Everyone else surely was thinking back to all the times David Ortiz had come through in a big moment.

Not Ortiz. He was thinking back to a time he struck out.

It was the eighth inning of Game 2, the bases were loaded, and Tigers manager Jim Leyland was headed to the mound to change pitchers. Ortiz wondered whether Leyland would bring in left-hander Phil Coke, but then he saw Joaquin Benoit coming in.

"They brought in the guy who was supposed to be closing," Ortiz said. "I was thinking about the pitch he threw me two months before."

It was actually almost three months earlier, in a June 23 game at Comerica Park, Ortiz's 26th career plate appearance against Benoit but his only matchup with the Tigers' closer during the 2013 regular season. In that June 23 game, the Red Sox trailed by three runs when Ortiz faced Benoit with a man on and nobody out in the ninth.

Ortiz worked the count to 2-2, then swung and missed at a Benoit changeup for strike three.

Nearly three months later at Fenway Park, with the magical Red Sox season hanging in the balance, there was Benoit again. Ortiz walked to the plate, certain he was going to see that changeup again, determined to be ready for it this time.

"I was sitting on it all the way, the minute I saw him walking in from the bullpen," Ortiz said. "And he threw me one right there."

This was a different Ortiz than the slugger who could get by on just seeing a pitch and hitting it earlier in his career, the slugger who'd grown up in baseball with Torii Hunter in the Twins organization. By 2013, Ortiz had aged and lost some reaction time, and he knew he had to make up for it with his smarts. So he'd learned how to study pitchers.

He hadn't, of course, lost his sense for the dramatic.

He also, on this October night, had a touch of good fortune.

The changeup he struck out on in June was a killer. "That just faaaded!" Rod Allen screamed on the Tigers' telecast.

But the changeup Benoit threw him in Game 2 of the ALCS was begging to be killed. It didn't fade until after it made contact with Ortiz's bat, until after it was headed for the Red Sox's bullpen, until after it had given the Red Sox new life in an ALCS that seemed lost.

In a way, it was a little crazy that it was Hunter who made the acrobatic effort to catch the ball as he tumbled into the Boston bullpen.

"If [the Tigers] beat us, I was going to be happy," Ortiz said. "Torii is like a brother to me."

Until the Ortiz grand slam, it looked as if the Tigers would beat the Red Sox. They won Game 1 and were controlling Game 2. Through the first 16 innings of the ALCS, Boston had just three hits against Detroit pitching. The Red Sox had already struck out 30 times in 51 at-bats.

Boston needed something dramatic. It needed Ortiz.

And as it turned out, the grand slam off Benoit's changeup was just a sign of what was to come.

Ortiz went 11-for-16 with two home runs in a World Series in which seemingly no one else could hit. But none of those 11 hits felt as season-changing as one swing of the bat against Benoit.

-- Danny Knobler