boston. Everything was in place, except for one thing. I had no game ticket. That's a story in and of itself.

At any rate, we arrived a little early at South Station, the city's venerable rail terminal, which had just had a bus terminal added. I got on the subway, known as "The T" for "transit." South Station is on the Red Line, and I changed at Park Street under (or, "changed at Pahk Street undah," as they say up theah) to the Green Line, and checked in. I had plenty of time to get back on the Green Line and get to the little green pinball machine off Kenmore Square.

One thing Fenway has in common with Yankee Stadium (old or new) is that, as soon as you get out of the subway, there are the scalpers, asking, "Anybody buying? Anybody selling?" I made the left turn from Commonwealth Avenue onto Brookline Avenue, took the bridge over the Massachusetts Turnpike and the Boston & Albany Railroad (now serving Amtrak, MBTA commuter rail, and the T's Orange Line), and past the most famous of all Red Sox bars, the Cask 'n' Flagon, across Ted Williams Way (the recently renamed Ipswich Street) from the big left field wall, the Green Monster.

I went to Yawkey Way (which has since had its previous name of Jersey Street restored), stuck my Yankee cap in the backpack, and looked for a scalper. I found one, with a ticket for an Obstructed View seat in Section 12, behind 1st base. List price was $24, and he was offering it for $42. In 2019 dollars, he was charging $65 for a $37 seat, so you can see just how much the Red Sox' 2003-present success has driven up prices.

The look on the scalper's face when, after making the exchange, I put my cap back on, was worth it.

*

I made my way inside the venerable old ballyard. One thing I've done on every visit to Fenway (except one, having forgotten until I was on the bus to go back home, and I felt terrible about it) is look for one of the little red Jimmy Fund boxes.

One good thing you can do is look for the Jimmy Fund boxes. The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has run the fund since 1948, when the Boston Braves pitched in to raise money for a kid named Einar Gustafsson, then 12 years old and a patient of the Institute's founder, Dr. Sidney Farber.

Gustafsson was called the much more generic "Jimmy," not so much because he had a decidedly non-English name (in the post-World War II era, a decidedly patriotic, pro-America time), but to protect his privacy. In the 1st year, $200,000 was raised for cancer research – about $2.1 million in today's money.

When the Braves left town in 1953, Farber turned to the Red Sox. Later that year, when Ted Williams returned from the Korean War, he volunteered, and became the face of the Fund, becoming close friends with Farber and raising money all over the country, especially after his retirement as a player in 1960 gave him more time to do so, until becoming too ill to do so a few years prior to his death in 2002.

*

Here were the lineups for the game. For the visiting Yankees, coming in at 61-39, leading the American League Eastern Division:

1. 11 2B Chuck Knoblauch
2. 2 SS Derek Jeter
3. 21 RF Paul O'Neill
4. 51 CF Bernie Williams
5. 24 1B Tino Martinez
6. 45 DH Chili Davis
7. 20 C Jorge Posada
8. 47 LF Shane Spencer
9. 18 3B Scott Brosius
P 14 Hideki Irabu

For the host Red Sox, coming in at 55-46, 6 1/2 games behind the Yankees, but in good position to take the 1 Wild Card berth then available in the AL:

1. 20 CF Darren Lewis
2. 13 3B John Valentin
3. 23 1B Brian Daubach
4. 5 SS Nomar Garicaparra
5. 25 LF Troy O'Leary
6. 44 DH Butch Huskey
7. 33 C Jason Varitek
8. 15 2B Donnie Sadler
9. 7 RF Trot Nixon
P 31 Mark Portugal

I was familiar all 9 position players. I had seen Huskey play for the Mets. Valentin had been with the Sox since 1992. And I had seen the other 7 play for the Trenton Thunder, now the Yankees' Class AA farm team in the Eastern League, but then belong to the Boston system.

The home plate umpire was Mike Reilly. Had I known that I would one day become a fan of English soccer team Arsenal, and that a referee named Mike Riley would badly screw them over in 2004, and then even more so as the supervisor for Premier League referees, I would have taken this as a bad sign. As far as I know, there is no connection between them, besides similar (if differently-spelled) names and a similar profession.

