If These Walls Could Talk

by Jerry Remy

  Both Roger and Pedro were accused of kind of being on their own schedule. But that’s not unusual. When you’re a superstar, as long as you’re getting your work done, I think managers can tolerate it. They both got their work done. I played with Nolan Ryan. He was on his own schedule, too. He also worked extremely hard, as both these guys did.

  I think the only time Pedro did something wrong was he got to the park late and Jimy Williams didn’t start him in a playoff game against the Indians. Pedro was never a guy who got to the park early on days that he pitched. Now, I couldn’t say what time he’d get there because I was not in the clubhouse at the time. All we knew is that we were sitting there waiting for Pedro to pitch and then the next thing you know, he’s going back up the runway. We had no clue what was going on. We found out later, obviously, that Jimy was tired of him being late. That didn’t sit very well with Pedro or probably with the 34,000 fans who were waiting for him to pitch.

  I think that strained the relationship between Pedro and Jimy. From a manager’s point of view, it was something he felt like he had to do to set an example for everybody else. From Pedro’s point of view, he knew he was ready to pitch. I’d say that stuff happened more in the older days than it does today. If they got their work done and they performed, nobody would say anything. That’s just the way it was. Both of these guys were pretty much on their own routines. They were hard workers. Roger was as hard a worker as you find. Pedro was the same way. Everybody gets ready for their games and their seasons differently. There’s not one set routine that works for everybody. As they matured into great pitchers, they figured out what worked for them and what didn’t work for them.

  Obviously with Roger there’s the issue of PEDs that hangs over his head to this day. But I think he belongs in the Hall of Fame. I can’t answer for a lot of these guys. I think as time goes on, I think they’re all going to probably end up being in there. I think that Hall of Fame voters are putting the PED stigma aside more and more. It was a bad era. There’s no question about that. If one guy’s on it, others felt like they had to be on it, too, to compete. Believe me, I can tell you this, had that stuff been available back when I played, there’d have been plenty of guys on it. In our era, we had amphetamines. You took whatever would give you the edge in a particular game. Had that stuff been available, I think anybody who tells you they wouldn’t have done it is lying. I think that they would’ve done it to help get an edge.

  As time goes by, I think it’s going to become an era of baseball that’s not looked upon as a great one but these are all great players. They were all great players without the stuff. I don’t care what generation you come from, anything that could give you an edge you were going to take. In their case, it happened to be steroids.

  Jim Rice and Ted Williams

  The other big Boston Red Sox position has traditionally been left field. Obviously, there was Ted Williams, the greatest Red Sox player ever. I was too young to remember Williams. I saw Yaz and obviously I played with Jim Rice. Yaz was my favorite, of course. As a teenager growing up, he was like my idol. He’s the guy who in ’67 brought baseball back to Boston, with that particular team going from last place to first place under Dick Williams and of course Yaz being the Triple Crown winner and the MVP. It was like Yazmania in Boston. Everybody was crazy about Yaz. Good for him, because he played on some lousy teams. I think he always played in the shadow of Williams. That year really brought him to the forefront. People realized how good a player he was. I think people around baseball knew, but I don’t think a lot of the fans realized it. They finally saw it all come together in ’67.

  He was the guy everybody emulated. Any kid who had a left-handed swing held the bat like Yaz. I was the same way. I was fortunate enough to get a chance to play with him toward the end of his career and got to be there for all those great moments, like when he got his 3,000th hit with his 500th home run. When he retired in 1983, I said, “Well, there’s the end of the Red Sox.” For me, the Red Sox were always about Yaz. It was a weird feeling that last weekend when he was gone.

  He told me in spring training of 1983 that he was going to retire at the end of the year. I never thought he was going to go. My locker was right next to his in Winter Haven, Florida. I said, “You’ve still got plenty left in the tank.” He disagreed. He made up his mind and that was it. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to get to know him and to play with him for a brief period of time.

