Part 5

Summary: In the previous four parts of this series we looked back at the 2003 Chicago Cubs’ surprising victory over the Florida Marlins in the National League Championship Series: their ‘03 World Series Game 1 and Game 2 battles with the New York Yankees; and the Yanks’ Game 3 collapse which pushed New York to the brink of final defeat. In this closing chapter of the series we’ll see how the Cubs finished their sweep of the Bronx Bombers and remember what happened to the 2003 World Series contestants in the years after the sweep.

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The New York City sports media let the Yanks have it with both barrels the morning after the Cubs’ Game 3 victory. By the time the ink had finished drying on the first copies of the city’s major newspapers, Joe Torre was being blamed for everything from potholes to the Black Dahlia murders; Yankees owner George Steinbrenner wasn’t faring much better, being turned into the subject of some unflattering  editorial cartoons. Callers to the city’s most popular sports radio talk shows were screaming for Torre’s and Steinbrenner’s head on a  plate along with that of Yanks general manager Brian Cashman. The Internet was so jammed with e-mails and message board posts harshly criticizing the Bronx Bombers one major e-mail service provider saw its servers crash three times in as many hours as a result of all that traffic.

The Chicago sporting press, on the other hand, generally gave high marks to the Cubs and their managerial staff-- not all that hard to do when your team’s up three games to none in the World Series and on the verge of sweeping one of the American League’s resident 800-lb. gorillas to boot. Fan support in the Windy City was reaching heights seldom seen since the Cubs’ historic 1908 Series showdown against the  Detroit Tigers. Even the Cubs’ cross-town competitors the White Sox were getting in on the act, opening U.S. Cellular Field to thousands  of fans who hadn’t been able to get Game 4 tickets and showing Game 4 live on Cellular Field’s Jumbotron giant video monitor.

For the grand finale of the 2003 World Series the Cubs put their hopes for victory on the shoulders of 28-year-old right-handed pitcher Matt Clement, who had a regular season ERA of 4.11 and a respectably swift fastball which promised to pose all kinds of problems for Yankee  hitters. The Yankees countered with Roger Clemens, who was hoping to gain a measure of redemption after the disastrous way his last Series outing had ended....

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...and things started well enough for the Yanks as infielder Alfonso Soriano led off the first inning with a long single out to straightaway center. Derek Jeter then moved Soriano over to second with a line drive that ricocheted off the first base umpire’s shoe and into the hands of the Cubs ball boy. A Jason Giambi double sent Jeter to third and scored Soriano for the first run of the game. But when center fielder Bernie Williams tried to lay down a bunt to get Jeter home, Murphy’s Law started to kick in with a vengeance for the Pinstripes. Williams’ bunt attempt took a freakish bounce off the side of the pitcher’s mound and into Matt Clement’s glove, allowing Clement to throw Williams out at first and setting up a rundown play in which Giambi was tagged out on the basepaths between second and third. Just like that, the Bronx Bombers found themselves in a hole as deep as the Hudson River....and the hole would get even deeper when Hideki Matsui struck out to end the inning.

1500-odd miles across the country, Yankee fans watching the game on TV stared in utter disbelief and shock. In spite of the unfortunate way the previous three games had played out, there had been a few such fans who’d cherished an outside hope that Game 4 might be the point at  which the Bronx Bombers started to mount a miracle comeback-- but that hope was fading quicker than you could say "friendly confines." And to add insult to injury, when Clemens took the mound to pitch to the Cubs in the bottom of the first he issued back-to-back walks to Juan Pierre and Luis Castillo and nailed Ivan Rodriguez in the shoulder with a 3-2 fastball, loading the bases for Derrek Lee.

Lee didn’t waste any time capitalizing on the Rocket’s missteps.  On a 1-1 slider from Clemens, he slammed the ball deep into left field to score Pierre and Castillo and advance Rodriguez to third base-- and just like that, the Cubs were ahead 2-1. The standing ovation from the Wrigley Field crowd when Lee slid into second base was loud enough to be heard from the top floor window of the Sears Tower, not to mention high-definition TV screens all across North America.

One could also distinctly hear the collective groan of "Oh, &*?!*!" from Yankee fans. Once again, in a situation where the Bronx Bombers urgently needed to pull together and function as the well- oiled juggernaut most baseball fans knew, they were instead acting like a walking monument to Murphy’s Law. Anything that could possibly go wrong for the Yanks was going wrong, and at the worst possible moments to boot. And when a wild pitch allowed Ivan Rodriguez to make it to home plate to boost the Cubs’ lead to 3-1, it effectively marked the beginning of the death watch for Joe Torre’s managerial career in New York. The first inning ended with the Cubs ahead 4-1 and Clemens on his way to the showers in the visitors’ clubhouse-- even though it was still early in the game, it was crystal clear to one and all that the Rocket was crashing and burning on the launch pad.

