PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- Late on a Sunday night in October, Rick Porcello was throwing from one mound in the visitors' bullpen in Fenway Park. Joaquin Benoit was throwing from the other. There were two out when Dustin Pedroia grounded a single to right off Detroit reliever Al Alburquerque, loading the bases.
Tigers manager Jim Leyland walked to the mound, signaling to the bullpen. He wanted Benoit, his setup man.
The Red Sox hitter was David Ortiz.
"We're up four runs and the bases are loaded, and I remember thinking, 'Just keep the bleeping ball on the good side of the fence, and we'll be all right,'" Porcello said.
Ortiz swung at Benoit's first pitch.
"When the ball left the bat," Porcello said, "he hit kind of a line drive, and I'm thinking, 'Shoot, it's in the gap,' and Torii's running over there, and ..."
And the ball flew over the wall of the Red Sox's bullpen, and so did Tigers outfielder Torii Hunter, and the bearded Boston cop threw his arms over his head, and Rick Porcello doesn't even remember hearing the kind of noise that comes only when 38,000 people have collectively lost their minds.
"I felt like it was a movie -- I can't believe that just happened," Porcello says on this Sunday afternoon in March. "First pitch, Ortiz hits a grand slam. I just couldn't believe it. I was genuinely in awe because it was one of those situations you feel like it was so easy to avoid, and then it actually happens.
"Crazy. A lot of feelings going on in a short period of time. Then it's s---, I've got to go in there."
Now it's the ninth inning, and the score is tied, and who can even think of sitting down, and here is Porcello, grandson of an infielder who played one year for the Red Sox, in the unfamiliar role of pitching in relief, and Jonny Gomes, Mr. Boston Strong himself, is leading off, and 38,000 voices are united in the conviction that the Red Sox cannot lose.
"Jonny Gomes hits a broken-bat ground ball and Jose Iglesias throws it into the stands," Porcello says. "I throw a wild pitch, and [Jarrod] Saltalamacchia hits a ground ball into left field."
Gomes scores the winning run. Saltalamacchia disappears under a mob of teammates. Porcello walks off the mound, charged with the loss.
"It's over now," he said on this Sunday, done with that reminiscence. "I'm glad to be on the other side of it now."
Rick Porcello has not pitched in a playoff game since that Game 2 loss to the Red Sox in the 2013 American League Championship Series. He could not have known then, of course, that if he wants that chance this season, it most likely will come in a Red Sox uniform. The Red Sox traded outfielder Yoenis Cespedes to Detroit last December because they believe Porcello can take them back to the postseason after 2014's last-place finish.
Porcello shares that conviction.
"I've said this countless times," he said Sunday. "I'm very fortunate that I got traded to this team and this organization and have a chance to win again this year. That's the most important thing to me, going into a season with a club that has an opportunity to compete. It's all you can ask for."
Sam Dente was Rick Porcello's maternal grandfather. Dente broke into the big leagues with the Red Sox in 1947 as a third baseman, one of eight players to play the position for the Sox that year. Dente started the most games at third, 44, five more than Eddie Pellagrini. He was 25 when he came to the Sox, a year younger than his grandson is now.
The Sox traded Dente that November to the St. Louis Browns, he was the everyday shortstop for the Washington Senators for a couple of years, and he wound up spending nine seasons in the big leagues. But for that one summer, 1947, Sam Dente was a teammate of Ted Williams, with whom Porcello can claim a different type of kinship: their shared love of fly fishing.
"There's an Orvis store in Manchester, Vermont," said Porcello, who spends part of his offseason in that state, his folks having bought some land there years ago, and was describing a visit to the original sporting-goods store founded by Charles F. Orvis in 1856. "And right next door is the American Museum of Fly Fishing."
Ted Williams, of course, was not satisfied with election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1999, Theodore S. Williams was inducted into the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame as well.
Porcello wishes he would have had the chance to talk fishing with the master -- "I would have learned a lot," he said -- though it would have been interesting to see Williams' reaction to Porcello's belief that there are parallels to be drawn between the art of pitching and the art of fly fishing.
"There are a lot of physical things involved -- timing, keeping your weight back -- that goes along with baseball, but the mental aspect of it is the biggest part," Porcello said. "There is a similarity between fishing and pitching. It's kind of hard for me to explain because not many people fly fish.
"It's like to match a hatch -- whatever insects hatch that day and the fish are eating it. I guess you could compare that to pitching -- what adjustment has a hitter made since the last time you faced him, what's he doing now. There's that fine line, too, in both fishing and baseball. You always have that special fly you go to if you're not catching a fish, and baseball's that way too. I know in any situation I have a very good sinker and I can go to that at any time.
"So it's kind of one of those things you think and try to exploit their weaknesses, but at the same time you don't try to get too far away from what works for you."
Leyland, the longtime Tigers manager who undoubtedly is bound for the Hall of Fame, once praised Porcello for the intensity with which he studied the game.
"I remember when Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux were real young," Leyland said. "They figured things out. They kept getting smarter and smarter and smarter and smarter. They were a lot like Porcello -- very talented young guys with good arms. They had their moments too. But they figured things out.
"I think Porcello will figure out for a long time how to get hitters out. He'll figure out a way to stay in the big leagues and pitch in the big leagues successfully for a long time, I think."
Studying the game, Porcello said, is something he never had to force himself to do.
"I just love watching the game," he said. "I love learning. It's not only a job for us; for me it's a passion. I've always played baseball, I've always loved it. It's easy for me because I have fun doing it.
"You never figure everything out. There's always something to learn. There always is something to pick up on. I'd be pretty mad at myself if I ended my career and I felt I hadn't done everything I could from that aspect."
Because he made it to the big leagues within a year of being drafted, in 2009, it is easy to forget that Porcello is just now entering what should be his physical prime. He has, in the past couple of years, abandoned his slider and tightened a curveball he has come to believe in, a pitch that has beautifully complemented his sinker. His four-seam fastball and changeup complete his repertoire.
He is not the same pitcher who one scout said Sunday was one of the best high school pitchers he'd ever seen, one who regularly threw in the high 90s and had an overhand curve to match. But he has evolved into a pitcher who draws wide praise from the scouts who have seen him grow and believe he can be Boston's most reliable starter this season.
"He has obviously evolved the last two years, with his innings totals climbing," Sox manager John Farrell said. "His win totals, that's reflective of the teams he played with, but getting around him, getting to know him, we've got a young guy who is very mature, he obviously has a lot of experience from an early age, and we're fortunate he's here."
For how long remains to be seen. Porcello is eligible for free agency, and he said Sunday that there have been no conversations with the Sox regarding an extension. But for one year, at least, he has a chance to see if he can make a sequel to that movie, one with another happy ending for the Sox, to be sure, but one in which he's part of the celebration.