Price hears cheers
Fans’ salute ‘huge’ for lefty
If you had seen enough yesterday that you didn’t like and thus made an early exit from freezing-cold Fenway Park, you at least had your boiling-over blood to keep you warm.
If you stuck it out, you saw the Red Sox rally for a two-run, game-tying rally against the Tampa Bay Rays in the bottom of the ninth, and then emerge with a 12-inning, 3-2 victory on a single to right by Hotrod Hanley Ramirez. But you went home cold.
To both the early-exiting and the late-staying at yesterday’s festive but frigid home opener, there was this universal truth: David Price pitched another stellar ballgame, even if all he got for his efforts was a nodecision.
But Price did earn a decision from the Fenway Park jury. Their decision was to let bygones be bygones and give the guy a rousing standing ovation.
So as Price walked off the mound after striking out the Rays’ Daniel Robertson to end the seventh, those fans not yet caught in the cruel grip of hypothermia stood and cheered, and kept cheering as the object of their affection disappeared into the dugout.
After the game, and after Red Sox manager Alex Cora observed that Price “has been in a good place from the get-go in Fort Myers,” which presumably means happy as well as healthy, the lefty was asked the usual array of questions about pitch counts, heaters, breaking stuff, etc. But he was also asked about that ovation, for the simple reason that the last time Price and Red Sox fans stood awkwardly on the doorstop after a date the latter offered a kiss and the former settled for a handshake.
You remember: It was Game 3 of last fall’s Division Series showdown against the Houston Astros at Fenway Park, a 10-3 Sox victory that included four shutout innings from a stillrehabbing Price. Sox fans rewarded Price with a huge ovation, but later, speaking with reporters, the seriessaver wouldn’t acknowledge the cheers.
Twice he was asked about the ovation. And twice he changed the subject.
After yesterday’s performance, he only had to be asked once. His answer will be remembered long after the specifics of his seven shutout innings have faded from memory.
“It was huge,” he said of the ovation. “To go out there and get 21 outs and give up no runs . . . I didn’t want to tip my cap, because that would kind of take myself out of the game, I feel like.
“I didn’t know if I was going to go back out for the eighth,” he said. “If I’d had been sure of it I definitely would have tipped my cap, but I didn’t want to kind of show Alex that I was gonna be done.”
Had David Price actually tipped his cap, no amount of late-inning heroics or heartaches would have changed the storyline of the day. Photos of Price’s cap-doffing would have gone viral.
That he did not tip his cap, and the reason he did not tip his cap, makes it an even better story.
It offers a rare glimpse into what forms the emotions of a professional athlete in his dealings with the fans. Price obviously heard the cheers, just as he obviously understood things didn’t go so well last year. Yet he also had various game-related calculations going on inside his head — he had thrown 92 pitches, but the game was still a scoreless tie — and it occurred to him he shouldn’t rule out the possibility Cora might ask him to start the eighth.
Red Sox fans didn’t get an Opening Day cap tip, but now they know that it was under consideration by the man wearing the cap.
A year ago, Price referred to Red Sox manager John Farrell as “Manager John,” which had a ring of dismissiveness to it.
Now he’s holding back on an inning-ending cap tip for no other reason that it’s the manager who makes the pitching changes, not the pitcher.
What a shame Red Sox icon Ted Williams never used managerial respect as an explanation for not tipping his cap. For years and years Teddy Ballgame was asked why he didn’t do a cap-doff after memorably socking a home run off Baltimore Orioles right-hander Jack Fisher in his final big league at-bat.
Had he simply said he wasn’t sure Sox manager Pinky Higgins was going to take him out of the game and insert Carroll Hardy in left field, it would have prevented decades of handwringing.