GLOVE STORY
For the last 20 years, retired Marlins ace Josh Beckett has preserved the final play of 2003 World Series.
TWENTY YEARS LATER, the ball is still tucked inside his glove, right where it landed at 10:54 p.m. on Oct. 25, 2003.
“It's never left the glove as far as I know,’’ retired Marlins pitcher Josh Beckett told me other day, “unless somebody else took it out and put it back.’’
We’re talking about the last out of the 2003 World Series, that weak grounder Jorge Posada hit inside the first base line where Beckett, in one running motion, scooped it with his glove and slapped the glove against Posada's waist.
It certainly wasn’t the prettiest play to end a World Series — he nearly collided with Posada — yet it put an exclamation point on the 23-year-old Beckett’s dominance that night at Yankee Stadium: On short rest, he tossed a complete-game shutout, striking out nine, never letting a batter past second base, to eliminate a Yankees team that had been heavily favored to win it all.
Perhaps just as remarkable is the almost accidental act of historic preservation that Beckett has managed to pull off for the last 20 years — keeping the ball in the pocket of the black leather glove he wore that night, his unassisted championship-clinching putout frozen in time.
Think about it: In the annals of World Series-ending plays, the defensive player who makes the final putout inevitably pulls the baseball out of his glove in the initial emotionally-charged moments of the on-field celebration, then pockets or secures the ball before leaping into a roiling pile of joyous teammates.
Those baseballs, including World Series-ending hits, are powerful symbols, in many ways as cherished as a World Series trophy or World Series ring. Most balls stay with the player responsible for the final play and are kept in a safe or display case at the player’s home. (Yankees outfielder Chad Curtis, who caught the final out of the 1999 World Series, gave the ball to a security guard.)
Others wind up in display cases in the winning teams’ front offices. Nine final-out balls (1903, 1921, 1962, 1963, 1981, 1988, 1991, 2004 and 2008) are at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.
But not Beckett’s.
The ball-in-glove final out of the ‘03 Series — recorded 20 years ago this week — is preserved in a display case in Beckett’s home in the Texas Hill Country.
Beckett, if he is to be believed when he says the ball has never left the glove (and why shouldn’t he be?), apparently has pulled off a feat almost as remarkable as the game he pitched that night.
Watching video of that final out, and the wild on-field celebration that followed, it’s almost a miracle that the ball never dislodged from Beckett’s glove. After his teammates hoisted him on their shoulders, he handed the glove to a clubhouse attendant who whisked it to safety.
A long-time spokesman for the Baseball Hall of Fame said he can’t recall any other instance of a player keeping a last-out championship clinching ball inside the glove that caught the ball.
And it’s the only time in the 119-year history of the World Series that the final out came on an unassisted ground ball putout by the pitcher. (Pitchers have made assists to end four World Series, fielding ground balls and throwing to the first baseman in 1938, 1974, 1992 and 2004.)
I first learned about the unusual act of historic preservation in January 2004, about three months after the World Series, on a visit to Beckett’s home in Spring, Texas. On assignment for The Palm Beach Post, one of the many questions I asked was: Whatever happened to the ball from the final out?
He led me and another reporter, Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald, into a bedroom, pulled open a drawer beneath the bed and lifted the relic. I remember how cautiously he held the glove, opening it just enough to show the baseball in its pocket.
“That ball has never been taken out (of the glove),’’ the 2003 World Series Most Valuable Player said at the time. “I think I'll just leave it in there. It's kind of neat.’’
And no, he replied to our query that day, he would not allow either of his South Florida visitors to hold it.
"He's taken the ball out of the glove before. I saw him," Beckett’s younger brother, Caleb, quipped, teasing his older brother in front of two reporters.
"He's wrong," Beckett interjected before sharing a conversation he’d had a week earlier with his girlfriend at the time.
"She said, 'What if I took the ball out?'" he recalled. "I told her, 'That would be a bad move. Bad move.’’’
A FEW MONTHS ago, just after the Miami Marlins hosted Beckett and some of his 2003 championship teammates for a 20th anniversary reunion at loanDepot Park, I got to wondering about the ball-in-glove again.
“It’s still in the glove. It has never come out,’’ he told me by phone one day in August as he was driving from his ranch to his home near San Antonio.
I couldn’t believe it.
You mean to tell me that for the past 20 years the ball has never left the glove?
“It is still in that glove. It has never come out,’’ he insisted. “Unless somebody took it out and put it back.’’
I asked him to send me a photograph of him holding the glove and ball — just like the photo I took of him holding the glove in his home in Texas in early 2004. He politely declined, explaining the hassles of accessing the glove: It’s secured in its own custom-made glass case inside another larger glass display case in his home, along with memorabilia from the World Series he won with the Boston Red Sox in 2007 and the no-hitter he threw for the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 25, 2014, before he retiring after that season because of injuries.
“I had a case built for it,’’ he said. “The glove is in a case in a memorabilia case. You’d have to unlock two things to get to it. I couldn’t even tell you where the keys are to that thing.’’
If Derrek Lee, the Marlins first baseman that October night in 2003, had had a say in the final play, he’d be the one with the ball 20 years later.
“D-Lee told me, ‘I’m still pissed at you for not flipping me that ball,” Beckett said, recalling the feigned grief he caught from Lee this summer at the 20th anniversary Marlins reunion.
I asked Beckett where Game 6 of 2003 ranked among his top three baseball career accomplishments.
“I don’t have a top three. I have a 1a, 1b and 1c,’’ he said. “The two World Series are 1a and 1b for sure. And the no-hitter is 1c.’’
Beckett and 2003 Marlins teammate Mike Lowell would be teammates on another championship team, the 2007 Red Sox. But that first championship, he said, will always be special.
And his Game 6 gem will always be his legacy.
“It's pretty hard to believe that was 20 years ago because I still remember everything very vividly,’’ Beckett said.
“Now that I have been retired for however long, you realize how special those years really are. There's a lot of people who never even make the playoffs. I talked to Derrek Lee about that. He had a great career, played on some really good (Cubs) teams in Chicago and he’s like, ‘We never made it past the first round of the playoffs (in 2007 and 2008) any other season in my career.’ Isn’t that nuts?’’
Beckett is 43 now. He spends time golfing, hunting, bass fishing and hanging out with his wife, Holly, and their three children, ages 12, 10 and 5.
Someday, he said, his kids will be the recipients of the cherished memorabilia from his career, including the ball and glove that sealed the 2003 championship.
“I'm not planning on doing anything crazy with it. It kind of just sits there collecting dust right now, but it'll be fun for my kids to have that stuff some day,’’ he said.
But “some day” won’t be any time soon. Until his kids grow up to be responsible adults, he said with a laugh, he’s making sure to keep the keys to the display cases well hidden.
“My son is 5 years old,’’ he said. “If he ever got that ball out of there, we’d never see that ball again.’’
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Great article