Original subtitles

Welcome back to the baseball show on the WEI

Sports Radio Network and Comcast Sportsnet.

It's Mike Felger, Lou Maloney, Steve Buckley here in the studio in Burlington.

But they think so highly of this young kid that...

They could have gotten Santana if they wanted.

They could have gotten... Would they drop him in the order?

I don't know.

I'm not sure I would do that, but that might be the next step.

You gotta be crazy or the most arrogant person's going.

They look never tested positive, but he makes everyone in that lineup better.

They're impressed to do that, you know.

There were a couple of times over the weekend in

particular, he looked very slow on a fastball.

I just think he's present right now.

John, we've been talking about this throughout the course of the day.

Red Sox starting pitching.

It seems to me, with the Red Sox in first place... That's crazy.

...as May is about to turn into June, worrying or complaining about whatever you

think the Red Sox issue is... Come on in, Harry.

Thank you very much.

Here's the pitch.

It's a slow curve line.

It's a big swing.

It's a long one.

A long one going out for it right now.

...the pitch is in.

...abami, 74 degrees, and the wind is blowing

dead out over the green monster in left field.

...long drive left field.

If it stays there, it's gone.

Home run!

The Red Sox win!

And the series is tied!

I sometimes sit and stare out the window thinking, what could I have done with my

life had I not spent all this time on the Red Sox?

Might I have completed this novel I've been working on for 25 years?

Might I not have done something else?

But what it becomes in the end is like raising your children.

If you raise them well, and they love you, and you love them back, at the end of the

day, you know that when you leave this life,

your children won't be thinking about you.

They'll be thinking about, you know, oh, what

a great column you wrote in October of 1972.

They'll be thinking about the time they spent with you as a father.

That's how I think about the Red Sox.

The time that I spent with the Red Sox.

This is NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.

Good evening.

There's never been a time quite like this

one, with so many people making so much money.

1999 will go down as the year of the high-tech, high-flyers, with stock prices

going from pocket change to hundreds of dollars in a heartbeat, and staying there.

But will this continue into the 21st century?

As the last baseball season of the 20th century began, the country and its

national pastime were thriving as never before.

In the five years since the crippling strike of

1994, the game had bounced back spectacularly.

Insiders and casual fans alike felt they were watching some of the greatest players

and some of the greatest plays the sport had ever seen.

Yet just as the game seemed to have entered a new golden age, suspicions grew

that many of the best players were using performance-enhancing drugs, that

steroid-inflated home-run records had replaced day-to-day heroics, that greed

had trumped loyalty, that only money and success, not character, mattered.

But at a time when America seemed most threatened, baseball provided a welcome

distraction, and offered the hope, at least for

a few hours, that things could return to normal.

At a time of ever-increasing offense, a

handful of pitchers still managed to dominate.

And a skinny singles hitter from the other side of the world

electrified fans with his elegant mastery of the old game.

And at a time when winning was all that mattered in America, baseball,

with its failures and disappointments, reminded

the nation that loss, is often the best teacher.

Through it all, the game continued to astonish, to rise above its own scandals,

and to reflect in good times and bad, the complicated country that had created it.

I've always loved the game from the time I was little, and I'll always love the game.

And nothing can tear me from the game.

There's something about what happens on the field that's like a kind of poetry.

It's like a kind of ballet.

The remarkable thing about the game is how beautiful it is,

despite all the ugliness that may be around it at times.

It's just a beautiful thing.

When you watch Pedro, it was almost poignant in a

way that someone that small could throw that hard.

Most great pitchers, you look at them, and they all have one great strikeout pitch.

If he counts 0 and 2, or if he even counts 3 and

2, he always has one place to go to to get you out.

Well, Pedro Martinez had three places to get you out.

It was the fastball, it was the changeup, and it was the curveball.

They were all the best pitches of their kind in baseball at the time.

And he could put them anywhere that he wanted.

Pedro Martinez had been born into a family of

pitchers in Managuaibo in the Dominican Republic.

But because of his slight frame, scouts worried that he would not be able

to withstand the punishment of pitching in the majors.

Martinez ignored them all, and made himself into

one of the greatest players the game had ever seen.

Swing and a miss, he struck him out!

15 strikeouts for Martinez!

In the 1999 All-Star Game, Martinez struck out five of baseball's best hitters.

Barry Larkin, Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire, and Jeff Bagwell.

A performance reminiscent of Carl Hubbell's in the 1934 All-Star Game.

He was the master of pitching inside, giving him a

distinct psychological edge over opposing hitters.

First of all, I'm confident.

And a lot of people misjudge that.

People might say he's cocky.

I'm fearless, intense.

Some people might say he's mean.

And sometimes, since I'm so intense, I'll strike you out, keep on looking at you.

Because baseball has a little bit of psychology in it.

If you see a guy frustrated with a changeup,

you have to continue to throw a changeup.

If you can't hit a changeup, I'm sorry.

You're going to see it again.

Between 1997 and 2003, he would post an earned run

average of 2.20 when the league average was above 5.

Twice, strike out more than 300 batters and win three Cy Young Awards.

For four years, he had no-hit stuff every night.

Every time he went onto the mound, there was a

chance that he was going to throw a no-hitter.

Pitching coaches will tell you that the differential between your fastball and

your changeup should be somewhere around 10 to 12 miles an hour on average.

Pedro, at his best, his differential between his fastball

and his changeup was 16 miles an hour, which was criminal.

It's unhittable.

There's no way that you can expect a 98-mile-an-hour

fastball and adjust to an 82-mile-an-hour changeup.

He was remarkable.

When everything clicks for you, you just feel right on top of everybody.

You look at A-Rod or Jeter or anybody, and just, I'm going to blow you away.

And you're gone.

Pedro Martinez was not alone.

Tom Glavin and Greg Maddux of the Braves would together win 660 games.

Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees would save nearly as many.

He was the most successful striker of all time.

In the postseason, he had no equal.

In 88 appearances, his ERA was an extraordinary 0.74.

Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks was the most intimidating left-handed

pitcher ever, striking out nearly 5,000 batters in 22 seasons.

He struck him out!

He's got 20!

Roger Clemens, a hard-throwing right-hander,

was every bit as fierce as Johnson.

For 13 years, he had been the exalted star of the Red Sox pitching staff,

winning 20 games in three different seasons and regularly

finishing among the league leaders in ERA and strikeouts.

But in 1996, the team decided to let him go, explaining to disappointed fans that

the 34-year-old Clemens, like most pitchers his age, was in the twilight of his career.

Indignant, Clemens signed with Toronto and began training with one of the team's

strength coaches, former New York City policeman Brian McNamee, who would prove

willing to do whatever Clemens asked to enable

the pitcher to hurl fastballs all season long.

Traded to the Yankees in 1999, he remained one of the most imposing

pitchers in the game, nearly as dominant in his late

30s and early 40s as he had been 20 years before.

Roger Clemens would eventually receive a record seven Cy Young awards.

We can forget about the debate between

Walter Johnson and Cy Young and Lefty Grove.

The greatest pitcher in the history of baseball is Roger Clemens.

Now, there are many, many great pitchers, but no one has ever done what Roger did.

And there's the freak show accomplishment, there's

20 strikeouts in a game, twice, 10 years apart.

This is a superhuman critter.

Baseball is something that makes me who I am.

The Wolf's Child is something that makes you who you think you are.

That's how I see it.

Ichiro Suzuki was born in Aichi, Japan, the son of a factory manager whose

philosophy of life was based on four guiding principles.

Harmony, patience, effort, and fighting spirit.

The only way to succeed, he once said, is to suffer and persevere.

From the time Ichiro was nine, his father drilled him in batting and

fielding, two to three hours every day, even when freezing

temperatures left his hands too numb to grip a bat.

A natural right-hander, Ichiro learned to hit from the left side of the plate so he

could begin each at-bat, two steps closer to first base.

Under his father's tutelage, he developed an unorthodox hitting style that allowed

him to put the full weight of his body behind each swing.

Your swing is different from the basics, so I was told to do it this way.

My coach taught me a lot of things, but if I say, you're

hitting better than anyone else, he would keep quiet.

I didn't learn the form, but I built it with my body.

At 18, Ichiro made his debut with the Oryx Blue Wave of Japan's Pacific League.

He would go on to win seven consecutive batting

titles and become Japan's highest-paid player.

Having reached the pinnacle of the Japanese game, he was determined to find

out if he could compete in America against the best in the world.

But most scouts doubted that Ichiro, with his slender frame and unusual batting

stance, would be able to handle big league pitching.

Ten Japanese pitchers had already come to the United States, but no Japanese

position player had ever appeared in the majors.

Then, in 2000, the Japanese-owned Seattle Mariners decided to sign him anyway,

hoping Ichiro would attract a lot of fans.

