Faithful
Authors: Stephen King,Stewart O’Nan
Stewart O’Nan, Stephen King
FAITHFUL
Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season
For Victoria Snelgrove,
Red Sox fan
Down by the river,
down by the banks of the River Charles.
That’s where you’ll find me,
along with
muggers, lovers and thieves.
THE STANDELLS
I put a spell on you,
cause you’re mine.
SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS
Introduction
I wasn’t always like this. I was born a World Champion, a third-generation Pirates fan, in early 1961.
A few short months before, the Bucs had taken the heavily favored Yankees to Game 7 in Forbes Field. The Yanks seemed to have the series in hand, up 7–4 in the eighth when Bill Virdon hit a simple double-play ball to short. As Tony Kubek charged, the ball took a bad hop off the alabaster plaster, hitting him in the Adam’s apple, and both runners were safe. Two singles later, it was 7–6. The next batter, backup catcher Hal Smith, caught up to a Bobby Shantz fastball and parked it over the left-field wall for a 9–7 lead.
But the Pirates couldn’t close it out, surrendering two in the next frame. With the game tied at nine, second baseman Bill Mazeroski led off the bottom of the ninth. He took the first pitch from Ralph Terry for a ball, and then, as every Pirates and Yankees fan knows, Maz cranked a high fastball over Yogi Berra and everything in left, and the fans stormed the field.
As a longtime Red Sox fan, I appreciate this history even more now, but, as a kid then, my perspective was limited. Living so close to the real-life setting of the legend (our library was right across the parking lot, and we’d walk over and touch the brick wall the ball cleared), I grew up pitying the Yankees as hard-luck losers.
As the ’60s turned into the ’70s, nothing happened to refute this. We won it all again in ’71, beating an Orioles team with four 20-game winners, and made the playoffs nearly every year before succumbing to the Dodgers or the Big Red Machine. Roberto Clemente, tragically, was gone, but his spirit lingered over the Lumber Company, a colorful and monstrous offensive club that included hitters like Willie Stargell, Dave Parker, Al Oliver, Richie Zisk, Rennie Stennett and Manny Sanguillen. Earl Weaver’s O’s and Charlie Finley’s A’s ruled the AL. The bumbling Yankees, like the Brooklyn Dodgers or New York Giants, belonged to a flannel, white-bread past, hopelessly square.
About the time George Steinbrenner took them over, I traded my interest in baseball for cooler high school pursuits: music and cars, girls and cigarettes. I noticed with an offhand disgust that the Yankees had bought the heart of the A’s dynasty to “win” two cheapies, but it didn’t mean much to me. I was too busy messing around to bother with a kid’s game.
That probably wouldn’t have changed if the Pirates didn’t go and win it all again in ’79. I was going to school in Boston, lost in engineering problems and partying, but one of my best friends was an Orioles fan. Game 7 was excruciating for him. Just like in ’71, they were playing in Baltimore, and just like in ’71, the three-run homer the O’s were waiting for never showed up. Rather than rub it in, I did my best to console my friend. That’s just how it went with the Pirates in Game 7—like the Steelers in the Super Bowl.
By Opening Day of 1980, the glow from winning it all hadn’t worn off, and, living two blocks from Kenmore Square, I decided to take advantage of the neighborhood and visit Fenway Park for the first time. I didn’t expect much. AL ball back then seemed boring to me, a slow, low-scoring game like soccer (since then, the leagues have swapped styles, maybe due to the DH, or the AL teams’ new, smaller parks), but bleacher seats were only three dollars. The park reminded me of long-gone Forbes Field, with its green girders and cramped wooden seats and oddball dimensions. And that wall, the top hung with sail-like nets to catch home run balls. It made me think of the wire screen in right and the way Clemente anticipated every weird carom off it, gunning down runners chugging into second.
