Best of 2007: J.D. Drew's Redemption

To say J.D. Drew had a tough year in 2007 would be a massive understatement.

Boston fans hated the Drew deal from the day it was announced. Why sign J.D. Drew? And why in the world would you give him $14 million per season? 

Drew’s the type of player Boston fans eat up.  He does things so effortlessly that he appears not to be trying.  He doesn’t treat each at bat like it’s the end of the world.  He takes everything quietly in stride—he just goes about his business, does his job (when he’s healthy), and goes home.

The man Drew was replacing, Trot Nixon, treated every at bat like it was life or death.  He always hustled, and earned the nickname “Dirt Dog.”  He had a dirty hat, he talked to the media, and he hated Roger Clemens. 

Bostonians loved him.

Scott Boras tried to sell Drew to Boston fans as a guy who could be a 30-30 player. 

We knew who and what J.D. Drew was.  We knew he didn’t like running into walls like our hero Trot Nixon.  We knew he was always hurt and never in a hurry to get back on the field. 

We knew he couldn’t steal 30 bases...mostly because he didn’t try hard enough.  You need to run hard to steal 30 bases, and you need to play a full season to hit 30 home runs. 

We knew the signing had the potential to be extremely ugly.

And we weren't disappointed.

Drew started off slow and never heated up.  It didn’t matter that the Red Sox were winning their first division championship since before the Yankee Dynasty of the late 90s—whenever the Sox lost a close game, Drew was the $14 million reason why. 

Boston fans didn’t care that Drew had a sick child at home—a child so sick that at one point he had to take a leave of absence from the team.  Nobody cared that he had a pregnant wife at home—a wife who was eight months pregnant come the beginning of October.

Were these very legitimate issues causing his lack of production? 

We weren't interested in the answer.

In Boston, we’re insane.  We want the Red Sox to win every game.  J.D. Drew, we thought, was the reason we weren’t winning every game. 

So we booed him. 

Mercilessly.

Drew was treated so poorly in Fenway that at one point Jason Varitek pleaded with the fans to give him a chance.

But we didn’t.

J.D. actually had a pretty good September, but nobody in Boston noticed.  He was booed right through the first round of the playoffs. 

When he came to bat with the bases loaded and two outs in the first inning of Game Six, everyone groaned. 

“Hopefully he walks!,” said the guy standing next to me at Tully’s bar in Epping, NH. 

To a man, everyone in the bar felt the same way.  We were all ready to hear Joe Buck exclaim, “And J.D. Drew strikes out looking, leaving the bases loaded.”

But Joe Buck never said that. 

“In the air to center field, well hit...back is Sizemore...grand slam J.D. Drew!”

Just like that, Drew became a hero to everyone in the bar.

“I knew you could do it!,” exclaimed the same guy who a few seconds earlier was begging for a walk.

J.D. Drew cleared the bases with one effortless swing.  In the process he erased every strikeout, every ground-out, and every pop-up from the minds of the Fenway faithful.

After the toughest season of his career both professionally and personally, he finally got a standing ovation and a curtain call. 

For J.D. Drew, Game Six of the 2007 ALCS can be summed up in one word:

Redemption.

That in itself has to qualify as a Best of 2007 moment.

I'm SeanMC
http://bostonsportsrants.blogspot.com/