08/21/2002 11:40 pm ET
Nomar lifts Red Sox to victory
By Ian Browne / MLB.com


BOSTON -- On a night the Red Sox desperately needed a lift and a win,
their primary superstar made both of things happen.
You can go to the box score and see that Nomar Garciaparra went 4-for-
5 in Wednesday night's gritty 5-3 victory over the Rangers. You can
go to the highlight reel and see that it was Garciaparra's two-run
single with two outs in the eighth that snapped the 3-3 tie and
served as the game-deciding hit.

But to truly see how Garciaparra enabled his team to rally back from
a 3-0 deficit, you had to be sitting in the Red Sox dugout.


The All-Star shortstop is too modest to explain exactly what
happened, but there were eyewitnesses who were more than willing to
tell the story.
"When we were faced with a little adversity, Nomar came in and pumped
everyone up and got everyone going," said Cliff Floyd, who played his
role in this victory with some hustling on the basepaths. "We need
that from our superstar. He's a leader, whether he wants it or not.
He might not take the credit for it, but he pumped everybody up with
his voice. And it was key."

And surprising. Garciaparra has been a star since he arrived to
Boston in 1997, and won the Rookie of the Year. A second-place finish
in the MVP balloting followed in 1998, and back-to-back batting
titles the next two years. Through all that, there have been
countless clutch hits and dazzling plays on defense. But there hadn't
been a lot of pep talks.

Garciaparra is a stoic, lead-by-example type, and his teams have
always followed his lead. But Wednesday night, the Red Sox needed a
little something extra.

They haven't won more than two games in a row in over a month. They
were slipping in the Wild Card race, and were fresh off a 2-4 road
trip and a crushing loss to Texas in Tuesday's opener of a nine-game
homestand.

The night didn't start well. Kevin Mench led off with a homer for
Texas. There were a couple of errors by the Red Sox. And every ball
Boston hit hard seemed to go right at a Texas defender.

Once again, the Red Sox were on the wrong end of the scoreboard in
the early innings, and Garciaparra started sensing a feeling he
didn't like.

"Early on, you saw we gave up a home run right from the get-go,
dropping balls here and there, things looked like, 'Here we go again'
sort of thing," said Garciaparra. "But the guys didn't feel that way.
Guys were coming in the dugout and we didn't hang our heads."

What Garciaparra chose not to mention was that he was a big reason
there was no feeling of despondency. He wasn't going to allow that on
this night. Not in his dugout.

"Carlos (Baerga) has been great keeping this team up," said infielder
Lou Merloni, Garciaparra's best friend on the Red Sox. "I try and
keep guys going, and (Jason Varitek). But we needed a little bit
more. Maybe it's not (Nomar's) character, but to hear it from him,
when we haven't heard it from him in a while, it was great for this
team and something we needed. We kind of carried that over emotion-
wise."
What ensued was the kind of team victory manager Grady Little has
been pleading for in recent days. He kept saying that one or two
players couldn't carry this team, and so many players seemed to come
up big in this one.

Young Casey Fossum had another solid start. Reliever Bob Howry picked
up the bullpen with two hitless innings, and earned his first victory
since joining the team July 31.
There was a two-out RBI double from Merloni in the fifth that gave
the Red Sox the first sign of hope, and trimmed the Texas lead to 3-
1.

In the sixth, the Red Sox again rallied for two runs to tie it.
Johnny Damon (single to left) and Garciaparra (double down the left-
field line) got that one going, and set up Manny Ramirez and Shea
Hillenbrand for RBI-singles to tie it.

Then there was the bottom of the eighth, when the Red Sox started
their game-winning rally with two outs and nobody on base.

Brian Daubach came off the bench and blooped a single to left. Trot
Nixon, who beat himself up after not producing a game-winning hit off
Rich Rodriguez 24 hours earlier, worked a pivotal walk against that
same left-hander. Then Damon walked to load the bases.
That set up Garciaparra to be the hero, a role he has been having a
tough time fulfilling over the last few days. He came into this game
in a 4-for-25 slump, and had one RBI in that stretch. But the king of
tunnel vision wasn't interested on what he had done lately. He had
his eyes squarely on a victory, and to do that, he had to make solid
contact off reliever Jay Powell

"Nomar, he never gives up an at bat," said Little. "It doesn't matter
what the score is. But when you are hitting with the bases loaded
there in that situation with two outs in the eighth inning, he put an
awfully good at-bat on that at that time."

In fact, Garciaparra resisted a frequent temptation and didn't swing
at the first pitch, which was just low and inside for ball one. Then
he saw something he liked and slammed it just under the glove of a
diving Herbert Perry for a two-run single that sent Fenway into a
roar that has been absent in recent weeks.

"I was thinking about maybe trying to get a good pitch to hit rather
than really trying to go after something," said Garciaparra. "Because
you get a walk, that gives us a run. I just wanted to get something
that I could put a good piece of the bat on. I got kind of scared
when it hit his glove, too."

But in perhaps a sign that things are finally ready to turn again for
the Red Sox, the ball glanced off of Perry's glove, and found left
field, instead of being stopped by the third baseman.

"The team has been positive all the way through," Garciaparra
said. "Everybody's there to pick each other up."

Wednesday, it was Garciaparra doing the heavy lifting. Both in the
batters box and the dugout.

Ian Browne covers the Red Sox for MLB.com. This story was not subject
to the approval of Major League baseball or its clubs