  I never met a guy who worked as hard at hitting as he did. If he had a bad game, he’d make our groundskeeper Joe Mooney pull that cage out after the game and go out there and hit for hours. People didn’t see a lot of that. He spent hours and hours in the cage prior to the game with Walt Hriniak. He just cared about hitting. At that point in his career he had done everything defensively in the outfield, winning seven Gold Gloves. He’d done all that. He was now playing some first base. What he cared about was hitting.

  One thing that he didn’t want to do was miss a fastball. He didn’t want to be late. He had all kinds of different stances at the end where it was kind of funny at times. The only fastball I saw him miss was his last at-bat at Fenway when, I think it was Dan Spillner, if I’m not mistaken, threw a quickie right down the middle for him but he threw it too slow. Yaz popped it up. That was his final at-bat at Fenway Park. You knew the guy was just going to groove one, but he threw it too damn slow. Yaz was out in front. It was funny to watch but we were all pulling for a home run there. Obviously, it didn’t happen. He was my guy. He was the guy. He was the man to me.

  He was also a fierce competitor. He was mentally tough, very tough. He wasn’t the easiest guy to get to know but once you got to know him he was your friend for life. He was another guy who wasn’t a rah-rah guy in the clubhouse. He was pretty much a loner. He had his circle of friends. He was another leader by example. You didn’t see a lot of his work ethic. He didn’t care if people saw it. He didn’t care about stuff like that.

  I didn’t know what to expect when I met him the first time. I was with the Angels. There was no conversation. Strength training, drills, he didn’t give a shit about any of that. He cared about hitting. Even today I have to laugh, because we were in spring training in 2018 and he comes over to the big-league field every once in a while. He’s sitting there and they’re going through all the fundamentals and the drills and the pitchers covering first. He goes, “All right. Enough of this shit. Let’s hit.” That’s kind of the way he thought all the time.

  Both he and Ted were spring training hitting instructors, but I never knew how close Yaz and Ted were. They obviously had a relationship, but I can’t say it was buddy-buddy. I don’t know if anybody was real close to Ted. Ted was Ted. The first time I saw Ted Williams, he walked into the clubhouse in Winter Haven and walked by the mirror near the bathroom right in the middle of the locker room. He put his arms out and he goes, “There he is. The greatest hitter of all time.” And then just walked away. Yaz kind of looked at me like, “OMG.” I think a lot of the uncomfortableness came from Yaz having to live in the shadow of this big, boisterous, great player, Ted Williams, who was the face of the organization. I’m not so sure Yaz ever got over that. I don’t know. That’s something he’d have to answer. That’s just my impression of it. I don’t think they disliked each other. But I don’t think they were the best of friends, either.

  Jim Rice is great man, a Hall of Famer. This guy played every single day. In 1978 he played 163 games because of the tie-breaker game vs. the Yankees. Jimmy was quiet. He had a rocky relationship with the media. All he wanted to do was play baseball. He didn’t want to deal with anything but baseball. Another guy who wasn’t a clubhouse leader or a chat-’em-up kind of guy. He just came in, put his uniform on every day, and played his ass off. There were days that he should’ve never been playing but he played. He played all the time.

  Terry Francona, Jim Rice, and I at an event in 2008. (AP Images)

  He was a li
ttle difficult to get to know. I got to know him, and I get along very, very well with him. I think there was some jealousy between him and Fred Lynn. They were called the Gold Dust Twins when they came up in 1975 and Fred wound up winning the Rookie of the Year and the MVP of the American League, while Jimmy also had a great season but suffered a broken hand in September. I think that bothered him a lot. I really do. I can’t say that he and Fred were close. I think Jimmy tolerated him. Jimmy’s a different guy now than he was when he played. He’s much more talkative now. He’s much friendlier. I really believe that the big thing that was lifted off his shoulder was when he got into the Hall of Fame. I’ve noticed a difference in him: his personality, his style, his friendliness. I think he went all those years not believing that he was getting into the Hall of Fame. Then he finally got in on his 15th and final year of eligibility. It was like taking a load off his shoulders.

