"When life looks like easy street there is danger at your door." -Grateful Dead, "Uncle John's Band"
A little over a year after his legendary career as a California high school athlete concluded, Ken Brett became the youngest pitcher ever to appear in a World Series, posting 1.1 scoreless innings for the Boston Red Sox in the 1967 fall classic against the St. Louis Cardinals. The 1966 number 1 draft pick of the Red Sox could throw hard, run fast, and hit as well or better than many major league position players, plus by all accounts he was unflappable, oblivious to the pressure of the big moment. My guess is that in 1967 the future seemed very bright for the 19-year-old Ken Brett.
As it turned out his Hall of Fame destiny fell to his less ballyhooed younger brother, George, a 1971 second-round draft pick of the Royals. As George played his entire career for one team, Ken roamed from city to city, leaving the Red Sox after four partial seasons to play with the Brewers for one season, the Phillies for one season, the Pirates for two seasons, the Yankees for two games, the White Sox for most of one season and part of a second, the Angels for a season and a half, the Twins for nine games, the Dodgers for thirty games, and finally two seasons as a seldom-used reliever on his younger brother's squad in Kansas City. This morning I balanced the shock of learning that Ken Brett is dead (he passed away of brain cancer in 2003) with the image of him in his first appearance as a teammate of his brother, who recalls in a 2003 Spokesman Review article by John Blanchette that Ken, to entertain George and their good friend, Royals catcher Jamie Quirk, sprinted in from the bullpen like a kid making believe he was an airplane, slaloming through the outfield with his arms straight out at his sides.
This makes me happy, as it seems to suggest that Ken Brett was not bitter that the golden path he seemed born to walk down turned into a series of potholed roads, the purposeless route of a journeyman. If we're lucky, if we're loved, we get the idea as children that life will be a golden path. But maybe if we're even luckier we're able to keep laughing when the path gets complicated.
So far in the 2007 playoffs the path has been golden for the first of Ken Brett's ten teams, and it's tempting to think that it will continue to be so as the series resumes this afternoon in California (TBS, 12:07 PT). But you never really know what's going to happen. The best you can do is follow the lead of Ken Brett. Whether it was a World Series game in 1967 that seemed to foretell a long career of glory or a late season mopup appearance in a 1980 blowout loss that signalled the end of a career of nondescript drifting, Ken Brett enjoyed the moment.
The lineups for today, courtesy of the box score on Yahoo.com:
Red Sox
Pedroia, 2b
Youkilis, 1b
Ortiz, dh
Ramirez, rf
Lowell, 3b
Drew, rf
Varitek, c
Crisp, cf
Lugo, ss
Schilling, p
Angels
Figgins, cf
Cabrera, ss
Guerrero, rf
Anderson, lf
Morales, 1b
Izturis, 3b
Kendrick, 2b
Rivera, dh
Napoli, c
Weaver, p
Of course, if you tune in then, the game will already have a few innings played. First pitch out here on the Left Coast is scheduled for 12:07 pm.
1. I love Manny Ramirez. The man may be the greatest all-around entertainer the Red Sox have ever had. His quotes from an extremely rare post-game interview Friday have been widely reported, especially the one where he implies that he is "a bad man." I also enjoyed another Manny-related quote that came out in today's Globe, from Mike Lowell:
"He actually told me in the ninth before everything happened, 'I'm going to end this,' " said third baseman Mike Lowell. "I said to him, 'Listen, if there's a guy on second they're going to walk Ortiz. "He said, 'Tranquilo' [no problem]."
2. Tranquilo is my new motto in life.
3. I think Pedroia will play today, but if his gimpy shoulder keeps him out I'm looking for Alex Cora to come through. In his rare appearances this year he's had a knack for getting in the middle of things in a positive way.
4. Is the younger Weaver brother capable of unraveling like his older brother? I hope so, but I kind of have the feeling today the Red Sox might not get a lot of runs. Which means...
5. Schilling's got to turn in a beauty. Which means...
6. Schilling's got to get some help from the gods. In the days of Odysseus, different gods messed with the mortals in different and always highly interesting ways, and on Friday the gnats in Cleveland and 17-year-old foul-ball catcher Danny Vinik in Boston had me thinking of a couple gods getting involved to keep themselves amused (the god of bugs and the god of fans catching baseballs, the latter no stranger to the playoffs in the last decade).
Ken definitely had a zest for life and in the brief time that I got to spend with him, he certainly didn't seem like someone who felt he got the short end of the brother stick.
I've seen Jered Weaver pitch twice in person. One time he was dominant, and the other time he struggled. He's had some physical problems this year, which has hurt his velocity and effectiveness.
5 , 6 : I wonder who's umping balls and strikes today. (Where can you get info like that?) Maybe today's plate ump is a "squeezer."
Also: I updated the post with lineups for today. Looks like the three injury questions, Anderson, Vlad the Impaler, and Pedroia, are in, but Kotchman is out for the Angels, not sure why. Juan Rivera makes his first start in the series at DH and Morales takes over at first. Morales has a slightly higher OPS versus righties than Kotchman (.888 to .852) but I thought Kotchman was supposed to be really slick with the glove.
I've grown up in Orange County, and until today, I've never seen the pictures of Angel Stadium as it was originally configured. It does look cool, definitely better than the doughnut of the 80s and still a bit better than the current configuration.
10 : CMcFood has been tracking all the many Oakland Coliseum shots in these cards (I think I've mentioned which old profiles he's made O.C. observations about in previous comments; suffice it to say that that stadium seems to be the most popular Topps backdrop of the 1970s.)
The Big A used to not have any seats in the outfield. There was just the Big A in left and then blackness. But during the day or in twilight, the background was really tough (I think it was the parking lot and some hills) and when Ryan was pitching, the hitters should have just given up.
Rimshot!
Squeeze away, Blue!
22 : Runge giveth, then taketh away with the wild-pitch block!
Most of the weather stations in Orange County aren't reporting strong winds.
There are high wind warnings for LA and Ventura Counties, but not for Orange.
Napoli was 5 for 25 since he came off the DL also.
Complaining about umps is something that fans of lesser teams do. :-)
What are they really about?
Manny posed a little on that one, too.
But that may be a moot point.
Amateur athletics are a different story.
I was hoping to see Weaver unravel after those two bombs but he held it together.
Arizona-Colorado
Boston-Cleveland/New York
Which will then mean that the World Series is going to require a lot of travel.
Very low. Very, very, very low.
Just kidding.
It's a very Red Sox-centric record.
I thought you were kidding. I had post about this on the Griddle.
The Red Sox lost 10 straight playoff games to Oakland. The streak ended in 2003.
The A's are still looking for that last win.
81 : They wanted to use Gagne as their 8th inning setup guy but he's basically hemmorhaged runs every time he's come into a game.
Congrats Bosox fans. Young Libblebit and her pappy will be happy, for 5 days anyway.
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