By Yours Truly
“What becomes of the brokenhearted?†sang Motown legend Jimmy Ruffin. In Eduardo Nunez’s case, he becomes an almost unlikely Red Sox World Series hero. Who couldn’t care less about being one. Even when he gets to swing for the first time in any World Series and hits the three-run homer that landed the knockout punch on the Dodgers in a chilly Game One Tuesday night.
Last year Nunez wondered what became of the brokenhearted. Today Red Sox Nation crowns him Prince Eduardo. And Dodger Nation crowns him the first big pain in the ass of the World Series.
“As long as we have the win,†the jubilant Nunez said after he landed the biggest blow in the Red Sox’s 8-4 flattening of the Dodgers, “that’s all that matters. We’re here to win and lose together. Who cares who’s the hero that night? As long as we have a hero, that’s a good feeling because we have the win.â€
Nunez got his chance to be the hero after an anticipated pitching duel between Red Sox starter Chris Sale and Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw was rendered a dud in a frigid Fenway Park on a night neither pitcher had anything close to his best or got a single out in the fifth inning. And, after Dodger manager Dave Roberts outsmarted himself two innings later.
The former Yankee who was once seen as a possible heir apparent to Derek Jeter before shifting to third base suffered his heartbreak beginning a year ago September, when a knee injury turned out to be a severe ligament sprain and got worse when he returned for that postseason; he collapsed on the field running out a grounder his first time up. Carried off the field, he was out of the Red Sox picture immediately.
This year, he dealt with more injuries and the loss of his job to Rafael Devers. But here he was in the bottom of the seventh Tuesday night pinch-hitting for Devers against lefthander Alex Wood.
The inning didn’t begin with Wood. Roberts started with Julio Urias, who’d worked the sixth and struck out the side. But the evening’s worth of Dodgers defensive clumsiness continued when Andrew Benintendi, the Red Sox’s left field acrobat, led off with a bloop to shallow left for which third baseman Justin Turner ran out, seventh-inning left field insertion Joc Pederson ran in, and neither could catch as it hit the grass on the fair side of the line, ricocheting promptly into the seats for a ground rule double.
Roberts turned to Pedro Baez and got a swinging strikeout against Red Sox pinch hitter Mitch Moreland before ordering an intentional walk to J.D. Martinez with Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts due up. Then Baez struck out Bogaerts swinging. Then Roberts went to Wood. And Red Sox manager Alex Cora, Roberts’ teammate on both these teams in their playing days, did what Roberts probably didn’t expect him to do.
He sent the righthanded Nunez up to hit, even though Devers has no noticeable platoon split. Either Cora is living a charmed life or he sees things nobody can see that haven’t been seen before, as Casey Stengel might have said it. And on ball one, Nunez caught hold of a slop curve drove it into the lower row of the Green Monster seats.
The last time any Red Sox pinch hitter hit a three-run homer in a World Series Game? It happened 45 years ago, when former Red Bernie Carbo ripped one off Cincinnati reliever Rawly Eastwick in the bottom of the eighth in Game Six, setting the stage for Carlton Fisk’s for-the-books game-ender.
“In the beginning, I thought it was going to be a single because the ball go so high,†said Nunez, very well aware of the Monster’s talent for turning booming liners that would be bombs elsewhere into mere base hits the size of which depends on how well left fielders play the wall’s caroms. “When I see the ball is going, I was excited . . . That was the best feeling as a player, see all the fans, they paid tickets to watch us, to play and be crazy.â€
Benintendi was only one Red Sox who appreciated Nunez’s big delivery. “When you’ve got a guy like hm on the bench,†he said, “it’s a weapon for us. And when he’s going well, we all seem to go well. It’s not easy to come off the bench and pinch hit, especially when it’s [frigid]. It was a great job.â€
A guy who rides the pine under orders to be prepared for whenever over almost four hours, on a night that trailed a day’s worth of thundering rains that kept the tarp over the infield until almost before game time, has to be carrying some serious determination.
Cora for one appreciates what Nunez has been through to get to where he delivered Tuesday night. “[T]hat was sad to see last year,†said the manager who spent last year as the world champion Astros’ bench coach. “He carried this offense and put this team in a different dimenson. And he got hurt and only one pitch in the playoffs, and then he was out of it. For him to show up [Tuesday] and put up a big swing, that’s his first World Series swing, it’s very gratifying to see him do that.â€
Which was the complete opposite of what Dodger fans saw in Game One. For them it was like seeing the Beach Boys showing up to play an outdoor show in Boston without checking the weather or the venue conditions first. It’s enough that the Red Sox can beat just about anyone throwing their A-game at them. On Tuesday night the Dodgers would have been lucky to rate a C plus.
Kershaw couldn’t keep the Red Sox off line at the plate, but Sale did have it slightly worse when he ran too many deep counts and spent more time pecking the corners than trying a full-frontal attack. Even allowing plate umpire Tim Timmons squeezing the strike zone a little too much on both sides.