And the Sox surprised me. They played like an NL club—all hitting, no pitching. No speed or defense either. The stars of the great ’75 and ’78 teams were gone, sacrificed to free agency by the old-school Yawkeys. The only survivors were Jim Rice, Dwight Evans and the fast-aging Yaz, anchoring a lineup of journeymen. They were a slower, less talented version of the old Pirates, a Lumbering Company, just hoping to outslug the other team. They weren’t good but they weren’t really bad either. They were entertaining, and Fenway provided me with the amenities of an actual park—a green space in the middle of the city where I could pass the hours reading and doing my homework. I watched the games and I liked the team enough, but I didn’t kid myself that they were contenders.
And that was okay. Between championships the Pirates went through long stretches in the cellar. This was better, skirting .500. The farm system was in good shape, and eventually we’d develop some pitchers.
You could say I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but game after game I happily shelled out my three bucks at the barred ticket window outside Gate C and staked my claim to Section 34 in straight center, right beside Channel 38’s camera, where you could call balls and strikes and let the opposing center fielder know he was on the road.
The Sox weren’t a tough ticket then, and I was surrounded by a scruffy tribe of regulars. My favorite was the General, a scrawny, grizzled guy in his late twenties with rotten teeth who wore a squashed Civil War cap and challenged all comers with his portable Othello board. And then there was the husky dude with receding hair who always came late with his dinner in a Tupperware bowl and bellowed, “WAAAAAAAAAAAAADE!”
After the ’84 season, I left for a job on Long Island, and was living there when Roger Clemens and the ’86 club made the playoffs. I was there for Game 6 of the World Series, deep in the heart of Mets country. I remember us being one strike away again and again. I was ready to jump up from my chair and dance. It was late, and I was watching by myself, the TV turned down so it wouldn’t wake the baby. When the ball rolled through Billy Buck’s legs, I heard the cheers of my neighbors.
One pitch—say, one of Pedro’s change-ups—and I wouldn’t be writing this. But no, we placed our faith in Calvin Schiraldi (who blew leads in both the eighth
and
the tenth in Game 6).
I’ve been to disappointing games since then—a string of playoff losses to Cleveland, the phantom-tag game in the ’99 ALCS, last year’s Pedro-Zimmer brawl—but none of those teams, no matter how far they went, even last year’s overachievers, were true contenders. We were always at least two players away, and one of those was usually a closer. Even in ’86, the odds were on the Mets (who, if you remember, were touted as one of the greatest teams of all time, a claim that now seems like the New York hype it was).
This year was different. With the addition of Curt Schilling and Keith Foulke, it looked like we had the horses. Months before pitchers and catchers were scheduled to report, the pressure on the team was already intense. Anything short of a World Championship would be considered a failure, and with the new owners trying to juggle too many high-priced contracts (including Nomar and Pedro in the last year of their deals), it appeared this was the only shot the Sox would have for a long time.
Add to that a new, largely unproven manager, Terry Francona, whose previous experience with the Phillies had been less than successful. After last year’s Game 7 debacle, the front office (led by whiz kid and Bill James disciple Theo Epstein) canned the Chauncey Gardner–like Grady Little, the latest in a parade of weak field managers with no input into personnel moves. Francona inherited a team with several notorious prima donnas, a brutal local media and a demanding fan base. He had a three-year contract, but if he didn’t produce a winner immediately, he knew he might as well pack his bags.
Along with those overarching dramas, there were questions about how the failed A-Rod deal would play out with Nomar and Manny Ramirez. The Yankees also picked up former Sox closer Tom Gordon, who they hoped would be the missing setup man they’d needed since promoting Mariano Rivera to closer. The Sox were still hoping Ramiro Mendoza would come around, and submariner Byung-Hyun Kim, but, emotionally, Sox fans were pulling harder for prodigal sons Brian Daubach and Ellis Burks. (Daubach’s drama started early: he was a nonroster invitee to training camp, and, as has been the case his entire career, had to scrap to stay in the majors.) And of course there was the question of Pedro and his shoulder, Pedro and his back, Pedro and his mouth. Plus whatever controversy came up. This Sox clubhouse, like the Yankees’ back when they had personality, was known for soap opera.