Mariano Rivera was pressed into service for the start of the second inning. For a while he managed to stop the bleeding, shutting the Cubs’ bats down long enough for his teammates to cut Chicago’s lead to 4-2 courtesy of an RBI double by Yankees right fielder Karim  Garcia with one out in the fourth inning. But in the fifth, Murphy’s Law reasserted itself with a vengeance; Rivera gave up back-to-back walks and a wild pitch to load the bases for Chicago. You could almost hear the acid churning in Yankee fans’ stomachs as Rivera faced what looked like a baseball Armageddon with nobody out and Chicago ready to break the game wide open. A Yankee TV commentator who normally refused to criticize the Pinstripes even if George Steinbrenner were setting  fire to the Staten Island ferry described their collective performance in the first four innings as "absolutely pathetic...it would embarrass a T-ball team."

No sooner had those words been uttered than veteran outfielder Kenny Lofton officially drove a stake through the heart of the Bronx Bombers with a screamer of a double to straightaway center. Two runs crossed the plate to expand Chicago’s lead to 6-2, and Rivera left the game in less than time than it took for disgusted New Yorkers to start reaching for their remotes to switch off their TVs or sit in front of their computer keyboards to vent their frustration at the way Game 4 was turning out. As for Cubs starter Matt Clement, he would stay in the game until the second out of the eighth inning, when Dusty Baker brought lefty reliever Mark Guthrie in from the bullpen and Clement walked off the mound to a justly earned standing O from the crowd at Wrigley.

Guthrie struck out Derek Jeter to end the eighth inning, then fanned the side in the ninth to close the book on a historic drubbing of the Yanks. When the final out of the game dropped into the waiting glove of Chicago left fielder Moises Alou, the roar from the crowd in reaction to the Series-winning catch was loud enough to almost blow the roof off the Sears Tower. After almost 95 years of heartbreak, the World Series pennant had finally returned to 1060 West Addison Street.

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Things went from bad to worse to just plain horrendous for the Yankees in the aftermath of their ‘03 World Series humiliation by the Cubs. During the off-season Aaron Boone, the hero of Game 7 of the ‘03 ALCS for New York, was injured in a pickup basketball game with one of  his friends; his replacement at third base, former Texas Ranger and Seattle Mariner Alex Rodriguez, turned out to come with a rather high price tag-- and was also a bust in the postseason in 2004, managing a  rather anemic .119 batting average in the divisional playoffs against the Minnesota Twins and making a costly error in the sixth inning of Game 5 against the Red Sox in the 2004 ALCS.

Joe Torre practically became persona non grata in the Bronx after the 2003 World Series debacle; even before the Bronx Bombers returned from Chicago a loud chorus of discontent had been sounded by Yankee fans who felt Torre was losing his touch and should make way for a new manager who could get the job done. That chorus only got louder when the Yanks lost seven out of eight games to start the 2004 MLB regular season, and by the All-Star break it would be positively deafening. The last straw for New York fans and for Steinbrenner came when the Yankees blew a 2 games-to-0 lead over Boston in the ’04 ALCS and ended up losing the series in six games; within less than 48 hours  after Game 6 ended, Torre was fired. And general manager Brian Cashman wouldn’t be around much longer either, resigning just before the end of the 2005 MLB season after contract extension negotiations between him and Steinbrenner collapsed in one of the most public and bitter breakdowns New York sports had seen in decades. By 2008-- just five years after the Bronx Bombers’ World Series defeat by the Cubs --only four players from the 2003 team would still be on the Yankee payroll, and that number would drop to three after Jorge Posada was traded to the San Francisco Giants in 2009.

While Torre hovered in managerial limbo before being hired by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2007, Dusty Baker was rewarded for his World Series success with a contract that ran through the end of the  2010 season. He won the 2006 NL Manager Of The Year award, and when the Cincinnati Reds needed to replace their own skipper after the 2010 season Baker was immediately placed near the top of the Reds’ "short list" of potential successors.

The Marlins haven’t made the postseason since their 2003 divisional playoff loss to Chicago; however, two players from the  ’03 Florida team did finally earn themselves a World Series ring when pitcher Josh Beckett and infielder Mike Lowell were traded to the Red Sox and helped power Boston to a comeback win in seven games over the Cleveland Indians in the 2007 ALCS and a sweep of the improbable National League champion Colorado Rockies in the 2007 World Series. Jim Leyland, manager of the ’03 Marlins squad, was later hired as skipper of the Detroit Tigers and led them to the 2006 American League championship.

Two of the marquee players from the ’03 World Series, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa, would experience very explicit and very swift falls from grace. Clemens would make one last bid for postseason glory as part of the 2005 Houston Astros club which would make the World  Series only to get swept by the Chicago White Sox; Sosa would finish his career with the chronically ill-starred Baltimore Orioles; and both players would find their respective baseball legacies tarnished by revelations of steroid abuse.

The Yankees finally captured their long-sought 27^th World Series title in 2009 under new manager Joe Girardi, walloping the defending National League champion Philadelphia Phillies in five games; a year later, Jorge Posada and Giants pitcher Tim Linecum would share Series  MVP honors after San Francisco vanquished the American League champion Texas Rangers in six games.