boston: Not too many people get to live out their lifelong dream. It’s a treasure when it does happen. And it’s why Indians pitcher Josh Tomlin is treasuring every moment this October.
Tomlin, as of a few months ago, might have been looking at a much smaller role this October until injuries to starting pitchers Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar forced him into a key position for the Indians.
On Monday night, he took the mound for Game 3 of the American League Division Series with a chance to close out the Boston Red Sox and lead the Indians to the American League Championship Series against the Toronto Blue Jays. At one point in the game, nearly 40,000 Red Sox fans were eerily chanting his name at Fenway Park.
It was similar to Tomlin’s dream as a kid. He made the most of it, leading the Indians to a 4-3 win and a sweep of the Red Sox.
“I had dreams like this since I was 4 years old,” Tomlin said. “Me and my dad would be out in the backyard playing catch, and I’d be like, ‘Full-count. Bases loaded.’ That whole thing every kid does when they’re a baseball player. I’ve done that since I was 4 years old — 3½ actually — when I tried to play T-ball. This is what I love doing. This is what I’ve done my entire life. I don’t know anything other than this, so to be able to do this on a stage like this is pretty special to me.”
Tomlin entered Game 3 as a fly-ball pitcher facing the best lineup in baseball on the road. It wasn’t an ideal matchup on paper, especially with the Red Sox trailing the series 2-0 and their backs against the wall. Tomlin’s task became additionally daunting when his name was being chanted by Red Sox fans who were attempting to rattle him.
The chant began in the fifth inning after he gave up his first run, but he responded with a key strikeout to calm his nerves, and then induced a groundout to escape the inning with the Indians still holding a 2-1 lead. That led to Coco Crisp’s two-run home run in the sixth, which led to relievers Andrew Miller, Bryan Shaw and Cody Allen having just enough to finish the game and put away the Red Sox for good.
“I was surprised there were that many people that knew my name, to be honest with you,” Tomlin said during the Indians’ clubhouse celebration Monday night. “It was awesome. I can honest to God tell you that it was hard for me to hear anything for the first couple innings. Once they started chanting my name, it kind of became real. I knew where I was at. After that, it was kind of settle in, try to check your emotions a little bit and understand what’s at stake, and go out there and do your job.”
Game 3 turned out to be an intense, can’t-breathe-until-the-inning-is-over type of game. But it was enough, and the Indians had enough fight in them — again — to exceed expectations. It’s been their flair over the past several weeks.
Tomlin put a word to the Indians’ style Monday night.
“Gritty. That’s the only way you can describe it,” Tomlin said. “We just go out there and grind through a game and see what happens at the end of it.”
Nobody on the club embodies that better than he, making him the right spokesman for it. Perhaps it’s because Tomlin is simply someone getting to live out a lifelong dream.
“I think it’s because I throw 86. I’ll take it,” Tomlin said. “I don’t know what it is. I really don’t. I love this game. I love everything about it. I’ve played it my entire life. I love everybody in this clubhouse, and I respect everybody in this clubhouse. This is what I’ve done my entire life, so to be able to do it for a living, and make a living doing it, and to be able to win while you’re doing it, it’s pretty special. I’m a small-town kid from Whitehouse, Texas, so to be able to be doing this right now is a dream come true for me.”
Ryan Lewis can be reached at rlewis@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Indians blog at www.ohio.com/indians. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/RyanLewisABJ and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RyanLewisABJ