This led to a large following among Asian Americans living in the Pacific Northwest.

In an era filled with home runs, Ichiro was a revelation.

Slapping the ball in every direction, beating

out infield hits, flying around the bases.

He was a 21st-century throwback to earlier generations of stars like Wee Willie

Keeler, George Sisler, Ty Cobb, and the fast-moving,

fast-thinking stars of the Negro Leagues.

American fans embraced him immediately.

I think he represents a counterpoint to a lot of what was out there.

Because this was in the midst of a bludgeon ball era in baseball.

And here's this wiry little guy spraying base

hits everywhere, beating out infield choppers.

Playing this sort of cerebral game was so different from the prevailing culture of

the sport that I think it made it even more appealing.

He had to make the perfect pitch to get him.

And he's gonna make you throw pitches too, which we hate.

Pitchers hate to throw more pitches than they should.

And even if you get him to hit the ball the wrong

way, he's got such great speed that you never know.

He might break his bat.

And still, he gets a base hit.

And Ichiro is one of those.

That throw, a Seattle reporter wrote, needs to be framed

and hung on the wall at the Louvre, next to the Mona Lisa.

Japanese newspapers and television stations dispatched hundreds of reporters

to send back news of his every move to a nation

eager for any information about their hero.

Ichiro, his prime minister declared, makes me proud to be Japanese.

Ichiro finished his first season leading the American League in at-bats,

hits, batting average, and stolen bases.

Won a Gold Glove Award and was voted Rookie of the Year and MVP.

It would be his first of nine consecutive 200-hit seasons, breaking a record set by

Wee Willie Keeler a century earlier, in 1901.

Other big league clubs were now eager to sign the next Ichiro.

That's the great thing about globalization, that people can take this

thing that you played with and invented and maybe to

some degree spoiled with whatever's going on here.

And it can go to an entirely different place and be recreated

and regrown as if it's a hybrid flower of some kind.

And then come back and show you the game maybe in a different way and maybe in a

way it used to be that you hadn't thought of in a long time.

And I think that's something really beautiful.

I have, still, two gloves that I've carded across all the years.

And I have them for a purpose.

One selfish, one familial.

The selfish reason is I love them.

I love them because they remind me of what I was when I was a kid.

And they allow me to still be a kid when I hold the gloves.

I can still see my parents.

I can still see the apartment we lived in.

All of those things.

The familial reason is that my kids, like a lot of

kids today, have an excess of things, material things.

A bad day for them is they lose an iPod.

But my boys who played baseball, when they were 12, 13 or 14, they would

occasionally come to me and say, Dad, I can't find my stuff.

I can't find my catcher's equipment.

Do you know where my bats went?

And I'd go get one of the gloves and I'd say, I'd hold it up and I'd say,

I've had this since 1954.

I know where this is.

Go find your stuff and don't lose it.

In 1999, a 34-year-old Barry Bonds had arrived

at spring training with a brand new physique.

The previous summer, he'd watched in frustration as fans cheered Mark McGuire

and Sammy Sosa for hitting home runs while ignoring

his own all-around contributions to the game.

Determined to outdo them both, he had put on 20 pounds of muscle in the off season.

Bonds had eight cold gloves, eight All-Star appearances, three MVP awards.

He should have had a fourth.

They gave it to a less obnoxious player just to punish him.

He had more than 400 home runs, more than 400 stolen bases.

He was a Hall of Fame player.

And then that wasn't good enough.

Bonds hit home runs more frequently that year than he ever had before.

But sidelined by injuries, he appeared in only 102 games.

In 2000, the Giants moved to their new home near downtown San Francisco,

Pac Bell Park.

3.3 million people paid to watch Bonds that summer, more than

had ever come out to see the club in its 115-year history.

He finished the season with a career-best 49 home runs

and propelled the Giants to the top of their division.

At his age, he was supposed to be declining and he just kept getting better.

And better and better.

All the different things that Barry Bonds did, he was playing at another level.

He was playing a different sport.

Barry Bonds, incredible eye at the plate.

Incredible discipline at the plate.

And also, intelligent.

Tremendous memory of how they got him out or how he hit it and what to anticipate.

And hitting, guessing is no good.

But anticipating, is great.

Off the field, Bonds worked hard to improve his

image, telling San Francisco fans, I love you.

You're beautiful.

On opening day 2001, Bonds slammed a 420-foot home run.

By the All-Star break, he had hit 39 and was on a pace to break the single-season

record of 70 that Mark McGuire had said would never be broken.

Bonds was so masterful at the plate that many teams

decided it was simply safer to pitch around him.

I remember thinking, this is the most feared hitter who ever lived.

Teams have never avoided a hitter like they have Barry Bonds.

Not Ted Williams, not Babe Ruth, not Joe DiMaggio.

And then when there was that one pitch that happened

to be in the strike zone, he didn't miss it.

In baseball, you had Bonds and everybody else.

Bonds had a sensational summer.

The thing that goes through your mind mostly

is, what's going to happen if it's over today?

You think about that more than, you know, what's happening at this point in time now.

Are you a wonderful person because you hit a bunch of home

runs, or are you an evil person because you don't do it?

On Sunday, September 9, 2001, in Denver, he slammed a 420-foot home run and slammed

a 488-foot shot in the first inning, a solo home

run in the fifth, and a three-run blast in the 11th.

He now had 63.

It was a big shot.

It was a very large play.

It crashed into the top of the tower.

I woke up the morning of September 11.

I had an appearance in Manhattan, waiting for a car service to pick me up.

My phone rings.

It's the car service saying, you still going?

I said, yeah, why?

I hadn't turned the TV on.

They said, well, a plane flew into the World Trade Center.

Well, I turned on the TV, and then the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

The last thing on your mind is baseball at this point in time.

Thanks very much, Dan.

It has completely collapsed.

The whole site has collapsed?

The whole building has collapsed.

The whole building has collapsed?

The whole building has collapsed.

The building has collapsed.

The tragedy was too great to comprehend.

The country was in shock.

No one knew what was going to happen next.

Planes were grounded.

Schools and businesses were closed.

The financial markets shut down.

Major League Baseball canceled all games indefinitely.

Over the next few days, the nation slowly began to regroup.

Thousands made their way to New York to help search the rubble for survivors.

Only a handful were found.

They're still trying to find people, Derek Jeter, a resident of Manhattan, said.

I really don't think it's the right time to play baseball.

On Friday, September 14th, Commissioner Bud Selig announced

that baseball would begin again the following Monday.

And the following Monday, when they opened Wall Street,

the streets were ringed with men with machine guns.

There was still smoke pouring out of the pyre of the World Trade Center.

After about four hours of walking around downtown, a cop recognizes me.

He says, how are you, Keith?

I said, I'm all right.

I'm all right.

How are you?

He says, I'm worried.

I said, yeah, I'm worried, too.

He said, I'm worried about the Mets.

And I sort of snapped out of it.

I said, you're worried about the Mets?

He said, yeah, well, I mean, the season resumes tonight.

I'm really worried.

We're in Pittsburgh.

I mean, do you think they've got enough to get back in the pennant race?

I mean, they were doing so well, and can they catch the Braves?

I said, how on earth could that possibly matter?

We're standing.

I mean, the smoke coming up from behind us.

He says, well, he says, it doesn't matter.

Of course it doesn't matter.

I've got 300 friends dead.

It doesn't matter.

He says, but tonight, 7 o'clock, and all day the rest of today,

I can look forward to 7 o'clock, where I can

put my feet up and pretend it does matter.

The New York Yankees' first game was in Chicago.

The remarkable part was we go out there, and in the

stands, you see, we love New York, and we're in Chicago.

And you know that, you know, in Boston, they were playing New York, New York.

That type of stuff just gave you goosebumps when you

realized that it was just a country coming together.

And our baseball was there to distract the people from,

you know, thinking about the horrors that just went on.

In San Francisco, Barry Bonds announced that he would donate $10,000 to 9-11

relief funds for each home run he hit the rest of the season.

For a time, wrote the Kansas City Star, Bonds became a symbol of American

resilience, of the country getting back to business.

By October 4th, Bonds had hit 69 home runs, one shy of McGuire's record.

The Giants were in Houston playing the Astros at Enron Field.

The next day, the Giants were back in San Francisco.

Barely three years after Mark McGuire had broken Roger Marris' 37-year-old record,

Barry Bonds was the new single-season home run champion.

And he wasn't finished.

Number 72 came later that evening.

Then, on the last day of the season, in his first at-bat, he hit his 73rd.

Bonds' 2001 statistics were astounding.

He had hit a home run in every seven at-bats.

His slugging percentage of .879 broke a record set by Babe Ruth in 1920.

He had been walked 177 times, more than any batter in history.

And with 567 career home runs, he was now sixth on the all-time list.

