BOSTON - The ruckus usually starts in the corner. Kevin Millar will say something about anything (or anything about something), Manny Ramirez will disagree, David Ortiz and Pedro Martinez will offer consenting or, depending on the day, dissenting opinions, and 30 minutes before first pitch the Red Sox clubhouse will be in full roar.
If it's not one thing, such as the way Ramirez wears his pants, it's another, such as the shiny blue shoes Ortiz is showing off. There's Derek Lowe walking around in a white doctor's jacket. Curt Schilling pontificating on the state of journalism, economics or who knows what. Millar doling out the latest in his line of inspirational T-shirts: "Tell 'em We're Coming." Martinez carrying his new good-luck charm, 28-inch tall Dominican actor Nelson de la Rosa.
And it can get hairy: from Johnny Damon's "caveman/Jesus" look, the free-flowing curls Martinez and Ramirez are sporting and the corn rows Bronson Arroyo paid $75 to have put in (as opposed to losing a bet) to the militarylike brush cut preferred by catcher Jason Varitek.
"This clubhouse? It's a (bleep)-ing zoo," manager Terry Francona said. "We've never contended that this has been a sane clubhouse. I imagine if the average person walked into this clubhouse they'd probably shake their head a time or two. ...
"I've seen Damon five minutes before the game and he's naked. Four minutes later he's on second. He does it every day. You just kind of live and learn and turn your head."
The Sox are turning heads for another reason, too.
After trudging through three long months as a .500 team, they have had the best record in the majors (42-18) since the July 31 shakeup highlighted by the trade of their grumpy star, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra. And though they didn't catch the Yankees to win the AL East title, they won 98 games and the wild-card spot and open the playoffs Tuesday at Anaheim confident they will be playing deep into October, maybe well enough to end the 86-year void since the Red Sox's last World Series victory.
"This team has quite a bit of everything that you want on a team going into the postseason," reliever Mike Timlin said.
The Sox already had plenty of talent, with two of the top MVP candidates in Ramirez and Ortiz, two of the top Cy Young candidates in Martinez and Schilling, a solid closer in Keith Foulke and a group of journeyman types, such as Mark Bellhorn. Bill Mueller and Millar for some reason, though for a reason, have prospered in Boston uniforms.
The problem, though, was defense. The Sox were in the top three in hitting and pitching for much of the first four months but had given up the most unearned runs in the league, and the sloppiness was costing them regularly.
"We were not playing good, sound, fundamental baseball," general manager Theo Epstein said.
Rather than whine about their problems or try patchwork fixes, Epstein went for a bold solution. Deciding they could survive with no more Nomar, he engineered a multiteam swap and ended up adding two Gold Glovers, shortstop Orlando Cabrera and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz, and an outfielder, Dave Roberts, with a very un-Red Sox like characteristic: speed.
The initial results were not necessarily good. The Sox went 8-7, and Epstein, the 30-year-old who plays guitar in the rock band Trauser, heard about it, from the "Trade Theo" signs at Fenway Park to a stack of rather, um, interesting correspondences. "I had letters from 6-year-olds which referenced things I didn't know 6-year-olds were aware of," he said recently.
But then it all started to work. The defense was better, the pitchers were more aggressive, the hitters didn't have to do as much.
"The difference is more than night and day," Schilling said. "It's one planet to the next."
The Sox went on a 20-2 tear, including a 10-game winning streak and an 8-1 run against AL West contenders Anaheim, Texas and Oakland. They closed from 101/2 games behind the Yankees to two and realized just how good they were.
"We'd been waiting for three months to get rolling and we never did," Arroyo said. "Finally, boom, it kind of came unexpectedly and we've just been rolling. We lose one, and everyone shakes it off and we come back and win another one the next day. It seems like we start a new streak every time. Our confidence level is way up."
With the team playing so well, and the Calvinistic fans of Red Sox Nation bracing for another tease or, crazier yet, the possibility that this could finally be the year, it's hard to find much to complain about.
Every ticket to every game at Fenway was sold this season, extending their sellout streak to 145 and giving them a record total attendance in excess of 2.8-million. And their legend continues to grow among the "in" crowd, with several songs, a Farrelly Brothers movie and a Stephen King book about the team in the works. Plus, Ben Affleck attends many games.
The wild bunch routine may not go over well in some places, and it many not last much longer in Boston, even though management and ownership may be liberal in philosophy, but they're having too much success now to stop the fun.
"We don't have rules here," Damon said. "If we do, we can't read them."
These Sox are different, and they're certainly nothing like the all-business Yankees, who wear their pinstripes like some executives wear pinstriped suits.
"Basically, it's like a bunch of high school guys together instead of a big-league team," Arroyo said. "It's awesome. I was with the Pirates for a little while and they're so serious in the clubhouse, and losing games all the time made it even worse.
"Around here it's just, "Have a good time.' It really brings out everybody's true personality. Nobody's really scared to say anything in here, and it makes it a lot more fun to come to the ballpark."
Whether they're "idiots" as Damon once described them, or "dirtbags" as Millar said, or renegades or frat brothers or any of the other more, um, creative terms flying around, nobody can argue with the results.
"They're serious about winning, but they're not serious about much else," Epstein said. "They like to have a good time. They're like kids, having fun playing the game."
"We were saying in June that we were dying for this team to get the personality," Francona said. "We were treading water. I've taken some heat for a lot of things. But I think that's our best way to win. Our personality - they care about each other. They feel good. I think that's our best way to win.