  I remember doing an interview with him the day that he got elected and he was ecstatic. I’ve never seen him so happy in my life. He learned how to play the Green Monster. He played it great. In 1978, he was the best player in the league. He just did everything for us. We knew when he came to the plate that he was going to be the guy and he was going to get it done. You just had so much confidence in him.

  For some reason, we hit it off. I don’t know why. I have no idea why. I think he liked the way I played. I think he liked the way I went about my business. He liked me. To this day, we get along terrific.

  He was naturally strong. He was the kind of guy that when we went down to take physicals prior to the season, he wouldn’t even bother. He’d just go out there and play. That’s all he wanted to do. All this other crap that we did, he didn’t want any part of that stuff. I don’t think he ever lifted a weight in his life. He was pretty special. I can’t rank these guys. It was just a pleasure for me to be on the same team with both those guys, Yaz and Jimmy, to watch how both of them went about their business.

  Rice was a lot like J.D. Martinez—power the other way. He wasn’t the same type of hitter as J.D., who was more of an inside-out hitter. Jimmy was more of a wrist hitter. He’d flip those wrists and he’s so strong it would just be a flick of the wrist and boom, the ball would go miles. A lot of times, Jimmy’s hits to the opposite field were a mistake to him. He was so damn strong that he’d get jammed and he’d hit a line drive to the opposite field. J.D. is more of an inside-out hitter thinking the opposite field. I’m not sure Jim thought that way. I think a lot of his ability was just natural ability. His wrists were so strong and so quick. I think that’s how he got things done.

  At the end of his career, Jimmy had trouble with his eyes. His eyes were always a problem for him, but as he got older they became more of a problem for him. He was always getting his eyes examined. His decline was fairly rapid, and I think his eyes had a lot to do with it. But not too many guys ever did it better than him. He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

  6. 2004: My Favorite Team

  My favorite team of all time was the 2004 team. They were a little bit off center, but they did something here that nobody else could ever do—at least not for 86 years. They won it all. They were a great bunch of guys to be around, they were fun, and they enjoyed baseball. Fenway Park and Boston didn’t intimidate those guys like a lot of teams get intimidated playing here.

  They had so many characters on that club, like Johnny Damon, Kevin Millar, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, and Bronson Arroyo. They had really serious guys like Bill Mueller, Mark Bellhorn, Jason Varitek, Trot Nixon, and Curt Schilling. They had a manager in Terry Francona who simply had the right touch and the patience to handle a group like that.

  This wasn’t a team that breezed through anything. They finished second in the American League East with 98 wins, three games behind the Yankees, who won 101 games. They had to win it all from the wild card position, which meant no home-field advantage. They had to make a major trade at the deadline that year, parting with the beloved Nomar Garciaparra. But the deals that brought back Orlando Cabrera, Doug Mientkiewicz, and Dave Roberts were really the trigger to the remainder of the season which enabled them to win it all.

  What’s lost is that they swept the Angels in the divisional series in three games. Nobody even mentioned that because what was to come was the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen in sports. It was a pretty special group because they had the ability, the mental strength to come back from an 0–3 deficit against the Yankees in the ALCS. It was the greatest comeback in sports. At least in my mind it was. You go from really having no hope after you’d lost Game 3 by the score of 19–8 and thinking a sweep was on the way, to feeling the euphoria of coming back to win Game 4. And suddenly you could almost feel the groundswell of a comeback. Oh, c’mon, nobody thought they could win four straight against the Yankees and get to the World Series, but then game after game, win after win, it all just started to fit, and you’d say, “My god, could this really happen?”

  I remember doing the postgame show on NESN and saying at that time that if they went on to win the World Series it was going to be the biggest parade anyone had seen in their life, and it was. That parade was just absolutely incredible. I was on a duck boat and the crowd noise was deafening. I don’t know how many people were there along the route. I have no clue. But I’ve never seen anything like that before and likely never will again.

