Three of a Kind

BY IAN TASSO
EDITORIAL - PHOTOS BY AP NEWS


He held his hat towards the sky as his teammates hoisted him on their shoulders, beaming at the crowd, the phrase “2003 World Champions” glowing on the scoreboard in the background.

There he sat, both fists held high in the air as the cheers poured on him from the stands. He was only a sophomore in the league, having appeared in just 50 major league games before now. But more importantly for the 23-year-old Josh Beckett, he was a World Series champion, creating history with his fingertips.


Or rather, reenacting it.


That’s because just one year earlier, Beckett himself watched as a fan of baseball – a fan of history - while a flurry of firework explosions sent John Lackey, a 24-year-old Angels’ rookie, charging towards the pitcher’s mound with both fingers pointed to the sky, his glove a long-gone afterthought as it soared through the air.


And as the deafening cheers drowned out the booming red and white pyrotechnics, Lackey himself joined more than just his teammates in a jubilant mob on the pitchers mound – he had joined Babe Adams of the 1909 Pittsburgh Pirates as the only rookie in baseball history to start, and win, game 7 of a World Series.


And Beckett had seen it all.

“I knew he was from Texas, so that was kind of cool to me,” said Beckett of watching his new teammate win the final game of the 2002 World Series. “I think earlier on in life, you always dream about that situation. That was my first full year in the big leagues was the year he did that. So obviously I watched the World Series and I watched all the playoffs and everything - and it came true in 2003.”

And just four short years after Beckett pumped his fists into the cold October air, the Van Goh of baseball history was at it again, painting yet another portrait of historical scenery – this time for a 23-year-old Tacoma, Wash. native, named Jon Lester.

After a 10-month-long battle with a rare form of Lymphoma, a blood cancer, Lester was back on the mound, this time with a chance at history. Unfortunately for Lester though, his quest for that history would be cut short, as after issuing a sixth inning walk to Colorado’s Garret Atkins, the young lefty was forced to hand over the baseball to skipper Terry Francona, and his shot at history over to his teammates..

Lester, like Lackey five years before him, then tipped his cap to the crowd, he joined teammate Josh Beckett on the Boston bench, to do the only thing left for him to do – sit and watch.

“Everybody in our dugout kind of knew where he had come from that year,” said Beckett. “We wanted to get that done that day, because of that.”

And they did.

After Lester had exited the game midway through the sixth inning, the Boston bullpen took over baseball’s biggest stage, slamming the door on the Colorado Rockies. And as Seth Smith desperately hacked at strike three, Jonathan Papelbon launched his glove into the air, sending the Red Sox dugout along with the entire city of Boston into a frenzy.

Lester then took the cue from his closer, and sprinted onto the field, embracing his teammates as not just a young and talented pitcher, but as a cancer survivor and a World Champion.

“The more playoff experience you have, it just adds coals to that fire,” said Lester. “It’s awesome. It’s something like I said, that if [Beckett, Lackey and myself] get back into that situation, we can draw from it and realize, hey, we’ve been in this spot before, and we’ve all succeeded.”

And the quest to return to that stage starts now, as three World Series champions who were previously linked together only in the history books, now come together in one rotation.

It’s a rotation that has a chance to be one of the best in the game, featuring three of baseball’s premier pitchers. It’s also a rotation that will no doubt contribute heavily to the outcome of the American League’s fiercest division. But more importantly to Red Sox pitching coach John Farrell, it’s a rotation that features three warriors - three champions - of winter baseball.

“It means they’ve grabbed the spotlight at that time of year,” said Farrell of his three ace-caliber pitchers. “I think it’s just great to be involved with three guys that have pitched at that level, and it’s got a chance to be a very talented group. They’re guys that love the game, they love to compete, they know the routine - and the fact that you can hopefully count on three guys and 600 innings, that’s a huge chunk and a foundation to build form.”

And build from it the Red Sox have, as after highlighting the 2010 offseason with the signing of Lackey, Boston filled in the gaps by reeling in two multiple gold-glove winners in Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron. And after inking defensive specialist Marco Scutaro, the Red Sox front office has made one thing clear – they’ve supplied their guns with the ammo.

Now it’s just a matter of pulling the trigger – and aiming steady.

“It’s the pride factor, man,” said Lackey, who tossed six innings of shutout baseball in his Red Sox debut. “When you go out there, you want to perform well, you want to do well. You’re a professional, you want to do your job the right well.

And as any professional knows, you’re only as valuable to your business as your most recent job.

As a result, those individual World Series wins? Things of the past. All of them.

“It’s cool, don’t get me wrong, it is cool,” said Lester of his two partners and their shared World Series experiences. “But it’s not something that, when Lackey signed, I sat at my house and was like, ‘oh, wow, all three of us,’ you know. It is cool, people have brought it up, and he is part of this team now, but no, it’s not something that we sit around and talk about.”

But perhaps in a few months time, that will all change.

Perhaps come next November, the three of them will finally have a World Series experience to talk about.