Ryan Dempster is one of the few athletes that got to go out on top. The righthanded pitcher played 13 seasons in the majors and finished his career in 2013 as a World Series champion with the Boston Red Sox.
Dempster was a part of the Red Sox squad that put together a magical run in 2013. The beginning of the season was marred by the traumatic Boston Marathon bombing, but Dempster and the boys were able to use that to bring themselves and the city together.
Dempster talked about what made that 2013 season so special during his appearance on Audacy’s original “The Bret Boone Podcast” this week.
“There was a difference, I think, given the circumstances that took place with the Boston bombing. I started that day on April 15th, Patriots’ Day. Leaving the ballpark after the game, we had a police motorcade that takes us to the airport all the time, and all of a sudden they all just leave,” Dempster said (56:30 in player above). “They got us out, we went to Cleveland, we come back from Cleveland and the game’s cancelled because they haven’t caught the guy.
“After they caught the guy and before Papi went out there and had his moment where he dropped ‘This is our f—ing city!’ The best was he goes ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say yet but you’re not going to want to miss it.’”
David Ortiz’s iconic speech helped set the tone for the rest of the year. The Red Sox were in this not just as a baseball team, but as Boston.
“We walk into our locker room and in our locker room on Saturday before the game was the governor, the mayor, the chief of police, the head of the FBI, the head of the secret service, multiple special forces, police officers, fire fighters. You couldn’t move. It was just jam packed,” Dempster recalled. “I remember Jonny Gomes looking at me and going ‘Look around, we can’t lose. We have all these people with us.’”
The Red Sox were able to turn a tragedy into motivation and togetherness.
“I think for the first time in my career in any team I’ve ever been on, we didn’t give two s–ts about the other teams. We didn’t care,” Dempster continued. “We didn’t care how good you were. We didn’t care how bad we were. We only cared about ourselves and what we could do as a unit together. We just cared about going out there and trying to out-execute you.”
So many teams try to use the “next man up” mantra. The Red Sox embodied it.
“If somebody didn’t get it done, the other guy was going to get it done. It was almost like that was the mentality: ‘If you don’t get it done, then I’ll get it done.’ And took it as excitement instead of ‘Aw, I got to get this done,’ it was ‘Wait, I get to do it. I get to be the one that gets the walk-off hit. I get to be the one that ends the losing streak,’” Dempster recalled. “There was this great powerful encompassing tight unit. The outside noise was just noise.”
Dempster recounted moment in May when Gomes told a groundscrew member to paint the Red Sox atop the AL East scoreboard on the Green Monster.
"‘Paint our name at the top of the scoreboard,’” Gomes had said. “‘I don’t know where the other ones are going to fall but you can go ahead and paint ours right there.’"
The Red Sox were tied for first place in the division on May 26th. After that, their biggest deficit was half a game.
“We were just so self-consumed with us and what we could do,” Dempster said.
The 2013 World Series had extra importance for Dempster on a personal level as he was able to finish his career on a high note.
“It was incredibly special,” he said. “To know the last pitch I ever threw in the big leagues was a strikeout, end Game 1 of the World Series. You think about that moment as a kid in your backyard.”
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