World Series Lessons

Those sportswriters who like to precede the World Series with a disposition on the historical intersections of the two teams are plum out of luck this October. Relations between the Boston Red Sox and Colorado Rockies are a virtual blank slate, and about the only significant dealings between the two teams was, in fact, a nondeal, a trade the two teams failed to consummate just before this season that would have sent Todd Helton to Boston and Mike Lowell and Manny Delcarmen west to Denver. Given the critical roles played by Helton as the veteran stalwart at the core of a young team and Lowell as the most consistent Red Sox hitter all season, it was a trade that likely would have hurt both clubs and, quite possibly, produced a different World Series pairing tonight.

Still, though their hitters have been important, both teams provide further evidence, as if any were needed, that pitching is the pathway to championships. Both teams, although the Rockies for a far shorter duration, have been perennial also-rans for most of their history, playing in ballparks that were hitters' paradises and pitchers' nightmares. Boston's Fenway Park, with its short perch in left and its vast open space in right, favored fly-ball hitting righties (Tony Conigliaro, Rico Petrocelli) and lefties who could spray the ball to all fields (Freddy Lynn, Wade Boggs, Mike Greenwell, Mo Vaughn). And Coors Field, with its light, dry air, favored any hitter with an uppercut swing, turning middling sluggers (Dante Bichette, Vinny Castilla) into stars and stars (Larry Walker, Todd Helton) into monsters.

The result: teams that were wicked at home and woeful elsewhere, having developed hitting and pitching habits that didn't play on the road. The parks wreaked psychic havoc on their pitching staffs, not the best path to championship glory. In recent years both ballparks have undergone dramatic changes, as the Red Sox, perhaps inadvertently, and the Rockies, most vertently, transformed their yards into places where good pitching can succeed. The subsequent success has not been an accident.

In Boston the transformation was a happy byproduct of construction changes at Fenway, begun as far back as 1989, designed not to affect play but to add more high-priced seats. Fenway Park became bigger and higher, most importantly behind home plate, and the resulting shift in the wind currents made it less of a home-run park. When Boston general manager Theo Epstein made his famous 2003 Thanksgiving trip to Phoenix to convince Curt Schilling to accept a trade, Schilling, who had been drafted originally by the Red Sox in 1986, recalled Fenway as a treacherous place for fly-ball pitchers like him. But Epstein was armed with all the latest stats, revealing to Schilling the winds of change. The rest, as they say, is history.

Short of a dome, the Rockies (Mountain High) couldn't do anything about the air. But several seasons back they began using a humidor to moisten the balls like fine cigars. If a pitcher wets the ball, it's an illegal spitter. But if a team does it, it's apparently a godsend. The Rockies' staff ERA has declined in each of the last four years, from 5.54 in 2003 to a respectable 4.32 in 2007, right in the middle of the National League pack. Even more critical, the Rockies' road and home ERAs were virtually identical this season (as opposed to 2004, when Colorado pitchers had this remarkable disparity: an ERA of 6.27 at home and 4.77 on the road).

In the postseason, pitching rules. The Red Sox and Rockies, with their strange home-field evolutions, are a testament to that. Here are the other key factors in this series: