Hunter takes his own words to heart
ANAHEIM, Calif. – When Torii Hunter(notes) lifted his cap, his bald head caught the gleam of the lights, so it looked like he was wearing an actual halo.
He was standing out in center field here, tucked in among the dancing red shirts and lingering fireworks smoke and playoff despair.
Mostly playoff despair.
Hardly anything goes right for the Los Angeles Angels against the Boston Red Sox, not this time of year. For years now they've drawn the Red Sox, played the Red Sox, then gone home to watch more Red Sox on TV. You can imagine it could be a little disheartening, being the warm-up exercise for the Red Sox's real series, the ones for pennants and World Series.
But, like those runners they tirelessly send from first to third, the Angels keep believing, keep rebuilding, keep showing up the next October, fists balled, fully convinced that they'll put an end to this very soon.
Outfielder Torii Hunter hit a three-run home run in the fifth inning for the Angels.
(AP Photo)
Just this summer Hunter had laid into them, suggesting after yet another loss at Fenway Park that maybe everybody needed to, well, display a little gumption where, um, Matt Holliday(notes) attempts to field his soft liners.
"Show some … " he'd demanded, finishing the sentence with a word that rhymes with – and in this case is synonymous with – guts.
So, here they were Thursday night, another division series, another Game 1, another crowd really wanting to believe but undoubtedly somewhat wary of all the other disappointments. The Red Sox pitcher – in this case Jon Lester(notes) – was looking familiar enough, carving up Angels hitters.
And their guy, John Lackey(notes), seemed headed for his usual destination, that being a nice, well-pitched game that might confirm his worth on the coming free-agent market but do nothing for the Angels' postseason aspirations.
Because these were the games they lose to the Red Sox. Lackey fights into the middle innings, Vladimir Guerrero(notes) gets a couple chances with runners on base and swings wildly at everything, and then a fastball finds David Ortiz's(notes) bat barrel, or Kevin Youkilis',(notes) or Jason Bay's.(notes) It's the way it worked three times in the past five postseasons, and the Angels and Red Sox arrived in the fifth inning of this opener playing the same game, nothing-nothing, the Red Sox looking for a soft spot they knew was there somewhere.
Then Erick Aybar(notes) flicked a double past third base. And Chone Figgins(notes) bunted him to third. And Bobby Abreu(notes) walked on a full-count pitch, one of four times he'd do exactly that. Hunter stepped in. Guerrero – and everybody loves Guerrero, but these just aren't his moments – waited on deck. This felt for all the world like the Angels' shot, their chance to stem half-a-decade's momentum, for somebody to loop a single or fall on a grenade or something.
That's when Hunter, who'd demanded something like guts from everybody else, offered up his. He cold-jacked a Lester two-seamer 400-and-some feet to left-center field so that it clattered off the rock pile, gave the Angels a 3-0 lead and practically set fire to the place. He chased Abreu around the bases, nearly catching him in spite of the fact Abreu had a 90-foot head start and had been running on the pitch. He smashed people's hands and slammed his helmet to the dugout floor, it bounding straight up and over Figgins' head.
Show some, indeed. They eventually won, 5-0. They'll play again Friday night, run Jered Weaver(notes) out against Josh Beckett(notes) and chase Hunter again onto the field.
"He backed it up," Lackey said. "It's definitely something I thought needed to be said. I was totally cool with it. And he backed it up."
By the time he got back out to center field, Hunter had hardly calmed at all. OK, he had a little coffee in him. He had a little adrenaline squirting. Lackey was killing it, the ace, the horse, the stopper, the ornery son of a gun, whatever. They were catching everything. The moment, the night, he knew, was theirs. They were laying the kind of efficient, heartless, unyielding, clutch win they'd almost always given away to the Red Sox.
Hunter waved at the people, and he removed his cap and revealed he was one of them, and it was as though they felt it would be a reasonable thing to believe again, granted an emotion not without its perils. Not more than a single home game's worth. Not foolproof. But, maybe, just maybe, reasonable.
It's about guts.
"I didn't say guts," Hunter said.
He didn't.
"I mean," he said, "just go out there and you play, man. … You don't know if you're going to get it done. You just try your best and have some heart about yourself and go on out there and play the game the best way you know how. That's all I said."
