September 25, 2004: Red Sox beat Yankees with seven-run eighth inning

Through September 22, the Boston Red Sox had narrowed the New York Yankees’ lead in the 2004 American League East race from 10½ games on August 15 to 3½ games. Two days later, however, the Red Sox were 5½ games out with nine to play, after losses to the Baltimore Orioles and Yankees.1 The Red Sox’ postseason hopes likely depended on clinching the AL’s wild-card spot. Every game mattered: Boston had just two more wins than the Minnesota Twins and three more than the Oakland A’s.

The Saturday evening game on September 25 saw the Red Sox and Yankees battle back and forth through the first seven innings until Boston’s batters blew it open in the bottom of the eighth.

Tim Wakefield started for Boston. In his 10th year with the Red Sox, Wakefield was in his second season as a full-time starting pitcher again.2 The 37-year-old knuckleballer had been 11-7 at the end of August but lost his next three decisions. His ERA had jumped from 4.38 to 4.96.

Yankees manager Joe Torre had right-hander Javier Vázquez start for the Yankees. In his seventh major-league season, and his first for the Yankees, Vázquez made the AL All-Star team, but had struggled in the season’s second half. His ERA had been 6.88 since the All-Star break,3 and three losses in his last four decisions had dropped his record to 14-10 with a 4.77 ERA.

Neither pitcher gave up a run in the first inning. All three Yankees to bat – Derek Jeter, Álex Rodríguez, and Gary Sheffield – popped up to Red Sox catcher Doug Mirabelli. The first two were foul; the third was caught in fair territory. “I’ve never done that before,” said Mirabelli, who started behind the plate for the 29th time in Wakefield’s 29 starts. “I’ve never even seen that before.”4 The only Red Sox batter to reach base was second baseman Mark Bellhorn, who drew a one-out walk in the bottom of the inning.

New York left fielder Hideki Matsui jumped on a 1-and-0 pitch leading off the second inning and hit his 28th home run of the year into the Red Sox bullpen in right field. The Red Sox came back with a run of their own in the bottom of the inning. With one out, right fielder Trot Nixon singled to left. Mirabelli was hit by a pitch. With shortstop Orlando Cabrera at the plate, a wild pitch let Nixon take third base. Cabrera hit a sacrifice fly to center, and it was 1-1.

No one reached base for either team in the third inning.

In the top of the fourth, Yankees third baseman Rodríguez popped up in fair territory, just behind first baseman Kevin Millar, who backpedaled and then had the ball tip off his glove. A-Rod reached first on the error and moved to second on Matsui’s one-out walk. DH Bernie Williams grounded out down the first-base line; Millar made the play unassisted, but the runners took second and third. Catcher Jorge Posada drove them both in with a double that struck a little more than halfway up the wall in left-center. It was 3-1, Yankees. First baseman John Olerud popped up foul, another one caught by Mirabelli.

Once again, the Red Sox promptly retied the score. Millar drew a one-out walk. Nixon struck out, but Mirabelli – who had homered and doubled against Vázquez on April 16 at Fenway Park – hit a two-run homer into the first row or two of the bleachers in straightaway center field. Mirabelli’s ninth homer of the season made it a 3-3 game.

Wakefield hit the first batter he faced in the fifth, but Kenny Lofton flied out to center and Derek Jeter hit into a 4-6-3 double play. In the bottom of the fifth inning, the Red Sox edged in front by a pair of runs. With one out, Bellhorn doubled to center and held at third on Manny Ramírez’s single to left. David Ortiz singled to left, producing the inning’s first run. One out later, Nixon lined a single into center and Ramírez scored. Torre made a move and called on Tanyon Sturtze to relieve Vázquez. Mirabelli was hit by a pitch again, but Cabrera flied out to right field. The Red Sox had taken a 5-3 lead.

The Yankees wasted no time drawing even again. With one out in the sixth, right fielder Sheffield reached on a hard-hit infield single to a diving Bill Mueller at third base. Matsui grounded into a force play, Sheffield out at second base. Bernie Williams walked. Posada doubled again, right down the line in right field. A fan reached out and interfered with the ball, so it was ruled a two-base hit, both Matsui and Williams scored, and it was 5-5.5

The bullpens kept the tie until the bottom of the eighth. After Sturze pitched a clean sixth, the Red Sox loaded the bases with one out against Sturze and Félix Heredia in the seventh, but veteran righty Paul Quantrill got out of the jam with a pop fly to short and a groundout to third base.6

Red Sox manager Terry Francona had Curtis Leskanic relieve Wakefield with one on and one out in the seventh, and Jeter hit into a 6-4-3 double play to end the inning. Leskanic alternated outs and walks in the top of the eighth. Keith Foulke came in to try to settle things down and not allow the Yankees to edge ahead. On Foulke’s second pitch, Posada grounded out to first base unassisted.

