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The 2004 ALCS between the Red Sox and the Yankees is probably the most legendary series in MLB history, and we’ve been treated to a surprising claim 20 years after it transpired after multiple members of the winning team accused their bitter rivals of some clubhouse espionage.
Prior to 2004, there wasn’t a single team in MLB history that had managed to crawl out of a 3-0 hole in a playoff series, and it was very, very hard to imagine the Boston Red Sox were going to be able to become the first after the New York Yankees took a seemingly insurmountable lead with a 19-8 win in Game 3 of that year’s ALCS.
However, as most baseball fans are likely aware, “The Idiots” representing Beantown staged a comeback for the ages with the help of late-game heroics from Dave Roberts and David Ortiz, Curt Schilling’s iconic “Bloody Sock Game,” and a lopsided victory at Yankee Stadium in Game 7 that saw the Red Sox punch their ticket to the World Series en route to snapping the “Curse of the Bambino” to bring an 86-year championship drought to an end.
The 2004 ALCS has been exhaustively covered since it transpired thanks to the historic nature of the series, but the new Netflix documentary The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox was able to get some fresh new perspective with the retrospective that was released two decades after the fateful showdown unfolded.
According to Boston.com, the team that conducted dozens of interviews with players, managers, and other personnel who played an instrumental role in the 2004 unearthed a pretty juicy tidbit concerning an item that was discovered in the ceiling of the Red Sox clubhouse at Yankee Stadium ahead of Game 2, with Boston ace Pedro Martinez recalling:
“I remember before the game, just getting up to the ceiling of the clubhouse and pulling a microphone and I guess a little device that was relaying our conversations.”
That story was supported by other members of the team including Bronson Arroyo, Doug Mirabelli, and Schilling, with the latter saying, “I know the difference between a microphone and not a microphone. And this was like a lapel mike and it was attached to … a little box with the red light on.”
It’s worth noting Yankees manager Joe Torre dismissed the claims as “bulls–t” while asserting the team wasn’t responsible if there was, in fact, a listening device, saying, “I say it didn’t happen, and if it did happen, we didn’t get the benefit of a microphone. Someone else did.”
The Red Sox subsequently went out of their way to hold team meetings on the bus to avoid falling victim to potential trickery, and things certainly worked out for them in the end.