Walk This Way: Red Sox Roll In Game 1

There's no substitute for experience. So it stands to reason that when your team has as little postseason experience as the Cleveland Indians, you can't really substitute for those guys who haven't got it with other guys who haven't got it, either. Got it? The Indians didn't have it Friday night in Game 1 of the AL Championship Series, getting flattened by the Boston Red Sox, 10-3.

And if the Red Sox didn't have it, well, C.C. Sabathia just went and gave it to them.

Nice guy, Sabathia. For years, he's desperately wanted to be called the Indians' ace. And after going 19-7 this season, that's exactly what he was called by Tribe fans hungry for their first World Series championship in 59 long years.

After his performance in Game 1, Sabathia is probably being called a few other things by those very same fans.

Fans are like that, prone to knee-jerk reactions with the emphasis on the second part of that hyphenated word. They forget all the good things a player has done and think of only the most recent bad outing.

Sabathia gave them plenty to ruminate. The large left-hander gave up eight runs, seven hits and five walks in 4 1/3 innings. After issuing only 37 walks in 241 innings during the regular season, Sabathia has walked 11 in 9 1/3 very shaky innings in the postseason.

"Next time, I'll be more aggressive," he told reporters afterward. "I'll throw the fastball in the zone and challenge them."

Those comments show that Sabathia has learned a painful postseason lesson -- namely that you go with your best stuff and never waver.

That he apparently had to learn it on his own is another sign of inexperience.

Catcher Victor Martinez seldom strolled out to the mound and put a paw on the big fella's shoulders during a little reassuring chat. He's done it at other times -- say in a mid-May contest against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. But Martinez probably was so caught up in his duties that it just didn't occur to him.

That's inexperience, too.

You can bet that take-charge catchers like Carlton Fisk, Pudge Rodriguez, or Thurman Munson would have worn a grooved path to the mound to get their point across.

Manager Eric Wedge and pitching coach Carl Willis, a veteran of the 1991 World Series with Minnesota, recognized the situation. Wedge sent Willis out a couple of times to try and get Sabathia on track -- to no avail.

"He just never got in sync," Wedge said of his acknowledged ace. "When you're talking about facing a team like Boston, they're going to make you work for it.

"He's our No. 1, and one of the best in the game. He's proven to me, he's proven to our team, that he can be a little off and find it. Unfortunately, it just didn't happen tonight."

With no real option to turn to, Wedge had to try and let Sabathia learn in a hurry. That's what managers always try to do with their ace and there is no second-guessing of Wedge on the matter. He did what was right, but it turned out wrong.

After Travis Hafner gave Cleveland a 1-0 lead by hitting a first-inning homer off Boston ace Josh Beckett, Sabathia gave the run right back. He yielded three consecutive singles in the bottom half to tie it. After an impressive second inning, Sabathia then loaded the bases in a four-run third and again in a three-run fifth. He once hit David Ortiz with a pitch to load them, and followed by walking Manny Ramirez after getting ahead of the ex-Indians slugger 0-and-2, but couldn't put him away.

Ortiz went 2-for-2 with two walks; Ramirez 2-for-2 with three walks overall.

"If they don't give you nothing to hit, just take a walk," Ortiz said.

The Indians pride themselves on being the team that works the count, but too many times they showed their postseason inexperience by flailing at the first pitch. In the fourth, after Hafner battled Beckett for 10 pitches before finally striking out, Martinez came up and bounced out on the first pitch. The next inning, Jhonny Peralta grounded into a double play on the first pitch he saw.

It was obvious that Boston pitching coach John Farrell, formerly the Indians' director of player development, had a good game plan set up for many Cleveland hitters.

He knows that Franklin Gutierrez struggles against curveballs. Red Sox pitchers threw more curves at him than Marilyn Monroe; Gutierrez went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.

The Red Sox made Grady Sizemore look bad. The Indians' leadoff hitter went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts, including one to end the game with the bases loaded.

The casual fan may argue that these same inexperienced Indians didn't fall victim to all of this during their four-game triumph over the New York Yankees -- and they would be partly correct.

There are times when a player or group of players are oblivious to what is going on around them and just play baseball as if they are on their favorite ballfield back home. They don't think about the circumstances, they just react and let their natural talents take over.

That was the case in some regards against New York, helped by the fact that the Yankees' pitchers were not particularly sharp, either.

Beckett was sharp, however. The Indians made some headway against the Red Sox's relievers later in Game 1, partly because they worked the count better and partly because Boston manager Terry Francona didn't use his big guns.

It won't get any easier and these Indians had better learn that quickly.

Otherwise, the postseason experience they accumulate is going to be an unhappy one.