Unlikely heroes put on their capes for postseason

WHEN AARON BOONE thinks back on it now, the whole thing is a blur. It was the 11th inning, Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series between the Yankees and Red Sox, and Boone stepped to the plate against Tim Wakefield, who had always unnerved Boone with his knuckleball. With the score 5-5, Wakefield went into his windup and let go that very pitch, which fluttered up to the plate like a piece of windblown confetti.

Boone swung.

As the ball soared high into the leftfield seats, Yankee Stadium erupted in joy.

The Yankees gained a berth in the World Series and Boone secured a place in history, the latter of which has become more meaningful to him as the years have passed.

"Immediately afterwards, I tried to distance myself from it - just because it had been so disappointing to me that we went on to lose the World Series," said Boone, who came back this year to play for Houston after having heart surgery in March. "But you know what? The older I have gotten, I have developed more of an appreciation for it."

That it was an average player such as Boone and not a superstar of the caliber of Derek Jeter who produced that moment is not altogether unsurprising. In the long history of postseason baseball - which begins again this afternoon as the Phillies face the Rockies in the National League Division Series - it is often an otherwise unheralded player who comes out of nowhere to claim a piece of enduring glory. Go back through the years, and you'll find Don Larsen, the journeyman pitcher who in 1956 for the Yankees hurled the only perfect game in World Series history; Bill Mazeroski, "the good-field/no-hit" Pirates second baseman who beat the Yankees in the 1960 World Series by hitting the only Game 7 walkoff home run ever. And who would ever remember Ron Swoboda were it not for his catch that helped the "Miracle Mets" upset the Orioles in the 1969 World Series? Or Orioles catcher Rick Dempsey, who won the World Series MVP in 1983 against the Phillies with an uncharacteristically stout batting display. Or even Phillies subs Matt Stairs or Eric Bruntlett, both of whom were unlikely heroes in the championship run a year ago.