It would be an interesting year, whichever way it went. If the Sox contended, all of New England would catch pennant fever. If they tanked, the carnage would be spectacular. Either way, Steve and I would be following them, watching them, listening to them, taking in games at Fenway, reading the box scores, checking the website, discussing them endlessly with friends and family and total strangers. Like any devoted Sox fans, we’d been waiting for this season since the end of Game 7, and our hopes were both impossibly high and cautiously guarded. Because as much as we love them, the Sox had broken our hearts over and over, and that probably wouldn’t change.
But what if? No one expected the Patriots to
ever
win a Super Bowl, let alone two. Our rotation was the best in the majors, and we actually had a closer now. Last year’s offense had outslugged the ’27 Yankees. More than any team we’d fielded since ’78 (that wonderful, terrible season), this squad had a bona fide shot. In February, before a single pitch had been thrown, millions of us believed this would be the year.
This book should reflect the depth of our obsession as well as how quickly the tone of a season changes. To get the emotions while they were fresh, the book is in double diary form. We didn’t chase the team like journalists, looking for total coverage. We just did our best to have a regular Sox-filled summer. For each day or game that we naturally came in contact with the Sox and found something remarkable—from spring training to the very last out—we wrote separate entries or reflections.
Besides the diary entries, for games or streaks that especially thrilled us or pissed us off (and with the Sox, we didn’t lack for those), we’ve attached spur-of-the-moment e-mail exchanges that show us firmly in the grip of the beast, feeding it.
In baring our relationship with the Sox, we hope to illuminate readers’ feelings for their own favorite teams. We also hope there’s something funny about owning up to the silliness of obsession yet being unable to break free of it—like Woody Allen or David Foster Wallace being painfully aware of their neuroses even as they navigate situations bound to freak them out. Sox fans are like any anxious sports fans, except we have good reason to be paranoid, so that even an 8–1 laugher against Tampa Bay can turn—in a matter of a couple of base runners, a couple of knuckleheaded pitching changes—into pure torture. And like hardcore followers of any sport, Sox fans are expert at taking a game apart and examining its most intricate components, especially when the worst happens.
We knew all of this coming into the 2004 season, and yet, for all the heartbreak, there we were again, psyched that Tommy Brady and the Pats might show up on Opening Day the way they did in 2002. Fenway was sold out for the season, and ticket prices on eBay were through the roof. The Sox and Yanks were both stocked and talking smack, from the front office down to the scalpers. The waiting was over—finally, it was next year.
Stewart O’Nan,
February 29th, 2004
Spring Training
WELCOME TO NEXT YEAR
February 21st
After the Schilling acquisition, and during the A-Rod negotiations, I felt distinctly weird…out of kilter as a Red Sox fan. I started to think, “I’m going to come back to a team of superhero strangers wearing Red Sox uniforms. Who are these guys?” It was a dreamlike feeling, both pleasant and unpleasant…like getting gas at the dentist and knowing it’s going to hurt like almighty hell later on. Then the A-Rod deal fell through—the same old Red Sox problem: lots of cash, just not quite enough cash. And the Yankees got him. And the tabloids gloated. And even the
New York Times,
that supposedly staid gray lady, got in a crack; the Yankees, one of their columnists said, continued to show the Red Sox how to win, winter and summer. That was when the unpleasant dreamlike feeling burst, and I woke up to real life, smelling not the coffee but the peanuts and Cracker Jacks: Ah yes, screwed again. Hello, world, I’m a Red Sox fan. For better or worse, I’m a Red Sox fan, and I’ve just been screwed again. Same as it ever was. So bring on the Yankees, and may Alex Rodriguez bat .240.
We’re going to spring training, the whole family. It’s a surprise, my birthday present, a long weekend in Fort Myers. I’ve always wanted to go, ever since I was a kid in Pittsburgh listening to the Bucs warm up in sunny Bradenton. Trudy says she’s sick of listening to me yap about it, so here it is, a folder with the plane tickets, the hotel reservations, the rental-car agreement. We can’t afford it, but I can’t say that.
