2007 ALCS: An Oral History

Anthony Castrovince presents an oral history of the 2007 ALCS between the Red Sox and Cleveland. Cleveland led the series 3-1. The Red Sox then won seven straight games, winning the pennant and sweeping the Rockies in the World Series.

Paul Byrd: First inning [Game 4] , David Ortiz is up with two outs and two strikes. I do the double-pump where I swing my hands, stop and swing my hands again. I threw it as hard as I could, and it cut on the side part of the plate and it was 91 mph, and he swung and missed. I have never heard a crowd so loud in my life. I'm not exaggerating when I say I didn't know if something had happened. "My gosh, did we have an earthquake? Did something collapse?" It was so loud that it shocked me. ...

Jensen Lewis: We go to bed after Game 4, and it really starts to set in: "We're nine innings from making this dream come true, and we've got our ace on the mound."

CC Sabathia: We were confident we were going to get it done. ...

Bob DiBiasio, Cleveland VP of PR: We had announced Taylor Swift [would sing the anthem before Game 5]. All these years later, I'm not sure why she was unable to perform. But we had to find somebody else, and [country singer] Danielle Peck was chosen due to local connections with her people.

Lewis: The few of us that were plugged into pop culture at that point knew [Peck was Beckett's ex-girlfriend].

John Farrell: Josh had the presence of mind that when the anthem started, he turned to me and said, "Just for the record, I broke up with her." ...

Lewis: That plane flight [to Boston] was dead quiet. It felt like Game 5 was our Game 7. ...

Lowell: [J.D. Drew's] grand slam was just monstrous. The big contract, new guy, replacing Trot, who was possibly the most polar-opposite personality. He had a lot of obstacles with the Boston fan base. And in one swing, he made up for all of it. ...

In the seventh inning of Game 7, Cleveland trailed 3-2, but had Kenny Lofton on second with one out. Franklin Gutierrez singled down the third-base line. The ball ricocheted into shallow left field and third-base coach Joel Skinner stopped Lofton at third base.

Kenny Lofton: I didn't know what happened. I was thinking that the ball maybe caromed off and the shortstop picked it up. Then I looked back and I'm like, "Dude, the ball's right there! No one's by it!"

Joel Skinner: I wish I would have sent him, obviously. ...

Lowell: And then Casey Blake comes up, first and third, one out. He hit me the groundball, it took just a little bit of a tricky hop and didn't go flush in my glove. But once I got it, I gave a good feed to Dustin at second. And when he turned the double play, I think it was the loudest I've ever yelled. Fenway just went absolutely ballistic. ...

Joe Castiglione: [Cleveland] never had a chance to get over that, because the Red Sox opened it up in the bottom of the inning. [Two runs in the seventh and six more in the eighth.]