So the Boston Red Sox did what they were supposed to do last night, closing out the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games behind a maligned pitcher who found his mojo and a journeyman slugger, and there was joy unbridled in New England and everywhere overdogs are celebrated.
The Red Sox won 108 games this season and were thus the overwhelming favorite to do what they did, but it was a triumph leavened with irony: The overdogs were led by an underdog, 35-year-old Steve Pearce, who hit three home runs in the Series and was proclaimed its MVP. A man untouched by the limelight the Red Sox have been basking in for 15 years, he's played for eight Major League teams in his career. If he was the MVP of anything in all that time, it was the waiver wire.
And now fame has touched him, much as it did journeyman David Ross two Octobers ago. A Cinderella story in the midst of an anti-Cinderella story, and a storyline worth the telling at last in this Series.
Here's another one: The tongue-in-cheek headline that ran in the Detroit Free Press after the Red Sox closed out the Dodgers.
They Did It! 2014 Detroit Tigers Finally Win World Series!, it read.
This is because, in an age of continual player movement, what goes around eventually comes around for pretty much everyone. Steve Pearce knows that this morning, as a former Yankee (among many others) celebrating as a World Series MVP for the rival Red Sox. And, yes, the Tigers get a piece of it, too, puckishly pointing out that the Red Sox heroes included a liberal sprinkling of 2014 Tigers.
That would include Price, who won two games in this Series, including the clincher. It would include Rick Porcello, another Red Sox starter who won 17 games and struck out 190 batters for the Red Sox this season. It would include second baseman Ian Kinsler. And it would include J.D. Martinez, the anchor bat in the Red Sox lineup, and who along with Pearce and Mookie Betts powered the clinching 5-1 win with homers.
So, yeah. Go Tigers!
And Red Sox. Them, too.
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