Journeyman adds new label: World Series MVP
USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES – Fenway Park was Steve Pearce’s final stop on his tour of the American League East, a late June trade from the Toronto Blue Jays to the Boston Red Sox enabling him to fulfill his last bit of curiosity within the division.
“I’ve been playing against these guys for so long,” Pearce says, “that I knew them just playing with them on the field. When you’re playing against them for a long time, you don’t really know what’s going on over there until you get here.”
Pearce, long labeled a journeyman, added a much more flattering identifier to his profile on Oct. 28: World Series MVP.
“This has been a life-long journey,” he said after Game 5. “And to be here right now is a dream come true.”
His two-run, first-inning home run off Clayton Kershaw launched the Red Sox to a 5-1 victory that clinched their fourth World Series championship since 2004.
“Best feeling in my life,” he said. “This is what you grow up wishing that you could be a part of something like this. With that special group of guys out there, to celebrate with them, that was awesome.”
Pearce finished the damage with a towering homer way up the left-field pavilion at Dodger Stadium in the top of the eighth inning, capping a coast-tocoast tour de force.
Game 5 was just the capper to what forged Pearce’s sudden October legend.
He hit an eighth-inning tying home run off Kenley Jansen in Game 4 and then provided the eventual winning runs with a three-run double an inning later in their 9-6 victory.
He also drew a crucial walk that spurred the Red Sox’s goahead rally in Game 2, the grittier sort of contribution that Pearce, 35, became known for in a career that began in 2007 in Pittsburgh before his AL East odyssey began in Baltimore in 2012.
He’s now played for seven teams, a journey that he says shaped him as a ballplayer in his ability to slow the moment when necessary.
“I just think when the crowd’s getting into it, everything starts to get loud, it’s almost you’ve got to do less,” says Pearce, a free agent to be. “And that’s my approach, don’t try to do too much when you’re out there. Just have the same approach and let the pitcher make the mistake.
“I think the longer I’ve played, you’re in these situations all the time, that sometimes you get yourself out and you know that wasn’t the right approach you should have had in that situation. And the longer I’ve played, you kind of step back and, hey, I don’t have to do that. Let’s just try to do less. And that’s really what’s been paying off.”