But in the aftermath of September 11th, the

response to Bonds' accomplishments was muted.

Most of the country was not in the mood to celebrate.

On the first night of Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.

counter-strike against Osama bin Laden and the ruling Taliban is underway,

led by cruise missiles and manned bombers.

In late October, as the war in Afghanistan began and demolition crews removed rubble

from the site of the World Trade Center, the New York Yankees found themselves in

the World Series for the fifth time in six years.

They were led by their shortstop, Derek Jeter, who had emerged as one of the

most popular and respected players in all of baseball history.

The epitome of the Yankees' success.

New York would face the Arizona Diamondbacks, an

expansion team in only its fifth year of existence.

They were led by two overpowering pitchers, Randy Johnson, whose fastball

seemed to be halfway home before he even let go of it, and Curtis Montague

Schilling, a brash right-hander known for pitching deep into games and fooling

hitters with a wicked split-finger fastball.

Between them, Schilling and Johnson led the National League in wins, strikeouts,

earned run average, and innings pitched.

Together, they were responsible for nearly half of Arizona's regular season victories.

When asked whether he was intimidated by the Yankees' mystique and aura,

Schilling responded, those are dancers in a nightclub,

not things we concern ourselves with on the ball field.

Johnson and Schilling are more dominant as a pair now than anybody in the history of

baseball has ever been, and that's what the Yankees are up against.

They aren't up against a team.

They're up against two pitchers.

It would be one of the most memorable World Series in baseball history.

Less for who won or lost than as a sign that the

country and its national pastime would endure.

In game one, Schilling stifled Yankee bats.

Randy Johnson was even more dominant in game two.

The third game would be in New York City.

Security was tight.

More than a thousand police officers guarded the stadium.

Fans were forced to pass through metal detectors,

and many were afraid there might be another attack.

Roger Clemens pitched the Yankees to a two-to-one win.

In game four, the Diamondbacks were leading three-to-one in the bottom of the ninth.

The young, young Kim, a 22-year-old relief pitcher from

South Korea, faced Yankee first baseman Tino Martinez.

In nine at-bats in the series, he had had no hits.

Kim had struck out the side in the eighth.

Tino Martinez hits the ball right center field.

And what I can see, still visualize, that ball disappearing over the fence,

into the stands, and boom, here we are.

The game was now tied.

Three balls, two strikes, two outs.

With two outs in the bottom of the tenth inning, Derek Jeter came to bat.

Young, young Kim trying to send this game to the 11th.

It was four minutes after midnight on November 1st.

Taking care of the first two here in the third.

And the 10th.

Jeter hits it into right.

Back.

Just 20 hours later, they were back at Yankee Stadium for game five.

Both teams played well, but in the bottom of the

ninth, the Yankees were again trailing by two.

Again, Kim was on the mound.

After last night, blowing the save in the ninth inning.

Putting Kim right back over the coals.

Got him.

Two gone.

For the second straight night, the Yankees were down to their final out.

Now it's up to Brocious for New York.

Third baseman Scott Brocious came to the plate.

Tying run at the plate.

Runner at second, two out, two nothing Arizona.

Here in game five.

A huge pitch for Kim.

Brocious hits one in the left.

Back.

At the wall, the Yankees have...

Again, the game went to extra innings.

In the bottom of the twelfth, Alphonso Soriano batted for New York.

On two and one.

Into right field, base hit.

Here comes Nogua.

They lead the series three games to two.

The Yankees had come from behind again.

They say lightning doesn't strike twice in the same spot.

It sure did that series.

And I'll never forget being in the Yankees' parking lot,

after game five, when the Yankees had done it again.

The players didn't want to leave.

It reminded me of after a Little League game.

After a big win, you're all hanging out in the parking lot of Dairy Queen.

Just talking about the game.

These last two games defy description.

In game six, Randy Johnson came through again for Arizona.

And they beat New York 15 to two in Phoenix.

In game seven, for the third time, Curt Schilling started for Arizona.

Roger Clemens again pitched for New York.

Curt Schilling, who last night guaranteed a victory, saying, we're going to win.

Through five innings, neither pitcher let a runner past second base.

In the sixth, Arizona broke through.

Finley floats one to center for a leadoff hit.

In the left center field, Danny Bautista delivers again.

That ball is going to put Arizona on top.

Going for third.

Out, but it's 1-0 Arizona.

The Yankees fought back in the seventh.

Runners at the corners won out.

Martinez with a base hit to right.

The Yankees have tied it.

Soriano into deep left.

Left field.

Yankees on top, 2-1.

Curt Schilling had been outstanding, but he was tired.

And Randy Johnson is coming in.

Randy Johnson, who had thrown 104 pitches

the day before, came out to pitch in relief.

Randy Johnson in the game for the Diamondbacks.

The one-two punch for Arizona, giving the Yankees all they can handle.

Johnson kept the Yankees from scoring again.

As he had for most of the past six seasons, Joe Torre again turned to his

unflappable reliever, Mariano Rivera, who had already pitched

three times in the series without giving up a single run.

But in the bottom of the ninth, Arizona tied the game, and then loaded the bases.

Rivera would face outfielder Luis Gonzalez, who had hit 57 home runs that year.

The chance of a lifetime for Luis Gonzalez.

2-2, bottom of the ninth.

Bases loaded.

Infield in.

One out.

The one problem is Rivera throws inside the left-handers, and left-handers get a

lot of broken bat hits into the shallow part of the outfield.

That's the danger in bringing the infield in with a guy like Rivera on the mound.

There's just about no chance of having enough time in

baseball to see tragedy or triumph headed your way.

But there it was for Yankee fans.

It was... They've got him positioned wrong.

Season's over.

The Diamondbacks are world champions!

The New York Yankees, the team much of America was rooting for, had lost.

Several of their stars, including Tino Martinez

and Scott Brocious, moved on or retired.

It would be eight years before they would win another championship.

It was just so sad saying goodbye to everybody.

I went around the room and hugged everybody, and it

was just a sad way to end our relationship, basically.

Even though the memories were great, that night was about as sad as it gets.

Good to live it again.

He

developed a concept that pretty much everyone in baseball knows now.

That's VORP.

Value Over Replacement Player.

And how did this come about?

VORP?

Did he say VORP?

This guy's VORP is $350?

What the hell is VORP?

We could spend half the day explaining what VORP is.

But there are those who will tell you, VORP is probably the defining statistic of

any player to tell you if he's really good, if he's great, or not as good as we think.

I don't have a clue how they figure out VORP, but it's something to do with the

value of a player over an average replacement for him at his position.

VORP.

How that adds up and how they calculate it, I don't have a clue.

I'm still trying to get OPS, you know, OPS, which

is Slugging Percentage Added to On-Base Percentage.

And that's OPS.

His OPS is 970.

I know that that's really good.

For decades, scouts and managers had relied on gut

instinct and accumulated experience when evaluating talent.

But in the new millennium, inspired by the iconoclastic theories of statistician Bill

James, one club discovered a radically new way to compete.

By compiling and reinterpreting baseball's unending stream of statistics,

the cash-strapped Oakland A's were able to identify players whose particular talents

had been undervalued or overlooked by wealthier clubs.

How batters got on base didn't matter, they realized, compared to whether they

got on base at all and how often they scored.

How many games pitchers won didn't matter as

much as how efficiently they got batters out.

The A's, despite having one of the lowest payrolls

in the game, made the postseason four years in a row.

Before long, sophisticated data analysis would affect

every decision made by every team, on the field, at all.

But many observers continue to believe that, these intangibles,

like a player's heart and determination, still had value.

That regardless of the numbers, some individuals

did perform better than others in the clutch.

The greatest home run hitter of all time, Hank Aaron,

opens trading today at the New York Stock Exchange.

And the market promptly hits a home run for investors.

The Dow now up 23% for the year.

NASDAQ, with all its tech stocks, up an astonishing 71% for the year.

At the beginning of free agency in 1975, the average

salary of a big league player had been $45,676 a season.

Just three times what the average American earned in a year.

Now, with revenue pouring in from cable and satellite TV, radio, the internet,

international markets, and new ballparks, the average baseball salary had soared to

nearly $2.4 million, almost 50 times what the average American made.

Who dreamed that players would make $25

million for a season in a game like baseball?

And that creates a great amount of desire to get to that place, just as it created

among us this sense that we could all make a ton of money in dot com, or we could

make a lot of money in flipping houses, or we could get all of these mortgages,

all of these home equity loans, and buy whatever it is we wanted.

Other things were out of proportion, too.

It's hard to compare eras now, but I also think that the balls are a little.

go a little farther, I won't say juiced.

Most of the parks are smaller, but players today are bigger and stronger than before.

The ball may be juiced, and some of the players may be juiced.

I was trying, in a general sense, to call attention

to the fact that this stuff just doesn't make sense.

