Bill Mueller was one of the many heroes on the 2004 Boston Red Sox. Mueller hit the game-tying single off of Mariano Rivera in Game 4 that started the Red Sox’ comeback in the 2004 ALCS 18 years ago this week.
Mueller had more than his fair share of success against one of the best closers in baseball history with a .455 career batting average against Rivera.
Mueller joined Rob Bradford on the Audacy Original Podcast “The Bradfo Sho” to reminisce and shared how the Red Sox went to work against Rivera.
“I was fortunate to be put in that situation and be able to handle it at the time, but it was more of a team concept that prefaced all that to that moment,” Mueller said (10:07 in player above). “Our guys having the ability to compete and have good at-bats and to be as competitive as we were against Mariano.”
The playoff hero shared that the Red Sox would watch Rivera pitch against other teams and him shut them down on nine pitches. Boston battled to make sure it wouldn’t be like that against the rival closer.
“Our guys just kept finding a way to manage to tinker with Mariano’s head in some capacity and what happened was he just started to instead of living with that cutter in all the time, it almost felt like he tried to – and I’ve never spoken to him about it – tried to start backdooring the cutter to some of us lefties and his accuracy just didn’t seem as good as what it was when he buried it in.
“Maybe he was trying to go in and left it out, but it seemed like more often than not it was a little bit more of a change in pattern with our guys than it was against any other team in our division and I think that’s what basically helped us because the big home run that I hit and the big hit up the middle were all balls left out over the plate.”
Mueller’s game-tying single did in fact come on an outside cutter as the third baseman was just looking to get Dave Roberts to third base.
“I hit the mistake, but normally he doesn’t make those types of mistakes and I’m just fortunate to be able to handle that type of situation and be successful to some degree,” Mueller said. “Once Dave got to second base my job was really to try to get him over and my mindset was, again, to the team, of let’s get him to third with one out and we can get this guy in by trying to hold the rope, it just worked out that I moved him over and got him in. I tried to keep it as simple as possible and again, didn’t miss a mistake that was left out over.”
Mueller and his teammates would talk about at-bats and compare notes about some of the tougher pitchers they faced. They used that to their advantage in the ALCS against Rivera.
“You’re always talking about ABs against the toughest guys. You’re always comparing notes and you’re always watching the game and I think collectively as a group we’re always trying to find or hunt a weakness to some degree to help with our success or help with our consistency,” he said.
The World Series champion continued to rave about the 2004 Red Sox’ work ethic and drive.
“With this group and how we worked together and played together and I think it was just a bunch of guys that loved to grind and loved to play and wanted to be the best that we could and everybody understood their role and managed themselves the right way,” Mueller continued.
Mueller’s game-tying single sparked a run of eight straight wins for the Red Sox to win their first World Series championship since 1918.
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