The other umpires: At 1st base, Brian O'Nora, of whom I have no memory; at 2nd base, Laz Diaz, not a good one; and at 3rd base, Rich Garcia, who wrote his name into Yankee history in the 1996 Playoffs, controversially giving Derek Jeter a home run despite then 12-year-old fan Jeffrey Maier seeming to interfere with play. (The call was correct: Baltimore Oriole right fielder Tony Tarasco was not going to catch the ball anyway.)

The game-time temperature was 84 degrees, quite tolerable, since there was a 17 mile-per-hour wind. Conspicuously, it was blowing from right field to left field, making the Green Monster slightly more tempting a target than usual, but not making it too easy a target. The sky was overcast, but there was no threat of rain. Given a cold drink, you couldn't have asked for a better night for baseball, a better place to watch it (I make a lot of remarks about Fenway to tease Sox fans, but I don't mean them), or a better pair of opponents.

*

Baseball games generally don't start on the hour or the half-hour. For TV's sake, the time printed on the ticket is usually at 5, or 10, or (in the case of Toronto Blue Jays home games) 7 minutes after the hour. Usually, first pitch comes at 7 or 8 minutes after. So this game should have started at 7:07 PM.

Instead, plate umpire Reilly shouted, "Play ball!" early, and Portugal threw the 1st pitch at 7:04. As I found out when I got back home and ran back the tape, this caught the Channel 5 camerman, and announcers Bobby Murcer and Tim McCarver, by surprise. They missed the 1st pitch of the game. They almost missed the 2nd pitch, too.

I had emerged from Fenway's concourse about halfway between 3rd and home, just in time to see that 1st pitch, and saw the 2nd pitch. It was a meatball -- or, since the pitcher's name was Portugal, maybe it was a chouriço -- and Knoblauch cooked it, sending it over the Monster. I was far from the only fan who had not yet reached his seat, and the Yankees were already up 1-0.

I got to Section 12, found my row, and, at just the right moment, turned around to see Jeter hit the 5th pitch of the game. This was no cheap Green Monster hit: He sent it to straightaway center field, almost hitting the camerman. I was still not in my seat (neither were a few hundred others), and it was 2-0 Yankees.

Finally, I got to my seat. On the 9th pitch of the game, to O'Neill, Portugal was so fershimmeled that the force of his delivery knocked him down. And by "him," I don't mean O'Neill, I mean Portugal. He literally fell off the mound.

You would think that this would leave the Red Sox shellshocked and unable to come back. But this was Fenway Park. Strange things happen. Irabu did not have his best stuff in the bottom of the 1st inning, and after starting things by getting Lewis to pop up, he gave up a home run to Valentin. He got Daubach to ground out, but he allowed a single to Nomar and an RBI double to O'Leary, tying the game, before he struck Huskey out to end the threat.

Fenway was still buzzing after hosting the All-Star Game 17 days earlier, with the pregame ceremony honoring Ted Williams and the in-game pitching of Pedro Martinez. At this point, with the score 2-2, everyone on hand, regardless of who they were rooting for, was expecting a classic.

But the game would not be close. With 1 out in the top of the 2nd, Spencer hit a ground ball to Nomar, then in a 3-way discussion with Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, then with the Seattle Mariners, as to who was the best shortstop in baseball. Met fans argued that the best was their shortstop, Rey Ordonez, but he wasn't as good a fielder as any of the 3, and he was a lousy hitter. Nomar did his role in this discussion no favors on this play, botting the grounder. Three straight singles followed: By Brosius, but Knoblauch getting Spencer home, and by Jeter getting Brosius home.

Jimy Williams was the Sox manager at the time, and he had seen enough. He took Portugal out, and brought in Korean pitcher Jin Ho Cho. O'Neill almost hit it out, deep enough to score Knoblauch. Nixon (full name: Christopher Trotman Nixon) made a bad throw, and Jeter was able to score as well. 6-2 Yankees.

Is any game ever really out of reach at Fenway Park? The Sox led off the bottom of the 2nd with Varitek drawing a walk and Sadler singling. Cliche Alert: Walks can kill you, especially the leadoff variety. But Irabu got out of the inning, on his way to getting 10 straight batters out.