And this was the part that I found especially galling.

People throughout baseball who pride themselves on knowing the difference

between the split second it took Bill Mazeroski to turn

a double play as opposed to the average second baseman.

Who pride themselves on knowing when a guy's arm angle comes down ever so

slightly because he's fatigued in the late innings.

Who notice if a guy has moved half a step in or half a step back at third base.

They didn't notice a damn thing when guys showed up

looking like they'd been inflated with bicycle pumps.

As the memory of the crippling strike of 1994

faded away, baseball's popularity surged.

But rumors and suspicions about performance enhancing drugs kept surfacing.

Over the years, a few sports writers and broadcasters had tried to call attention

to steroids infiltration of the national pastime.

But nothing was done.

And doping became an open secret in the game.

I don't think a bunch of owners or general managers got

into a room and they said, we got a great thing going here.

Turnstiles are humming.

Fans love it.

Let's not do anything.

I think what happened was when they were clued enough into what was happening,

it was already too late without really getting their hands very dirty.

Cleaning it up meant taking down the biggest players in the game.

And that was an undertaking they weren't going

to touch until somebody made them touch it.

In May of 2002, Jose Canseco, who would later claim that without steroids,

he would have never even made it to the major

leagues, retired from baseball with 462 home runs.

He told the press that 85% of major leaguers were taking steroids.

There would be no baseball left, Canseco insisted, if we drug tested everyone.

But hardly anyone took his claims seriously.

Then, a few weeks later, Sports Illustrated published a cover story by Tom

Verducci, which described players taking a wide range of performance-enhancing drugs.

In the article, former Padres third baseman Ken Caminiti confessed that he had

taken heavy doses of steroids for years, beginning in 1996, when he had been named

the National League's most valuable player.

And what really, really struck me was first of all, the responsibility that he

took for his own career, but also the fact that he had no remorse whatsoever.

And that's when it really hit home to me that it was so pervasive

in the game that given the choice, he would do it again.

In 2001, Commissioner Bud Selig had imposed a drug testing program on the

minor leagues where he did not need the consent of the Players Association.

But the union had refused to permit a similar program in the major leagues.

Our view was there may well be reasons to test people if you

have some reason to believe they're doing something wrong.

But if you have no reason at all, that's an entirely different set of circumstances.

And that there ought to be some reasonableness factor.

It's sort of the industrial counterpart of probable cause.

This is a subject of collective bargaining.

This is not something the commissioner can do unilaterally as much as I'd like to.

What took so long?

Some very long and difficult negotiation.

The union was in a very difficult position.

But at the same time, they did not cover themselves in glory here.

And I think that the players hurt themselves by

simply believing that they were above accountability.

Three months after the revelations about Caminiti and Canseco, Selig and Fear

announced that the union had agreed to limited drug testing.

Players would be tested anonymously only once

or twice, and not at all during the off season.

If more than 5% did test positive, a punitive

plan would automatically go into effect.

Thanks largely to the Players Association, it was the

weakest drug prevention program in professional sports.

But in the first year, more than 5% did test positive.

From then on, those who failed more than

once faced suspensions of at least 15 games.

After five positive results, they would be suspended for an entire season.

They came to an agreement about a drug testing policy that had so many holes in

it that there was no way a player, unless he is just dumb as a rock,

was going to fail under the guidelines that they set forth.

Despite the negative publicity about steroids, Bud Selig could justifiably take

credit for the fact that baseball was booming,

enjoying a renaissance unparalleled in its history.

And for the first time, the owners and players had managed to negotiate a

collective bargaining agreement without a work stoppage.

In the new contract, the richest clubs also agreed to

share some of their profits with the poorest clubs.

And the players allowed a luxury tax to be

imposed on the teams with the highest payrolls.

The Mets, the Red Sox, and especially the Yankees.

Although no one could have predicted it at the time, the disastrous strike of 1994

had ushered in a period of unprecedented labor peace as the

players and the owners finally learned how to work together.

This is the golden era of baseball.

Average game today is drawing 33, 34,000 people with all the games on television.

The popularity of this sport is just enormous.

And that's been the question.

Is it possible to have a renaissance and a calamity at the same time?

It all depends on what your barometer is.

What is your measure?

If your measure is money, and only money, then yeah, it was

possible because people in this game made more money than ever.

But if your barometer is something more than that, if your barometer is integrity,

is in having people look at you and believing in your sport, not just going to

the games, but believing in your sport, then it's not possible.

I think fans have been able to compartmentalize their

disappointments and still enjoy it the way they used to.

And I think we have built up the same sort of sieve for letting experience through

that we have with real people in our real lives.

We don't expect them to be saints, and we no longer expect our athletes to be.

We expect them to be the same range of people that we see in the rest of our life.

And I think that one of the reasons that baseball has not only not lost popularity,

but gained it, is as its flaws become apparent, it actually gains depth in

humanity, even as it loses its fairytale mythic qualities.

I've done well in my career.

If it ended today, I have nothing to be ashamed of.

The only thing is, I would just feel very sad about it.

About not having the opportunity to go to the World Series.

Because you can play 100 years of baseball and never

ever have that opportunity to go to the World Series.

The World Series is what I want more than anything.

In 2002, Barry Bonds had another spectacular season, and would be named the

National League's Most Valuable Player for the fifth time.

And now, he was on his way to the World Series for the first time, eager to prove

he could perform as well in the postseason as he did the rest of the year.

The Giants would face the Anaheim Angels.

Both teams had been their league's wild card, something

that had never happened in a World Series before.

I had the privilege of covering all seven games of that

World Series for the Sacramento Beam, my newspaper.

And it looked for all the world that the Giants were finally going to win.

With Bonds leading the team, the Giants took a three games to two lead.

Game six would be played in Anaheim.

This

is walked twice tonight, 26 times in the postseason.

That is crushed, deep into the night, and it's four on the nothing.

San Francisco!

15 bats in the second half.

San Francisco starter Russ Ortiz pitched brilliantly, and the Giants took a five to

nothing lead into the bottom of the seventh.

We were all counting the outs.

They were eight outs away from winning the World

Series for the first time as the San Francisco Giants.

Russ Ortiz was pitching a shutout.

Here's the two-two pitch.

Swung on and missed strike three.

In the Giants' clubhouse, attendance iced champagne in preparation for a celebration.

Russ goes into his windup, and the pitch on the way to Gloss.

Line drive, that's a base hit.

And Troy Gloss has just the third Angel hit.

And I can remember being in the press box, and

I was thinking, it's finally going to happen.

It's finally going to happen.

Ortiz delivers, and it's ripped into right field.

At that point, I was 40 years old.

Angel's being shut out, five nothing at the moment.

I'd been with these guys since I'm eight.

So that might be it for Ortiz.

He has a four to nothing lead.

Four hits, shutout working.

You know, I'm trying to keep some sort of professional distance, but I couldn't help

to imagine Parade Down Market Street in San Francisco.

And I was already thinking I was going to take off my jacket because I didn't want

it to stink of champagne and the whole thing.

Three and two.

Big pitch coming up.

And then the bottom fell out.

The three-two pitch is belted to right field.

Back on it goes Sanders.

He can't get it.

Here's the pitch by Juarez.

A drive hit into right field.

That ball is gone.

And they are within one.

Here's the one-oh to Salmon.

A drive into center field.

Lofton can't get it.

Face-in.

And at a certain point, the Angels rally kept going.

Here comes Diggins.

I sat back in my chair and I stopped writing.

The Angels take the lead.

Six to five.

And then when the Angels went ahead, I did what all writers dread doing.

I highlighted everything I read and I hit the lead.

A third strike.

A seventh game.

They're one strike away from all of that.

The two-two pitch.

Swung on and missed.

The Angels won five.

When game six was over, I knew it was over.

I knew they weren't going to win game seven.

The next night, the Angels became world champions

for the first time in their 42-year history.

Barry Bonds had made three wins in 30 trips to the plate, hit four home runs,

and was walked 13 times.

A World Series record.

But it hadn't been enough.

It was like a morgue afterwards.

There's so much media for the World Series.

And we're all trying to cram into his locker.

And at one point, he's got his shirt off.

He's got this enormous physique.

And he wheels around.

And he says, if you guys don't step back right now, I'm going to snap.

I love them so much that every year, for 25, 30 years, I would write in the

paper in the Globe each spring, this is the year.

No matter how poorly they appeared to be as a team in spring training.

And it was the hope of a child.

Because that's part of the gift of baseball.

It's a child's hope.

And I always had that hope.

But also the reality that, you know, well,

probably not going to happen in my lifetime.

The tension is so great for me that I'm embarrassed to admit that when the other

team is up in a close game, I cannot even watch the game.

I run out of the house sometimes.

And I know that's crazy.

