Alfonso Soriano breaks out in a smile every time he returns to Chase Field, remembering his moment of near-glory with the New York Yankees in the seventh game of the 2001 World Series on the Arizona Diamondbacks’ field.
“I never forget the great moments, and that was a great one for me,” Soriano said.
When the Cubs played a three-game series at Arizona in late August, “I remembered,” Soriano said. “As soon as I walked into the clubhouse, I thought about it.”
Soriano, then the Yankees’ second baseman, homered off Arizona’s Curt Schilling in the eighth inning of Game 7 to give his team a 2-1 lead. Mariano Rivera struck out the side in the bottom of the eighth before losing the game in the ninth on Luis Gonzalez’s soft single.
“I was just a rookie then,” Soriano said. “And when I hit that home run, man, especially since it was right after Sept. 11, everyone in New York went crazy. That was a great moment, but we didn’t close out the game.”
Soriano came up big that postseason. He also delivered the game-winning RBI single in the bottom of the 12th inning of Game 5 of the World Series to give the Yankees a three games to two lead. And he hit a two-run, walk-off homer to beat Seattle in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series that October, becoming the first rookie with a game-ending homer in postseason history.
The man in the Seattle dugout watching helplessly was none other than Lou Piniella.
“And now he’s my manager,” Soriano said, laughing.
Soriano proved to Cubs fans in September he was a money player, hitting a franchise-record 14 home runs for the month. But the playoffs are what really drive Soriano to greatness.
“I feel comfortable in the playoffs, and healthy, which is the most important thing,” he said. “Everything counts now, so if we play good, we can get back to the World Series.”
Soriano didn’t get his ring, but Derrek Lee and Cliff Floyd earned rings with Florida in different years. Lee was part of the 2003 Marlins and helped break the hearts of thousands of Cubs fans along the way.
Like the 2007 Cubs, the ’03 Marlins got off to a poor start. They got manager Jeff Torborg fired but turned it on at the right time under the leadership of Jack McKeon and his sidekick, third-base coach Ozzie Guillen.
“This team is a little different,” Lee said. “That team was really based more on speed. This team is based a little more on power. But I like the character. That team in ’03 had a lot of character, and this team definitely has a lot of character.”
Floyd last went to a World Series with Florida in 1997, but he was just a young reserve on a team full of superstars. He knows teams can be underestimated in the postseason and that the Cubs can’t afford to feel any comfort in the Diamondbacks’ lack of superstars.
“They won a lot of one-run games,” Floyd said. “And their hitting, it wasn’t like a lot of guys hitting .300 with 20 homers and 90 RBIs, but the situational hitting on that team is pretty good.
“Their lineup on paper doesn’t look like they rate. But the situational hitting shows through.”
Does the D’backs’ relative lack of experience matter at this point of the season? Floyd said their numbers with runners in scoring position suggest otherwise.
“When you’re hitting with guys in scoring position, that pressure is gone,” he said. “They’re really loose in those situations because they know they get guys in. When you’re confident with runners in scoring position, that alleviates a lot of your offensive woes. They’ve grown a lot this year, and they’ll probably be ready for us.”
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