This was a game in which twelve pitchers threw a combined 308 pitches and struck out a combined 24 while surrendering nineteen hits, and the Dodgers fumbled, bumbled, and tumbled despite chasing Sale after twelve outs. They even got three hits from Justin Turner and tied the game twice.
But they misplayed numerous foul balls, as though they hadn’t done all that much homework on Fenway’s smaller foul territory dimensions. First baseman David Freese—starting in Roberts’ unusual all-righthanded-hitting alignment against lefthander Sale—overran Red Sox leadoff man Mookie Betts’s foul pop off the first base line and a ball he could have caught instead thudded to the grass to his left.
Betts promply lined a base hit up the pipe and stole second with a little help from Dodger catcher Austin Barnes throwing past second and into short center. Then Benintendi shot a grounder right past diving Dodgers second baseman Brian Dozier to open a 4-for-5 night for only the fourth lefthanded hitter to get four hits off four lefthanded pitchers in a World Series game.
Yasiel Puig in right field came up with Benintendi’s ball and threw. He sailed it past his cutoff man and wide of the plate as Betts shot home with the first Red Sox run. After Freese backpedaled to catch Steve Pearce’s pop along the first base line, obviously taking no chances this time, J.D. Martinez singled Betts home and the Red Sox had a 2-0 lead off Kershaw right out of the chute.
The Dodgers got one back in the top of the second when Matt Kemp, their prodigal son, hung in against Sale to a full count and an eighth pitch with one out, and drove one into the Monster seats himself. An inning later, Manny Machado, who’s still high on Red Sox Nation’s least wanted list after his rough slide spiked Dustin Pedroia in early 2017, earning himself a shot near the head two games later from relief pitcher Matt Barnes, tied the game by singling home Turner.
Martinez broke the tie in the bottom of the third with an RBI double off the rearmost center field wall. After both sides went in order in the fourth, Machado pushed Dozier home with a grounder to second facing his old nemesis Barnes, who’d just wild pitched second and third over from first and second.
After the Red Sox pushed Kershaw out of the game with a leadoff walk (Betts) and a base hit (Benintendi), Roberts brought in Ryan Madson. Ball one turned into a wild pitch and the runners moved to second and third, then Pearce completed a four-pitch walk to load the pads. Madson struck out Martinez but Bogaerts dialed what looked like an Area Code 6-4-3 until he beat the throw at first, when Madson looked like he was bounding away celebrating just a little too soon.
It scored Betts, erased Pearce, and left first and third for Devers, who shot an RBI single to right poste haste. That’s what a momentary snooze on the job does to the other guys.
The Dodgers’ only answer to that 5-3 deficit was Machado sending home Max Muncy, who’d pinch hit for Dozier and got the first of a pair of back-to-back singles, with a sacrifice fly in the top of the seventh. All that proved to do was keep things at just the right level for Nunez to step in and, as the Red Sox motto this postseason has been, do damage.
Big damage. Game-out-of-reach damage. Why, the Red Sox were so locked in in Game One that Craig Kimbrel, the Red Sox closer with an apparent penchant for inducing cardiac arrest, had an almost uneventful ninth with a leadoff ground out and two strikeouts—though the second came after a battle with Turner that went to a full count right off 0-2 and then to two foul offs before Kimbrel threw a four-seam fastball right through Turner to end it. Michael DeBakey, don’t call your office just yet.
Just why Muncy was pinch hitting that late became a small issue itself, since the smarter moment to use him might have been in the fifth with Freese due up after Dozier’s leadoff walk sending Sale out of the game. Roberts had only done that a few dozen times before. Roberts said after the game he didn’t want to risk draining his bench prematurely and he’d liked Freese’s at-bats all game long. So Freese stayed and struck out. And the Dodgers got only one run in the inning for their trouble.
Benintendi’s four hits joined him to some exclusive World Series company, too. He’s only the fourth player to pick up four hits in a World Series game before his 25th birthday since expansion began in 1961. He’s only the third in Red Sox history to do it, joining Wally Moses (1946 Series) and Jacoby Ellsbury (2007 Series), and the Red Sox won all three of the games in the bargain.
And he joins Claude Rossman (1907 Tigers), Dave Parker (1979 Pirates), and Hall of Famer Willie Stargell (1979 Pirates, too) as the only lefthanded swingers with four hits off four lefthanders in a World Series game.
Don’t bother telling him just yet. “I don’t really care,†he said. “I’m just glad we won.â€
So is Nunez, who admitted he re-signed with the Red Sox for the chance to win a World Series. “I never have that experience [before],†he said in his halting but effervescent English. “I never have a World Series game. I think the best chance is this thing, how I see the team, the players.†Right now, they and Red Sox Nation see him as a World Series game buster.
He’ll leave it to people like me to care about history. So let me say Nunez and Kemp in the same game hit home runs in their first ever World Series at-bats, just the way Chris Taylor did for the Dodgers last year. It won’t shock either Red Sox or Dodger fans if a few more precedents are broken in this Series. Much.
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