You have this sense that as long as you don't

watch, something bad is not going to happen.

And then you just pray that by the time you come

back, your worst fears will not be realized.

And you'll suddenly see them up at bat again.

I mean, it makes no sense at all.

But there is this strange dynamic that the fans feel that their actions have

something to do with what the players are going to do on the field.

In 2002, hedge fund owner John Henry and television producer

Tom Werner bought the Boston Red Sox for $700 million.

Neither of them was from New England, and locals were skeptical about their motives.

But rather than tear down Fenway Park, the team's home for 90 years, Henry and

Werner decided instead to renovate the cherished ballpark.

And most important, they promised to bring a world championship to Boston.

They had their work cut out for them.

The Red Sox had not won the World Series since 1918, and

always seemed to find new ways to break their fans' hearts.

I'll say the Boston fans are the most loyal fans I've ever seen.

I got very familiar with some of the comments that they made.

Is this going to be the year?

Is this going to be the year?

Every year.

This is the year.

It was a comment that we would hear almost every season.

In 2003, the Red Sox made it to the postseason as the wildcard.

They were led by their hugely popular shortstop, Nomar Garciaparra, their

designated hitter, David Ortiz, and Manny Ramirez,

one of the greatest right-handed hitters in the game.

The pitching staff included the nearly invincible Pedro Martinez, sinker-baller

Derek Lowe, and Tim Wakefield, who had mastered the

knuckleball after failing to make it as a first baseman.

In the American League Championship Series, they would face their dreaded

rivals, the New York Yankees, whom Red Sox CEO

Larry Lucchino had christened the Evil Empire.

People have said it's been the greatest rivalry in sports, but I don't know how

much of a rivalry it can be when it's been very one-sided.

You know, to be a great rivalry, the other team has to

win some of the time and knock people off their perch.

The Yankees, to the complete infuriation of Red

Sox fans, seem to come out ahead every single year.

The two teams were almost perfectly matched.

The Yankees won two out of the first three games.

But Boston battled back to tie the series at three games apiece.

Everything came down to game seven at Yankee

Stadium, enemy territory for Red Sox fans.

It was the 26th time they had met.

No two teams anywhere, in any sport, had ever

played each other more in a single season.

And I remember talking to Willie Randolph, who back then was the third base coach,

and I had said to him, so what do you think?

And he said, listen, every single time we've had to beat them, we've beaten them.

Tonight's not going to be any different.

Roger Clemens, Boston's one-time ace, pitched for New York.

Pedro Martinez took the mound for the Red Sox.

Nixon into right center field.

Did he get enough?

Yes, he did.

The Red Sox strike first.

To the left side for Enrique Wilson.

His throw sails into the zone.

And that'll make it 3-0.

And the Red Sox and their fans have to be thinking, finally, we have not seen the

Yankees hit anything crisp so far here tonight against Pedro Martinez.

Martinez was masterful through seven innings.

And going into the bottom of the eighth, the Red Sox had a 5-2 lead.

But all season long, Martinez had struggled after he had thrown more than one.

More than a hundred pitches.

When Pedro came back out in the eighth inning, we all started screaming,

no, no, you can't be doing it.

I mean, fans think they know more than the managers, and often we don't.

But at that point, everybody knew the pitch counts that Pedro would suddenly

fall off the cliff if he were over that pitch count.

He was way over that pitch count.

And so there was this huge sense of dread the minute he came to that mound.

And with one out here in the bottom of the eighth inning, he works to Derek Jeter.

With the Red Sox, five defensive outs away from heading to the World Series.

Jeter flies into right, Nixon back.

On the run, it's over his head.

Jeter will dig for second.

And hold there.

The 2-2.

Into center field.

Damon will play it on a hop.

Jeter will come to the plate.

It's a two-run game.

Manager Grady Little went out to the mound.

The Red Sox bullpen had been all over the place.

It was dull but unhittable that year.

And Martinez had already thrown 115 pitches.

Little left Martinez in the game.

She gave Martinez the chance to say yea or nay.

And he said yes.

Double.

It's second and third with one out here in the eighth.

Boy, is it strange that Little is not going to his bullpen.

I mean, that is absolutely weird.

His bullpen has been... I was just trying to do it.

And that's what a lot of people don't understand.

Well, why didn't Pedro give away the ball?

They didn't ask me to give away the ball.

They asked me if I could face the guys.

I said yes.

Of course I can.

I'm in the middle of the game.

I'm here to do this.

A base hit ties the game.

Second and third.

One out.

The pitch.

Swung on and looked to shallow center field.

It is a base hit.

One runs.

The game went into extra innings.

The Red Sox turn to knuckleballer Tim Wakefield.

The odds were favoring a hitter in a slump.

Because a hitter in a slump, his timing is already off.

A knuckleball pitcher throws your timing off.

Put a guy with bad timing and add more bad timing to him, suddenly he has good timing.

It's a zero sum game in terms of timing.

So you're thinking, who on earth is going to get the base hit for the Yankees?

Who can do anything against Tim Wakefield?

Boone.

In the bottom of the 11th, third baseman Aaron Boone, whose grandfather,

father, and brother had all played in the major leagues, came to the plate.

In 31 postseason at-bats, Boone had managed just five hits.

Now we're tied at five as we go to the bottom of the 11th.

Here's Aaron Boone to lead off.

His first at-bats.

He's out of the game.

There's a fly ball deep to left.

It's on its way.

Aaron Therries.

Aaron Therries.

My son Timmy was then 11.

And I always used to say, when the baseball season

was over, it's time to put the storm windows on.

So it became time to put the storm windows on

in a split second after an incredible game.

And the crowd was going berserk in Yankee Stadium.

And my son Colin, who was then 20, tapped me on the

shoulder and said, Dad, you better take care of Tim.

And I looked down at this 11-year-old child, one of the loves of my life.

And he had tears the size of hubcaps streaming down his cheek.

And I started crying.

And I hugged him.

And, you know, in my heart of hearts, I was thinking, what have I done?

What have I done?

I became a Cubs fan at age 7 in 1948.

That year, Mr. Wrigley, who owned the Cubs, took out

ads in the Chicago papers apologizing for the team.

It was not an auspicious beginning.

The day I was born, they lost, by the way.

I've looked it up.

Like the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs played in one

of the oldest and most beloved ballparks in America.

But they hadn't appeared in the World Series since 1945.

And hadn't won since 1908.

Their loyal fans still showed up at Wrigley Field

each spring, no matter how poorly their team played.

But in 2003, the Cubs finally put together a contender.

They made it all the way to the National League

Championship Series, where they faced the Florida Marlins.

An expansion team.

A team that had already won the World Series in 1997.

Only their fifth year of existence.

The Cubs won three out of the first five games.

And returned to Chicago for game six, needing

just one more win to get to the World Series.

In the top of the eighth, they were leading 3-0

with one out and a Marlins runner on second.

And the Marlins beginning to run out of outs against Mark Pryor.

The offender was a lifelong Cubs fan named Steve Bartman.

Florida would score eight runs before the inning was over.

The Cubs never recovered.

The Marlins won game seven and headed to the World

Series, where they beat the New York Yankees.

There are few words to describe how awful I feel, said Steve Bartman.

I am so truly sorry.

From the bottom of this Cub fan's broken heart.

I'm angry at the guy, said Illinois' governor, Rod Bogoyevich.

Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, offered the beleaguered fan asylum.

That winter, the Bartman ball was auctioned off for $106,000.

And then blown up as thousands of approving fans looked on.

There is going to come a day when the Cubs win a World Series.

It has to happen.

They've had a bad century.

It's time to rally.

Alex Rodriguez joins Andre Dawson as the only players to

ever win the MVP award while playing for a last place team.

And an hour after winning, A-Rod confirmed the

Rangers have talked to him about trading him.

It was almost like a black hole where

everything got sucked into these two franchises.

And the players around the league bought into it.

When Alex Rodriguez was going to get bought out of his

contract, he only wanted to go to Boston or New York.

And so when that happens, the Red Sox and Yankees were playing in a separate league.

And there was a lot of resentment around the league because no one else could

compete with this aura that these two super power teams had created.

It was the stage in baseball.

It was the place where everybody wanted to be.

It was the place where everybody wanted to be.

After their devastating loss to New York in 2003, the Red Sox tried again to beat

free-spending Yankee owner George Steinbrenner at his own game.

They sent general manager Theo Epstein to Arizona for Thanksgiving dinner with

Diamondbacks ace pitcher Curt Schilling, who

had helped defeat the Yankees back in 2001.

Schilling quickly agreed to be traded to the Red Sox and with characteristic

bravado, vowed to lead the team to a world championship.

But in February of 2004, after several failed attempts by Boston to sign him,

George Steinbrenner brought one of the game's biggest stars,

shortstop Alex Rodriguez, to baseball's biggest stage.