  This was a team that kind of bridged generations of people. There were people who lived and died never seeing a Red Sox team win a championship. Think about that. We were indeed cursed. The Curse of the Bambino was real. It lived in all of us. When they finally won it, there were so many heartwarming stories about how an elderly person got to experience a world championship on their deathbed. There were fans who went to the gravesites of their deceased loved ones and put Red Sox banners on them. The night they completed a sweep of the Cardinals in the World Series, there were thousands of people in the streets of Boston just ecstatic over what they had experienced.

  I had chills down my spine because I understood so well what this feeling was, not only as a kid growing up here but as a player who experienced the heartbreak of 1978. And just like that team that I thought should’ve won it all, the 1986 team should have, too, marred by the infamous ball going through Bill Buckner’s legs against the Mets in Game 6.

  All of that stuff came to everyone’s mind on that night. The World Series was almost icing on the cake. It was almost melodramatic because the ALCS was mind-blowing.

  The Red Sox had won the season series 11–8, but the Yankees managed to beat Pedro twice in September. It was just one year after Grady Little left Pedro in too long and Aaron Boone hit the walkoff homer against Tim Wakefield to eliminate Boston in the ALCS in seven games.

  The Yankees won the first two games at home, again beating Martinez in Game 2, 3–1. Yankees fans were having fun with Pedro’s famous “Who’s Your Daddy?” quote. The Yankees just pounded us 19–8 in Game 3 at Fenway Park, and there was absolutely no reason to think we’d even win a game much less the series. No team had ever come back from 0–3.

  Until this one.

  Francona kept telling the guys that all they needed to focus on was the next pitch. So, on October 17, 2004, the historic run began.

  The Yankees were ahead 4–3 in the bottom of the ninth. They were about to humiliate and embarrass the “Idiots.” The greatest reliever of all time, Mariano Rivera, was on the mound.

  Which is why what was about to happen was so special.

  It all began when Rivera walked Millar. It was really a great at-bat and very patient of Millar to stay back and see the ball into the mitt. That’s when Francona called upon Dave Roberts to come into the game and pinch-run for Millar. Roberts had been a nice trade deadline acquisition for the Red Sox, who needed speed in that lineup. Being a speed guy myself, I watched Roberts closely the rest of the season. He was really an outstanding base runner. I know Dave repeated a line t
hat the great Maury Wills often told him: “There’s going to come a time when you have to do something great. You have to put yourself out there and go for it.”

  This seemed to be that moment.

  David Ortiz’s walkoff home run against the Yankees in Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS. (AP Images)

  Rivera threw over to first a few times and Roberts was actually almost picked off once. But Roberts had him sized up pretty well. He took off and just beat Jorge Posada’s throw. At the time you thought, “Wow, that was a great play,” but it became a greater play considering what it began and what it came to mean.

  Mueller singled, driving in Roberts with the tying score and forcing extra innings. With the game about five hours old, Ortiz homered off Paul Quantrill in the bottom of the 12th and it kept the Red Sox alive. Remarkably.

  Game 5 was similar to Game 4. Rivera was not on one of his better streaks and blew another 4–3 lead. Roberts again scored, this time on a Jason Varitek sacrifice fly, to tie it up. The game dragged on into the 14th inning. Big Papi was again the hero with a walkoff single against Esteban Loaiza, which scored Damon.

  I remember feeling curious about the Yankees’ offensive strategy in the eighth inning. They had a 4–2 lead. Miguel Cairo had doubled to lead off the inning against Mike Timlin. Then Derek Jeter bunts him to third. I get trying to advance the runner. But this is Jeter. He’s bunting? Alex Rodriguez was up next, so you figure, okay, it’s going to be 5–2, but A-Rod didn’t do very well in that series. Timlin struck him out and the Yankees didn’t score.

  Then in the ninth inning of Game 5, I felt the Red Sox got a huge break when Tony Clark hit a ground-rule double into the right-field corner with Ruben Sierra on first. How that ball made it into the stands is beyond me. Even Clark, now the executive director of the players’ association, talks about the bad luck the Yankees had. If it hadn’t gone over that wall, Sierra would have scored, and New York would have taken the lead.