Reminiscing about old games is inevitable when Red Sox legends reunite, especially if they won a World Series together.
Yet in the hours before Trot Nixon, Dustin Pedroia, and Jonathan Papelbon were inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame – alongside esteemed executive Elaine Weddington Steward and Billy Rohr (1967 team) – at Fenway Park on Wednesday evening, they weren’t talking about those iconic 2004, 2007, 2013 or 2018 Fall Classic contests.
Instead, they spoke of a random Spring Training game two decades ago, long-forgotten by the world, but subtly pivotal for the franchise.
It was March 23, 2005. Nixon was an established 30-year-old veteran, weeks away from a ring ceremony in Boston, and Papelbon and Pedroia were young, mid-level minor leaguers, fresh out of the ‘03 and ‘04 drafts, respectively. The Red Sox were about to head out on the long drive from Fort Myers to Fort Lauderdale to play the Baltimore Orioles. A bus and van would schlep the Sox across Florida for the meaningless game.
“Nobody was happy about it because you go across the state, and it takes forever to get there, takes forever to get back,” Nixon said.
The bus had already left, but the van couldn’t. The hold-up? Someone was missing.
“We were waiting for Jonathan Papelbon, a minor-league kid,” Nixon said with a chuckle. “He had overslept.”
“I missed the bus that morning, and I’m taking the (van) with all these big-leaguers who just won the championship!” Papelbon said.
“First off, I made ‘em all late. That was when we had two complexes, so I thought they were gonna come pick me up, and they’re like, ‘Pap, where are you?’ ” he recalled. “I’m like, ‘Man I’m waiting for y’all!’… They’re like, ‘No, we don’t come to you, you come to us!’ ”
“That was the first (expletive)-up of the whole trip,” Papelbon laughed.
“The Heavy was on, in the van,” Nixon said, referring to the late Tim Wakefield. “And when Pap got there, he looked like he’d combed his hair with a rock, literally just rolled out of bed, and Wakey made him sit in the front row, sittin’ straight up the entire way to Fort Lauderdale while everybody else is sprawled out, sleeping. And he didn’t say a word, he just (knew) I deserve it.”
“Trot slept the whole time. It was (Alan) Embree, (Kevin) Millar, (Mike) Timlin, and (Doug) Mirabelli, and Wake,” Papelbon concurred.
As a tardy minor leaguer on a bus full of reigning champs, he wasn’t so lucky.
“I get on the bus and they don’t even let me have a seat. Like, I got one ass-cheek on this seat the whole way to Fort Lauderdale,” Papelbon said. “Millar is behind me the whole time, whispering in my ear, ‘Tito (Francona) hates rookies’ and ‘You done (expletive) up already, rookie, you’re done,’ and Embree is like, fake-kicking me like he’s sleeping the whole time, and so I’m like, man there’s no way I’m gonna get through this start.”
The Sox made it from one Fort to the other, but the chaos was only beginning.
Papelbon was starting (remember when Theo Epstein wanted him to be a starting pitcher?) against Daniel Cabrera, and the Orioles starter kept plunking Boston batters.
“I get out there and of course, (Cabrera) is throwing 100 mph that day, and just drillin’ like, two or three of our guys, and Trot was one that got drilled,” Papelbon said.
“He threw a couple up-and-in, like ‘What’s going on with this guy?’ and it started getting fishy, like he was, had a vendetta out there,” Nixon said.
“I’m sitting in the dugout, and Trot walks back in, and he’s yellin’ at the pitcher, ‘We got one of those too, you son-of-a-bitch! We’re gonna get ‘em!’ And I’m looking over there, and (Trot) looking at me like, ‘Right? Right?” Papelbon said. “I’m like, God almighty, so now I gotta go out there and drill somebody. I remember thinkin,’ ‘There’s no way I’m going back in this dugout without drilling somebody.’ ”
The young pitcher decided he couldn’t hit Rafael Palmeiro, a fellow Mississippi State man, so he went for Sammy Sosa.
“Pap goes out there and puts one in Sammy Sosa’s ribs!” Nixon said. “You don’t get that kinda policing nowadays.”
“Dude, he’s crazy!” Pedroia said.
But it was how Papelbon handled the aftermath that impressed the big leaguers.
“He didn’t say anything, he didn’t go, ‘Yeah, see, I did this!’ I think he was still tired,” Nixon said with a smile. “After the game, I was like, hey this kid’s gonna be something. He earned so many guys’ respect, veteran guys that were there, earned that respect, and he was humble about being out there.”
Evidence of this game is virtually nonexistent on the internet, though Tony Massarotti reported for the Milford Daily News that Johnny Damon and pitching coach Dave Wallace gave Papelbon rave reviews.
“It was very funny,” Nixon said, “but he also earned a lot of guys’ respect.”
“The ‘04 team started the culture,” Papelbon said. “I just tried to follow suit, do what they were doing.”
A few months later, Papelbon made his Major League debut. Pedroia joined him the following August. Papelbon the franchise’s all-time saves leader. Nixon debuted with the Sox in ’96, and stayed in a Red Sox uniform through ’06. Between the trio, there are 10 All-Star seasons, four Gold Gloves, a Silver Slugger, American League Rookie of the Year, and an MVP award.
And of course, three gleaming World Series trophies, including the first won by the Red Sox in 86 years, and the first clinched at Fenway in 95 years.
If you’re lucky, baseball is full of big moments like those.
But it’s also as much, if not more about the little moments that fuel the big ones. Like a random Spring Training game, when a minor-leaguer showed his future teammates he already had their backs.