Rodriguez was the highest-paid player in the history of the game, having agreed to

a ten-year, quarter-of-a-billion-dollar

contract with the Texas Rangers back in 2001.

To get that contract, Rodriguez's agent, Scott Boras, liked to quote one reporter's

assertion that Rodriguez would one day save baseball.

In Texas, he had more than proven his worth, batting above

.300, averaging more than 50 home runs, and winning an MVP.

Despite his achievements, the Rangers had finished

dead last in the American League World Series.

He had played in the Midwest three years in a row,

and Rodriguez was eager to jump to a winning team.

Now, he was with the Yankees.

When the 2004 season began, Boston and New

York picked up right where they had left off.

The Red Sox, now managed by Terry Francona, and

the humiliating loss of 2003 had never happened.

They were scrappy, wore their hair long, and goofed around in the dugout.

What you see is what you get, said first baseman and team ringleader Kevin Millar.

The heart of the team was Boston's designated hitter, David Ortiz,

known to everyone in Red Sox nation as Big Papi.

Here was a Red Sox player who really did instill fear in the heart of the Yankees.

Here's a guy, he went out, and when he was

up, you were afraid if you were a Yankee fan.

If you were a Yankee, you were afraid of what this guy was going to do because he

was doing things that most Red Sox players had never done before.

He represented the sea change that, look, we don't fear you, we know we're

better than you, and we're going to beat you.

That one's not coming back anytime soon.

Led by the dominant pitching of Curt Schilling, Boston again faced the Yankees

in the American League Championship Series.

But in game one, Schilling, hobbled by an injury to his ankle, lasted only three

innings, the shortest postseason outing of his career.

No one knew whether he would be able to pitch again in the series.

New York took game two as well, three to one.

Game three in Boston was a blowout.

Yankee hitters hammered one Red Sox pitcher after another.

The final score was 19 to eight.

The New York Yankees were just one win away from going

to the World Series for the seventh time in nine years.

No team in baseball history had ever come from

three games behind to win a best of seven series.

I was so angry at the 0-3 start to the playoffs against the Yankees.

I was humiliated.

I was embarrassed.

I was thanking God for caller ID, all the calls from area code 212 on the cell phone.

You'd push ignore because you knew what it was going to be.

Just another winter of verbal abuse.

But you know what?

You cannot count the Sox out.

But the irrepressible Kevin Millar was not about to let his teammates give up.

I know you grew up a Red Sox fan.

Don't let us win this game tonight.

Then they get Petey, and then they get Shield game six.

And game seven, anything happens.

Derek Lowe pitched for Boston in game four.

Orlando Hernandez was on the mound for New York.

It was a back and forth game.

A-Rod goes into left center field.

Back at the wall.

Alex Rodriguez has hit one over the monster to make it 2-0 New York.

Ortiz into right center.

And the Red Sox have taken the lead in game four.

Timlin's thrown quite a few pitches in the dirt.

He grounds to the right side.

Bellhorn knocks it down.

Can't make a play in the Yankees' lead again.

It's a two-run sixth inning and a 4-3 Yankee lead.

Once again, Joe Torre brought in Mariano Rivera to finish off the Red Sox.

Mariano Rivera in the postseason.

Six for six and save chances.

With Boston down by one run in the bottom of the ninth, Rivera faced Kevin Millar.

Our pinch runner, Dave Roberts, is going to come in for Boston.

He can run.

Picked up from the Dodgers.

Good lead for Roberts.

The great base-dealer Maury Wills had once told Dave Roberts the day would come when

he'd have to steal a base with everyone in the ballpark expecting it.

When I got out there, Roberts said, I knew what Maury was talking about.

Dave Roberts knew that moment was coming.

Had studied Mariano Rivera, knew every single one of his moves to home plate.

And you have to love the fact that he took off on that first pitch.

You know, the Red Sox down to their last breath

were going to go down fighting and being aggressive.

And that's going to be the stolen base that's

going to be remembered in Boston forever.

The game was tied, and it stayed that way into extra innings.

Manny Ramirez led off the bottom of the 12th.

It was 1.

23 a.m.

The Red Sox were still alive.

It was one of the most exciting moments in my whole history of the game.

And you then began to feel, even so, I mean, all you are now is 3-1.

But still, there was hope because of that happening.

If it could happen in the last part of that inning, then maybe it could happen again.

With a tying run at third.

The go-ahead run at first.

In Game 5, the Red Sox again came from behind to force extra innings.

With two outs in the bottom of the 14th and men on

first and second, David Ortiz came to the plate.

Five hours, 49 minutes, and 14 pitchers into Game 5.

Ortiz had done it again.

It was his second walk-off hit in less than 24 hours.

But Boston still had to win the next two games at Yankee Stadium.

After the Red Sox won Game 5, Boston's team doctor sutured the skin around Curt

Schilling's ailing tendon to hold it in place.

A procedure that he had tried only once before...

on a cadaver.

Like a scene from the natural, Schilling climbs the

mound and prepares to take on this Yankee lineup.

A 2-2 now.

Sierra strikes out, and that's the first strikeout of the night for Curt Schilling.

When Schilling came out in Game 6, we already

knew that there was trouble with his ankle.

One wasn't sure at all that he'd be able to pull this off.

Despite the pain, Schilling managed to quiet Yankee bats.

With two outs in the fourth, Kevin Millar started a rally for Boston.

Schilling lasted seven innings and gave up just one run.

The bullpen took over.

Runners go.

Red Sox force Game 7.

A tremendous pitching performance by Schilling,

Arroyo, and Keith Polk, who does it again.

It's now tied 3-3.

Two of my boys are in Washington.

Timmy is here with us.

I call them up.

I say, we're going back.

We're back for Game 7.

For the second year in a row, the American League pennant

would be decided in a seventh game between Boston and New York.

More than 31 million people were watching on television.

And here's Ortiz.

He rips one into right field.

Boston came out swinging.

Red Sox.

Damon hits it in the air to right field.

Sheffield back in the corner.

A grand slam.

Johnny Damon.

Quiet.

All series goes deep.

Four more.

There's another one into right field.

Johnny Damon is going off.

And throughout the park, you could see people who had been huddled with winter

jackets and sweatshirts against the autumn chill.

We moved them.

And they had Red Sox shirts underneath.

And Tim stood on the chair in Yankee Stadium.

And a friend of ours was with us.

And he turned to me and said, I've never seen a kid

with as happy a look on his face as Timmy Barnacle had.

This would be the fifth pennant for the Red Sox since that 1918 season.

Here it is.

Ground ball to second.

Reese.

The Boston Red Sox have won...

It was the greatest comeback in baseball history.

This was the victory we'd all been waiting for.

Even though it was still the World Series to go.

The Red Sox would now have to face the formidable St. Louis Cardinals,

who had twice before broken Boston hearts in the 1946 and 1967 World Series.

For the first time in my baseball life, I watched every play of every inning.

I don't think there was a single time when I

ran away, closed my eyes, went out of the room.

I began to no longer think we were going to lose.

I felt brave.

The team, I think, had transformed the fans.

It was almost as if they believed in themselves so much.

And if they could get us through that Yankee series on the brink of disaster at

every moment and come back at the last minute, who were we not to believe in them?

The Red Sox are one out away from winning it all.

Boston swept St. Louis.

The Cardinals never led in any of the games.

Rhyme in 86 years.

For the first time since that game, in 1918, they are champions of the world.

If you ask me about my World Series ring with Boston, I would not trade that one

for three anywhere else because it meant so much.

I think grown-ups, small ones, little boys, little girls, old people,

everybody cried in Boston, I think, when we got that World Series.

Think about all the people that lived their entire lives without seeing that moment.

It wasn't just about 2004.

It was about people's fathers and grandfathers and mothers and grandmothers

and all these people who had waited all these years.

They were all connected.

And I've never seen a championship in any sport that meant more to people in a

region than I saw with the Red Sox in 2004.

It had been 31,458 days since Boston's last title.

From Bangor, Maine to New Haven, Connecticut, from Burlington, Vermont and

Charlestown, New Hampshire to Providence, Rhode Island, millions rejoiced.

The next morning, in corner stores and offices, barbershops and on factory floors

across New England, fans were greeted by newspapers announcing Boston's victory.

Vendors who normally sold 1,200 papers in a day sold 8,000.

At the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, miniature Red Sox flags appeared beside

headstones as fans shared the happy news with relatives

who had spent a lifetime hoping for a championship.

The joy of it really didn't seep into me, I think, until they came back home.

And the explosion of emotion couldn't be contained.

On October 30th, three million people, five times the population of the city of

Boston, turned out for a victory parade through the streets of the Old Town.

One of our most enduring memories, my brother and I, was my mother sitting on

the stoop of her house in Fitchburg, Massachusetts,

in the shade of a single tree on a busy street.