Tino led off the top of the 3rd with a single. Chili walked. Posada doubled Tino home. Spencer popped up, and then Brosius singled home Chili and Jorge. 9-2 Yankees.

The Sox, now with Rich Garcés on the mound -- a Venezuelan righthander known as El Guapo, the Handsome One, although he should have been called El Gordo, the Fat One -- kept the Yankees from scoring in the 4th and the 5th. The Sox scored in the bottom of the 5th on a triple by Lewis and a sac fly by Valentin, making in 9-3, but that was as close as they would get. Garces and Mark Guthrie kept the Yanks off the board in the 6th, but in the bottom of the inning, Irabu struck out the side: Garciaparra, O'Leary and Huskey.

The Yankees ended any doubt in the top of the 7th: Single by Chili, home run by Jorge, walk by Spencer, double by Brosius, single by Knoblauch. 13-3. At the 7th inning stretch, the Sox fans sang, "For it's root, root, root for the Red Sox!" I could only answer, "If they don't win, it's the same!"

By this point, there were about 10,000 people left in Fenway, and about 5,000 of them were chanting, "Let's go, Yankees!" I was one of them.

I did not, however, make a nuisance of myself. I was 29 years old, no longer a kid. Certainly, I yelled encouragement to my team's players, but I did not taunt the Sox players, and I did not go out of my way to antagonize the fans around me, most of whom were reasonable, and none of them tried anyting. This may have been my 1st Yankees game at Fenway Park, but, as the saying goes, this was not my first rodeo.

Yankee manager Joe Torre went against his usual instinct, and kept Irabu in the game. Or maybe he figured that, since this was Fenway, he needed to keep his bullpen as rested as possible. Irabu allowed a single to pinch-hitter Reggie Jefferson in the 7th, and a single to Nomar in the 8th. 

But in the 9th, he got Huskey to pop up to Tino, got Lenny Webster (who had replaced Varitek behind the plate) to ground to Brosius, and ended the game with his 123rd pitch of the night, fanning Lou Merloni (who had replaced Sadler at 2nd base) for his 12th strikeout, against just 1 walk.

Cue John Sterling on the radio, the team then being broadcast on WABC, 770 AM: "Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeeee Yankees win!"

Yankees 13, Red Sox 3. For the Yankees: 13 runs, 16 hits, no errors, 8 men left on base. For the Red Sox: 3 runs, 7 hits, 2 errors, 5 men left on base.

The winning pitcher: Hideki Irabu (8-3), a surprising complete game from the tubby Japanese pitcher who was already being considered a bust, despite having been part of a World Championship team the season before. Obviously, no save. The losing pitcher: Mark Portugal (6-8).

Knoblauch went 5-for-6, with the leadoff home run, and 4 RBIs. Jeter went 2-for-6 with a home run and 2 RBIs. Posada went 3-for-5, with a home run and 3 RBIs. Brosius didn't hit a home run, but went 3-for-5 with 2 RBIs. Not only did Knoblauch almost outhit the Sox all by himself, but the Sox were 0-for-4 with runners in scoring position. That tells a lot.

The attendance was 33,777, and, as Yankee broadcaster Michael Kay would say, the time of the game, a slightly unmanageable, but enjoyable 3 hours and 3 minutes.

*

I had been to Fenway, and seen the Yankees kick the Sox' asses. That was the easy part. The hard part would be getting out alive.

Not yet knowing that, in soccer leagues around the world, visiting fans are put in the same section, kept segregated from the home fans, and kept behind until after the home sections have been emptied, and only then let out, I stuck around for as long as they would let me, even finding my way to the edge of the bleachers, looking for the famous red seat that marked the spot where Ted Williams hit what is, officially, Fenway's longest home run, a 502-foot shot in 1946.

(There may have been a longer one hit by Babe Ruth in the 1920s, or over the Green Monster. But, as far as those home runs that have been measured, this blast by the Splendid Splinter is the longest.)

This being the era before camera phones, I used my regular camera, but it was already dark, and I didn't get a good picture.

I was not the only Yankee Fan who felt like sticking around. I even ran into a Boston University student who had played football at my high school. (BU had dropped its football program in 1997.) Finally, the ushers began asking us to leave. They did so politely. We followed their instructions.

