David Ortiz’s 2004 ALCS Game 4 walk-off home run squares off against Kevin Garnett’s “Anything is possible” speech in the first round of Boston’s Greatest Sports Moment tournament.
Red Sox fans wanted to win Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS to avoid a sweep and the inevitable trash-talking that would have come from Yankees fans. But David Ortiz gave the Boston supporters something more. His walk-off home run in the bottom of the 12th inning gave them hope — even if it was just the slightest flicker. That game, that home run, teammates later said, was the catalyst for the greatest comeback in baseball — perhaps in all of sports — history. The storybook ending started with a two-run eighth inning, but wasn’t cemented until Ortiz’s heroics. Manny Ramirez led off the inning with a single and Ortiz, the next batter, sent Paul Quantrill’s pitch over the right-field fence to give the Sox a 6-4 win and the chance to play another day.
Kevin Garnett must have truly thought winning an NBA title was impossible. A championship eluded the Big Ticket for 12 NBA seasons, and the closest he had ever gotten to the Finals was in 2004, when the Los Angeles Lakers beat his Timberwolves in the Western Conference finals. Realizing the end of a career could be near, Garnett teamed up with two other aging stars for a chance at a ring. What happened next was one of the most unselfish displays in sports. Garnett, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and the rest of the Celtics came together to beat the Lakers in six games in 2008. When Michelle Tafoya put a microphone in front of the new champion, Garnett blurted out exactly what he felt.
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