With her nylon stockings rolled down to her ankles in order

to get some cool breeze, and the radio on the front porch.

And she would keep score on a piece of paper,

not the score book, on a piece of paper.

And when the Red Sox won the World Series, my brother took

a scorecard out to the cemetery from game four in St. Louis.

Put it on the grave.

We're here today because the sport is about to

become a fraud in the minds of the American people.

You have a serious public relations problem here.

Mr. Feer and Commissioner Selig, all I can say to you is this issue has

reached the level where the President of the United States discusses it at a State

of the Union message to the American people.

Your failure to commit to addressing this issue straight on and immediately will

motivate this committee to search for legislative remedies.

I don't know what they are.

But I can tell you and your players that you

represent, the status quo is not acceptable.

If you look at the history of the game, it takes an outside

influence to really get baseball to ask the tough questions.

You know, going back to the gambling problem in the early 20th century,

the cocaine in the 1980s, going back to Pete

Rose's gambling problem, and now with steroids.

In every case, it took an outside agent like the federal government or Congress or

a court case, a legal case, to really get baseball to move.

In the fall of 2004, when fans wanted nothing more than to revel in one of

baseball's greatest post-seasons, the game's steroid

problems hit the front pages in airwaves once again.

Now this.

A report in the San Francisco Chronicle that Bonds admitted before the grand jury

investigating the Balco steroids case, that he

did take substances now identified as steroids.

An ongoing federal investigation of Balco, a laboratory in Northern California that

sold nutritional supplements to athletes, had

implicated some of the biggest names in sports.

Balco was run by a former funk musician named Victor Conte.

He had joined forces with Patrick Arnold, an avid bodybuilder and brilliant chemist

who had already introduced Andro, an

over-the-counter steroid, to the American market.

Arnold had also done something that made the

blood of every anti-doping expert run cold.

He had created an untraceable steroid called The Clear.

When taken with a meticulously orchestrated combination of other drugs,

it enabled Balco's clients, some of the greatest athletes in the world,

to become greater still.

Olympic medalist Marion Jones, NFL linebacker Bill Romanowski,

as well as baseball sluggers Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, and Barry Bonds.

How much testing do you welcome in baseball?

They test me every day if they choose to.

You know, like I tell everybody, you want to be on

top, you have to have broad shoulders to be on top.

I'm going to tell you that right now.

Because as fast as you get there, as fast as they try to knock you down.

And so I have broad shoulders.

I can deal with it.

In San Francisco, many fans were reluctant to believe that

their favorite player had taken performance-enhancing drugs.

But some critics pointed out that his head had gotten bigger,

and his shoe size had increased from 10 and a half to 13.

Bonds, according to his lawyer, was told by his trainer that the cream

rubbed on his skin was rubbing balm for arthritis, and that the clear taken orally

was flaxseed oil.

Bonds testified that he had taken steroids inadvertently

and later complained that he was being unfairly singled out.

Bonds has been certainly singled out, but that's what

happens when the results of your cheating are so lurid.

It attracts attention.

If you hit 73 home runs, what do you expect?

I mean, if some middle infielder tries to buy another year scuffling in the big

leagues with performance-enhancing drugs, it doesn't get as much attention.

This is not complicated.

Then in February of 2005, Jose Canseco published a tell-all autobiography.

In it, he extolled the benefits of anabolic steroids, detailed his own

extensive use of them, and named many other stars, hitters and pitchers,

who he said had also been on the juice.

Wilson Alvarez, Ivan Rodriguez, Boone, Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro, Mark McGuire.

Now, people listened.

Let me start by telling you this.

I have never used steroids.

Period.

Do you think that the team trainers, the managers, the general managers,

and even the owners might have been aware that some players were using steroids?

No doubt in my mind.

Absolutely.

So it's not a secret that State... Many people sneered.

Doesn't Congress have something better to do?

Absolutely.

I believe that.

Well, sometimes they may poke their nose into sports where they don't belong.

But in this case, it actually led to a good outcome.

Even if there was some grandstanding involved, it was very

clear that Don Feer and Bud Selig felt the whip from Congress.

And they had to respond.

It is rather an infamous occurrence that in the year you were breaking the home run

record, a bottle of Andro was seen in your locker.

Well, sir, I'm not here to talk about the past.

I'm here to talk about the positive and not the negative about this issue.

As far as this being about the past, that's what we do.

This is an oversight committee.

If the Enron people come in here and say, well, we don't want to talk about the

past, do you think Congress is going to let them get away with that?

I've accepted, by my attorney, his advice not to comment on this issue.

Okay.

And you could just see him deflate like a giant balloon

in a Thanksgiving Day parade with a pin stuck through it.

And that's very sad.

And also unfair to some degree.

Because Mark McGuire never had the kind of ego that

could say, let's see you try and do this on steroids.

Bonds had that ego, but he didn't have that ego.

And so he couldn't come back and say, you can't take this away from me.

It looked as if he was shattered as a consequence.

Without the federal government, you still have people like Mark McGuire

telling you there's nothing in a bottle that can help you hit a home run.

Or Barry Bonds just telling you to get out of his face because he's bigger than you.

It was about time that somebody bigger than them held them accountable.

Mr. Sosa, what obligation do you think you have if you

are aware that someone is using drugs on your team?

I'm a private person.

I don't really go, you know, ask people whatever it is.

In the fall of 2005, Major League Baseball and the

Players Association finally took decisive action.

The anti-doping program they put in place for the 2006

season would be the toughest in professional sports.

Players who failed a drug test once would be suspended for 50 games.

The second time, 100 games.

And the third time, they would be banned for life.

It's now time for realism.

And the realism is this.

The stakes of athletic excellence, the financial stakes are now so high,

and the incentives for cutting corners, therefore, so great, that we are in an

endless competition between the chemists trying to devise non-detectable

performance-enhancing drugs and the enforcers trying to devise detection.

And it will probably never end.

The baseball world may have hoped the stigma of steroids would go away,

but the most dominant player implicated in

that scandal was making that an impossibility.

He's larger than life and had to fall for that reason.

He was reaching, like Icarus, he's reaching for something

he can't reach for and he had to fall for that reason.

He was good enough without that.

Everybody says it.

I'm not even sure what he wanted was public adulation,

although behind all that is an insecurity that is really sad.

He comes into the world not trusting anybody and then desperately wants to

change that and then gets angry when he can't trust you.

The problem with me, like my dad told me before he passed away, he said,

the biggest problem with you, Barry, is every

great athlete that has gone on for great records.

Everyone knows their story.

And I'm sorry.

I was raised to protect my family, keep my mouth shut and stay quiet.

But it doesn't make me a bad person.

It doesn't make me an evil person.

I'm an adult and I take responsibilities for what I do, but you know what,

I'm not going to allow you guys to ruin my joy.

Barry Bonds began the 2007 season just 21 home

runs shy of Henry Aaron's career mark of 7.55.

He was 42 years old.

As he approached the record, fans, writers and Major League Baseball

struggled with how to honor the man who was

about to become the game's new home run king.

You know, it was sort of like, Bonds, oh my goodness, we never liked you

and we never wanted you to break the record.

And the steroids just added insult to injury, I think, with all that.

Some suggested Bonds should retire rather than

presume to play long enough to break Aaron's record.

And as he approached Aaron's record, every game was sold out, not just in San

Francisco, but Chicago, in L.A., every city the Giants

went into couldn't get a ticket for those games.

So those fans, I don't think, were hoping he was going to retire before he got to

their city, because they'd already bought the tickets to see

him play, and I think they were hoping to see him hit one.

Henry Aaron, who in 1974 had received racist hate mail and death threats as he

approached Babe Ruth's home run record, grew tired of answering awkward questions

about Bonds and decided to be elsewhere when his record was broken.

Bud Selig, a close friend of Aaron's, said he wasn't sure he would be there either.

The whole thing was a joyless march toward the inevitable.

Baseball powerless.

Selig with his hands in his pockets, watching, obviously in some pain,

not just because of what had happened to the game, but what had happened to his

lifelong friend, Henry Aaron and Aaron's mark.

Bonds got threats in hand and hate mail too.

Fans in opposing ballparks taunted him, booed when he was announced as the hitter,

then booed louder when their own pitchers walked him.

Boo me, cheer me, those who are going to cheer me are going to cheer me,

those who are going to boo me are going to boo me.

So what?

But they're still going to come see the show.

And I'm happy.

Dodger Stadium is the best show I ever go to in all my baseball.

They say Barry sucks louder than anybody out there.

And you know what?

You'll see me in left field going just like this because you know what?

You've got to have some serious talent to have 53,000 people saying you suck.

I'm proud of that.

On August 4th, 2007, Bonds faced Clay Hensley, who had once been suspended for

15 games after testing positive for steroids.