I tried to find my way to the main entrance, the big wooden doors on Yawkey Way. There were enough people left that it was easy to bump into people. And I did bump into someone. I looked up, and, before I could see who it was, I said, "Sorry, mister."

It was Bobby Murcer. Star Yankee outfielder of the early 1970s who returned at the end of the decade, and broadcaster since his retirement as a player in 1983. Next to him was Tim McCarver, the longtime St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies catcher who had broadcast for the Mets in the 1980s, who was in the 1st of 3 seasons doing so for the Yankees. They were nice enough to not be mad at me for literally bumping into Bobby. (I did not ask for autographs. I never see the point in it.)

I walked out of Fenway. Here is where the real trouble could have begun. I had to get back to the T, without getting killed for wearing a Yankee cap in the aftermath of a Yankee shellacking of the home team. But enough time had passed since the final pitch, and enough of a margin of the score, for it to not be so bad. Nobody bothered me.

I decided to press my luck. I got off the Green Line at Arlington, and walked over to the Bull & Finch Pub on Beacon Street. Although it only opened in 1969, unlike on the show where the sign said 1895 but the script said 1889, The Bull & Finch was used as the basis for the bar on the TV show of the same name, Cheers.

Since then, both the bar and the restaurant above, Hampshire House, used on the show is the basis for Melville's, have been bought by someone who turned all of it into a single establishment called Cheers, with the permission of the ship's production company.

I went down those famous steps, walked in, still wearing the Yankee cap, but did not yell, like Norm Peterson (played by George Wendt), "Good evening, everybody!" After all, there, not only would a Yankee Fan announcing his presence in such a way have been a bad idea, as seen on an early episode; but, unlike with Norm, nobody would have known my name.

There was an empty stool, I ordered a Samuel Adams beer, drank it, paid for it, and walked out in one piece, cap still on my head. I got back to my hotel, and slept a very restful night.

(Sam Adams is still regarded as good beer, but, since it is so easily identified with the Red Sox, I haven't had one since 2004. On principle.)

*

The next day was a hot Saturday. I had time to visit the John F Kennedy Presidential Library, but, while trying to get back to South Station to head home, I had my Walkman with me, and the Red Sox were beating the Yankees, with the newly-acquired Roger Clemens on the mound -- for us, not them.

By the time I got on the bus to head back to New York, the game was over, and the Sox had won. They would win the Sunday game, too. In other words, of the 3 games in the series, the Yankees won only the one that I went to. This has frequently worked out the other way, including this year, when the Yankees took 3 out of 4 from Houston at home, and they only lost the one that I saw live.

But once the bus reached the "neutral zone" of New Haven, Connecticut, I realized that I had accomplished my mission. I had been to the belly of the Beast, and not only escaped, but emerged victorious. As Julius Caesar said after the Battle of Zela (in what's now Zile, Turkey) in 47 BC, "Veni, vidi, vici." I came, I saw, I conquered.

*

The Yankees did go on to win the American League East, but the Red Sox went on to win the Wild Card. In the AL Division Series, the Yankees swept the Texas Rangers, while the Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, to set up an AL Championship Series showdown.

The Yankees won Game 1 in 10 innings, on Bernie Williams' walkoff home run, and won Game 2 as well. Game 3 was the much-hyped showdown between Clemens and Pedro Martinez, but it didn't pan out: The Red Sox shellacked us, 13-1. Sox fans acted as if they just won the World Series, but, at the time, how would they have known? As they would say in English soccer, they had"won their Cup Final."

Game 4 was incredibly controversial. It was only 3-2 Yankees going into the ninth inning, but Ricky Ledée hit a grand slam, and Sox fans threw garbage on the field. When the field was cleared, and play resume, Yankees scored again to make it 9-2. There were questionable calls from the umpires, but Sox fans has absolutely no right to complain. Their team made 9 errors in the series, 4 in that Game 4 alone. Their team did it to themselves.

The Yankees won Game 5 to clinch the Pendant at Fenway Park on October 18, before winning the World Series against the Atlanta Braves in 4 straight, clinching at Yankee Stadium on October 27.

The Yankees-Red Sox rivalry would get wilder, and nastier. But, for me, it was never better than on July 30, 1999, 20 years ago today.