Quantrill was still on the mound in the bottom of the eighth. With one out, Johnny Damon singled over the second baseman and into right. He stole second, and Bellhorn walked on the next pitch – his 86th walk of the season. On the first pitch to him, Ramírez doubled off the center-field wall and drove in Damon, giving the Red Sox a 6-5 lead. Pinch-runner Pokey Reese took third.

Quantrill walked Ortiz intentionally to load the bases, then gave way to lefty C.J. Nitkowski. Doug Mientkiewicz had run for Millar in the seventh and remained in the game at first. Francona pulled back the left-handed-swinging Mientkiewicz for righty pinch-hitter Jason Varitek. Varitek, with just four hits in his last 39 at-bats, came through with a ground-rule double that bounced into the right-field seats, to add two more runs and push the lead to 8-5.

After Nixon was hit by a pitch, again loading the bases, rookie Scott Proctor was brought in from the Yankees bullpen. It was his first year in the big leagues, but his 24th appearance.7

Mirabelli doubled off the wall in the left-field corner, driving in two of the runners Proctor had inherited and giving the Red Sox catcher four RBIs for the game. Cabrera hit a sacrifice fly to left and the Red Sox added another run. Mueller – who had led off the inning with a strikeout –singled to center to make it 12-5, with Boston’s seventh run of the eighth.

Foulke had yielded ninth-inning home runs in each of his last three appearances.8 This time he was staked to a comfortable lead. Foulke induced a groundout and then two outfield flies. The game was over. The Fenway Park faithful had seen the hometown team blow the game open and pick up another game in the race. Both the Twins and the Athletics lost, helping with wild-card contention. 

The Red Sox were in a bit of scoring burst. They had scored seven runs to close out this game. They scored seven more runs the next afternoon before the Yankees even got on the board. The season ended with the Red Sox winning 11 of their 19 games against New York (the first year since 1999 that they had won a season series against New York) and perhaps providing a bit of confidence that the Yankees could be beaten.

The Yankees did win the AL East for the seventh consecutive season. With wins in 2005 and 2006, it was a streak they stretched to nine seasons. They won the World Series in each of the first three of those seasons (1998-2000) but were unable to do so again until 2009. 

This Red Sox team ultimately stood in the way of the Yankees reaching the 2004 Series. When the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, it was their first World Series win in 86 years.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Carl Riechers and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Manny Ramírez, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and YouTube.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS200409250.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2004/B09250BOS2004.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz8n9RFh_Os

Notes

1 The Red Sox had lost three games in a row to the Yankees – on the 18th, 19th, and 24th. The losses on the 19th and 24th were both charged to, Pedro Martínez, who declared, “What can I say? I just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy. I can’t find a way to beat them at this point. You just have to give them credit and say, ‘Hey, you guys beat me, not my team.’ I wish they would [expletive] disappear and never come back.” Dan Shaughnessy, “He’s Just a Babe in These Woods,” Boston Globe, September 25, 2004: E1. Martínez faced the Yankees twice more in 2004, losing Game Two of the ALCS 3-1, and giving up four runs in six innings in Game Five, a game the Red Sox won in 14 innings.

2 Wakefield had begun his career as an infielder in the the Pittsburgh Pirates minor-league organization. After becoming a pitcher and developing skill as a knuckleballer, he had started 13 games for the Pirates in 1992 and gone 8-1. He had been a starting pitcher for the Red Sox in his first four seasons with Boston, then mixed starting and relieving from 1999 through 2002, with 15 or more starts each year mixed in with an average of just over 30 relief appearances each year.

3 Tyler Kepner, “Relievers Are Lucky the Yankees Didn’t Need This Game,” New York Times, September 26, 2004: SP1.

4 Bob Ryan, “Backup Keeps Popping Up,” Boston Globe, September 26, 2004: C1, C6. 

5 The call was discretionary, made by first-base umpire Jim Wolf. Terry Francona argued to the point that he was ejected from the game. Bob Hohler, “Foulke, Wakefield Are Happy to Pitch In,” Boston Globe, September 26, 2004: C7.

6 Quantrill, too, had struggled since the All-Star break, with an ERA of 7.23. Kepner.

7 Proctor was 1-1 with a 5.24 ERA. He had two holds. The Yankees would likely have preferred to go to Tom Gordon but he had worked two innings just the night before – allowing the Red Sox just one hit and earning a win.

8 After the game, Foulke said “It was nice to … have a little room to work and try to work out of this funk. … It’s one of those things where I need to get back out there and get my mechanics in order and start to get a lot more people out.” Hohler.