On August 7th, a sellout crowd crammed into AT&T

Park in San Francisco to see the Giants play.

the Washington Nationals.

In the bottom of the fifth, with one out and

nobody on, Bonds faced left-hander Mike Bassik.

And Bassik deals.

It is a great accomplishment which requires skill, longevity, and determination.

I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry

and his family on this historical achievement.

When Hank Aaron's record went down, I felt nothing.

I can't tell you where I was.

I didn't wake up my son to let him watch the moment.

I didn't care.

And I think that a lot of people felt the exact

same way I did because of all that had been lost.

This was not supposed to be this way.

If you care about the sport, no matter how you felt about the man, when you achieve

the all-time home run record, this is supposed to be a moment of celebration.

This is supposed to be a moment where everybody drops their swords and they

recognize the history that they've witnessed.

And none of that happened.

And to me, that told you more than anything else about what's been lost in the sport.

Some people have suggested that this record is tainted.

The word that you've heard, that word, tainted.

Do you feel at all it's tainted?

And what would you say to someone... This record is not tainted at all.

At all.

Period.

I'm not a big believer in putting an asterisk next to records.

You start pulling on this one thread, say it's

Barry Bonds, and it leads to another thread.

The pitchers he hit against, the players who were in the field, players who were

competing against him, who was clean, who was dirty.

You're not going to be ever able to answer those questions.

But I think in some ways, the asterisk is already there.

There are no asterisks.

There's no asterisk next to the name of the Cincinnati

Reds who won the 1919 World Series that was thrown.

It doesn't say they didn't deserve to win.

You know, asterisk, they should have lost.

The asterisk is whatever exists in the mind of the fan.

No asterisk, Henry Aaron said.

Let's just congratulate Barry and give him his due.

Many baseball fans disagreed.

Although other players had used performance-enhancing

drugs, Bonds had become the symbol of the steroids era.

Barry Bonds finished 2007 with 762 career home runs.

Although he remained one of the toughest outs in the game,

San Francisco decided not to offer him a contract for 2008.

Other teams stayed away too.

He never played again.

For more than a decade, there has been widespread illegal use of anabolic

steroids by players in Major League Baseball.

This has not been an isolated problem

involving just a few players or a few clubs.

In December 2007, a commission set up by Major League Baseball and led by former

senator George Mitchell to investigate the steroid scandal released its report.

It was a damning indictment.

Players on every team illegally took drugs to enhance their performances.

And club owners, general managers, and managers routinely considered players'

possible steroid use when discussing their injuries,

injuries, or strategizing about trades and contracts.

I thought the Mitchell report was good insofar as it provided an official

declaration that there was a steroid era, that it was long-lasting and pervasive,

that it wasn't isolated, and that it affected

contemporary competition and distorted the game's history.

So far, so good.

But beyond that, there's a randomness to it, which is not to say that any of the

individual accusations are inaccurate, but it's so selective and random.

Off the top of my head, I could name a hundred guys who likely could have wound

up in the Mitchell report and just by luck escaped.

Although 89 players were named, the most sensational section of the report

was devoted to allegations of extensive doping by the most successful pitcher of

the previous 15 years, Roger Clemens, winner

of 354 games and seven Cy Young awards.

So now with Roger Clemens, they got a white player

with comparable accomplishments in the game to Barnes.

It gives baseball an out.

First you have a position player and now you have a pitcher.

You have a black and you have a white.

And both of them are big stars who normally would make the Hall of Fame and

now it's kind of clouded and you don't know whether they'll make it or not.

In the coming months and years, other players, including some of the

greatest stars in the game, would also be exposed.

Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, and Manny Ramirez.

Mark McGuire, saying it was now time to talk about the past, admitted what many

had long suspected, that he had used steroids for most of his career,

including 1998, the year he was so celebrated

for breaking the single season home run record.

Roger Clemens vehemently denied doing anything wrong.

Barry Barnes, under indictment for perjury in the Balco investigation, said nothing.

Yeah, it's a bad thing.

Baseball had a black eye, but I'm not sure that everybody should have been named.

It's a sad time, but it's something we have to deal with.

We have to get through it.

And, you know, hopefully the sun's shining on the other side of this thing because

this game is too beautiful to, you know, have a lasting scar on it.

We're going to have When you look at the Mitchell Report and you look at the minor

league program and you look at the major league program and you look at the people

who've been suspended, it doesn't matter who they are.

We're going to clean this sport up.

I'm the commissioner.

I'll take full responsibility to every thing that's gone on in my tenure.

I'll take credit for all the great things,

The moralist wants to decide what's right and wrong.

The artist wants to see things exactly as they are, even if there are so many shades

that right and wrong isn't a place that you get to.

John Keats wrote in a letter, and he was talking about William Shakespeare,

he said that the feature that distinguished Shakespeare the most and

made him the greatest of all writers was what Keats called negative capability.

Which he described as the ability to remain

in tension, undecided between opposing poles.

And he said that Shakespeare had that negative capability, the ability to see

everything and not jump to one side of the

question to a greater degree than any other artist.

Now, we live in a sports age and a baseball age where nothing's more valuable

than negative capability, because if we're just in a rush, if we can't wait to see

Roger Clemens or Barry Bones or whoever it is that's right or wrong, then we're

missing the complexity of these people and the

difficulty of the age that they're living in.

Back into the ground, ball off the middle.

Sliding stop, Jack Wilson flips it to Castillo.

To the first base!

How did they do it?

Slicing foul.

Burns dies.

Great catch!

A great catch by Eric Burns!

Jason Baratek, a swing and a fly ball into center field.

And DiPietro going back to the one he trekked to the wall.

Reaches up and he makes the catch!

Holy smokes!

What an amazing running catch by Hixiro!

At the end of the day, I think most people have found a way to make their peace with

the sport they love because they don't want to say goodbye to it.

The fan has decided that the game is more important than the

players, that the game is more important than the owners.

The game is more important than steroids.

It's more important than money.

It's more important than all of it.

Here's the 1-2 pitch to Palmeiro.

A ground ball past Jenks.

The White Sox up the middle of the infield.

Uribe has it.

He throws.

Out!

Out!

A White Sox winner and a World Championship!

The White Sox have won the World Series!

Swing and a miss!

The 2006, the 10th World Championship in their illustrious history.

Game over.

Series over.

And the White Sox are world champs again.

The 0-2 pitch.

Swing and a miss!

Stuck him out!

The Philadelphia Phillies are 2008 World Champions of Baseball!

In 2009, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great

Depression, baseball gloried in one of the most exciting World Series in years,

reminding the country and the world of the joyousness, the unpredictability,

and the surpassing beauty of the game.

The Yankees, having bolstered their old guard of homegrown talent, with a new crop

of lavishly paid free agents, faced the

Philadelphia Phillies, the defending champions.

The MVP of the series was Hideki Matsui, a former outfielder for the Yomiuri

Giants, who led New York to their 27th championship.

It just seems to be eternal.

Now they say that forest fires are good for forests.

Every year you think, there's possibility in the ground.

There's new trees there.

We can be a forest one day.

I don't know why that is in that sport.

Maybe it's the number of games.

Maybe it's the right number of players.

More than in basketball, less than in football.

What a catch by Torrey Hunter!

There's nothing quite like it, and it still takes my breath away after 50 years.

I can't not feel that way.

I've looked for the next generation of ballplayers to be less serious,

to be less craftsmanlike, to be less committed, to be less reckless.

A virtue sometimes.

But they haven't.

It's wonderful how the game revitalizes itself, reshapes itself, shows a different

facet of itself, and yet essentially doesn't change.

What a wonderful touchstone to return to.

Always the same, always changing.

When my children have children, we have our first grandchild now, a little girl.

I'm going to teach her how to keep score.

And hopefully someday my children and their children will remember going to

games with me just as I remembered going to games with my father.

They'll tell stories about me and funny stories the way I do about my father.

Which means that those lives don't really come to an end.

That you really can live on in the memory of others.

And to the extent that baseball is a continuing thread through many of our

lives, then the stories that will be told will keep the memory of us alive.

I do love this game.

I love being there.

Other than my home, other than being with my family, it is, I can honestly say,

the one place I truly feel at home, at peace, comfortable, is at Fenway Park,

watching the Red Sox play.

I always have.

Through losing years, winning years, I just feel it's a piece of my home.

Well, let me ask you, do you think the Red Sox have

any appetite to trade some of these young arms?

They've got three who are just off the charts and barred...

I mean, the Yankees obviously are a very talented team.

They have some issues, but I do think they'll be in it.

You know, the Blue Jays...

Because they've got Josh Beckett, they've got John Lester, and who else?

The rest are signs of interrogation.

And everyone talks about it.

When Wakefield comes back, when Daisuke comes back.

Yes, but the calendar is...