Tara Sullivan: For the Kimbrel family, the only save that truly mattered came in March - The Boston Globe
Lydia Joy Kimbrel is 13 days away from her first birthday.
The Red Sox are four wins away from giving her a most perfect present.
If it happens, if the Red Sox cap this remarkable season with a World Series title, if they end up taking one final champagne shower and partying with a championship duck boat tour, they will share a small but deeply emotional slice of their journey with little Lydia Joy.
The daughter of closer Craig Kimbrel and his wife Ashley is, after all, the toughest fighter in the room, surviving the congenital heart condition that necessitated multiple major surgeries, thriving since the March procedure that forced her dad to miss a large chunk of spring training and through it all, inspiring a group of teammates driven to rally around one of their own, a living, bouncing reminder that as great as it is to win a baseball game, beating the medical odds is so, so much sweeter.
“It’s been a long year. We’ve been through a lot,” Kimbrel said in the haze of the visitor’s locker room in Houston, where he’d just notched his third save of the ALCS, the last one clinching Boston’s trip to the Series. “To have a chance to do this in my professional life is great. Everything at home has been going great as well. She’s doing unbelievable. To be able to share this with her, to be able to go to the next round and share that with these guys, it’s special.”