J.D. Drew was down in Georgia, sporadically checking his phone for updates regarding what his brother was doing in Boston. Around 10 p.m. the former Red Sox outfielder flipped on the device just in time to have the small screen show him a game-tying home run from Stephen Drew.
More than an hour-and-a-half later, the images would be punctuating the younger Drew’s most notable night as a Red Sox — an 11th-inning, walkoff double off the left-field wall that gave his team a 6-5 win over the Twins at Fenway Park.
“He’s standing alone now,” said J.D. by phone. “There are no more Drews to be compared to. He’s his own man now. I’m pulling for him, no doubt.”
As much of a relief as the four-hit game was for Stephen, it was seemingly equally as gratifying for his big brother. The moments gathered each time the phone went on — including the awkward slide on which Stephen was called out at home when replays showed he was safe (“He kind of went sideways, some sort of roll-block,” J.D. said. “I don’t know if he was doing football drills back from back in high school, or what”) — and eased the mind of the elder Drew.
J.D. knows how tough the downturns in Boston can be, and he didn’t want his kid bro to go through such discomfort.
“He’s my youngest brother and I always want to see him do extremely well,” J.D. said. “It’s kind of like watching my son play because I’ve watched him grow up. I try not to watch it while he’s struggling so I don’t get overly critical because I know he’ll come out of it at the end. I always told him if you grind out your at-bats, draw your walks and look at your 500 at-bats at the end of the year your numbers are going to be pretty much where they’re going to be. I think at any level, an older brother is going to pull for their younger brother regardless where he’s playing at.
“That’s the nature of where I’m standing. Inevitably your younger brother is going to be more free-spirited. Stephen has always followed me around, from Florida State all the way to the big leagues, but it has been out of sight, out of mind. But, with him, I’ve always had a close eye on what’s going on. Yeah, there’s been some tough times. I’ve been looking for those four-hit games.”
And, Monday, there it was.
The performance helped Stephen take a huge step toward carving out his own identity with the Red Sox. In his last eight games, Drew has hit .379 with a 1.131 OPS. The four hits against the Twins raised his batting average from .182 to .225. The promise of finding his stroke — after a spring training derailed by his March 7 concussion — was finally coming to fruition.
But, according to J.D., this is far from the first time Stephen has set out to clear his own path. Perhaps one of the first instances of claiming an individual identity might actually have been 20 years ago.
The story goes that J.D. was a freshman baseball player at Florida State, letting his then-10-year-old brother hang around a very noisy locker room, when Seminoles pitcher Jonathan Johnson came up to his teammate’s sibling and asked Stephen’s name. But the music was so loud, and the younger Drew was so soft-spoken, “Steve” couldn’t quite be deciphered by Johnson.
That was when Stephen tried to take advantage of the botched introduction. As J.D. puts it, “He wanted a nickname at the time.”
“Sod!”
That’s what Stephen finally blurted out to Johnson, using the nickname he had formulated using his own initials — Stephen Oris Drew.
“He came up on his own that he wanted to be called Sod,” J.D. recalled. “He said, ‘Just call me Sod.’ Jonathan Johnson heard him and said, ‘Sod? I’m going to call you Dirt.’ Everywhere he went on the field they would call him Dirt. You get called that enough by enough 18-year-olds when you’re 10, it sticks.”
As Monday reminded us, Stephen is still pretty good at separating himself.
Up until recently, his existence with the Red Sox had been that of being J.D.’s younger brother, or the guy standing in the way of more Jose Iglesias. (In case you haven’t been following Iglesias in Triple-A Pawtucket, the young shortstop is hitting .235 with a .675 OPS in the minors, having not played since being taken out of the game due to manager’s decision Saturday.)
Slowly, but surely, Drew is finding his level, and his identity.
“I don’t know how it’s been on him,” J.D. said. “It doesn’t matter what market you’re in. You have to perform, as well as the team performing. So that resiliency is built on how much you’ve struggled, and he’s definitely had to build some resiliency with all the adversity that has been put out there for him.
“I dealt with everything at an extreme level from the day I left college, with the whole thing with [Philadelphia], the draft and four markets [St. Louis, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston] that have intense scrutiny. You develop a resiliency of your own, and Stephen has seen what I’ve gone through. I’ve said that this year would be a really good learning experience and turning point in his career just because it’s a good chance to play in a big market that can highlight him as a shortstop and a hitter.”
And, Monday, the spotlight that comes with playing for the Red Sox certainly seemed to fit Stephen just fine.
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