And there’s the envelope with the game tickets and the diagram of City of Palms Park. We’re going to see the Sox play their traditional game against Boston College on Friday, then the first game of the year against the Yankees Sunday and finally a Monday game against the Twins, who also train in Fort Myers. I forget about the money for a second and check out where we’re sitting.
I hit the Sox website to find out more about the training complex. I figure my son Steph and I can hang out and watch the players while Trudy and Caitlin beach it. I check the schedule, thinking the BC game is the very first of the spring.
It’s not. We’re playing the Twins at their place on Thursday. I go to their website and buy four tickets for it.
We’re also playing Northeastern at home on Friday night. I buy four more.
February 23rd
My brother John calls from Pittsburgh and asks me who he should draft from the Sox for his AL fantasy team. He’s a Pirates fan and doesn’t follow the junior circuit closely. Personally, I don’t like fantasy leagues, the way they make you root for individual players over team performance, but I do my best for him.
“Keith Foulke should get forty saves no matter how badly he pitches.”
“Last year you told me Mendoza.”
“Bronson Arroyo.”
“He’s no good. At least he wasn’t when he was with us. Who else?”
“Pokey Reese.”
“We had him. He’s always injured.”
I hang up feeling unhelpful, all of my arcane knowledge useless.
Second base is the one big question mark this season, besides not having a lefty starter. Pokey Reese has missed the better part of the last two seasons with leg and thumb injuries. He’s a little guy, a speedster who played option QB in high school, but suddenly he’s become delicate. He could be the Gold Glover he was a few years back and hit a respectable .260, or he could tank. Already the Sox are looking at Mark Bellhorn, Tony Womack and Terry Shumpert as insurance policies.
Nomar says he’s excited about playing beside such a slick fielder. Every spring it seems he says the same thing, because it’s been ten years since we’ve had the same Opening Day second baseman in consecutive seasons. We let playoff hero Todd Walker walk. Rey Sanchez got the boot after a decent year. Before that we had Jose Offerman, ex–general manager Dan Duquette’s laughable answer to losing Mo Vaughn.
Duquette, you’ll remember, is the genius who said Roger Clemens was “in the twilight of his career” and let him go off to Toronto, where he won back-to-back Cy Youngs. In the ’80s there was continuity at second. Jerry Remy, Marty Barrett and Jody Reed all enjoyed long stays, and were fan favorites (Jerry still is, doing color for NESN). Duquette, trading our top prospects yearly in his attempt to build an instant champion, stripped the farm system, and now our second baseman—like our closer—is a replacement player.
February 25th
I’m trying to get tix for Stewart (and Stewart’s wife Trudy) and me to the annual game pitting the Red Sox B-team (invitee Brian “Dauber” Daubach should be starting for the Sox) against the Boston College baseball team. Ordinarily these would be a slam dunk—prime real estate up in Owner’s Country at City of Palms Park, and maybe a couple of spots among the Escalades and Navigators in the players’ parking lot—but my main man, Kevin Shea, has moved on, and so it’s nervous-making time. How about the satellite connection? Can I get New England Sports Network (aka NESN, aka The Home of the Free and Land of the Eck) down here? Yes. Thank God. But my subscription from last year has lapsed. Oh shit. And how many spring training games will they carry, anyway? Oh shit, maybe Joe Castiglione can help me with tix to the Sox/BC game…but he wanted me to blurb his book, and it deserves a blurb, but I haven’t done it yet…
It’s nervous time.
Oh God, I wish Curt Schilling was only thirty-two.
February 27th
I’ve been trying to nail down tickets to the home opener for months now. It’s been sold out since five minutes after seats went on sale, but I’ve got an in. Last year I managed to score some last-minute seats—field boxes ten rows behind home plate. Took the kids out of school, only to sit in the freezing rain for three hours before the game was called. I figured we’d get the same seats, but when the replacements came they were grandstands. I sent them back, but the ticket office never got back to me. At the end of the season, I called and asked what the deal was, and Naomi there said they’d give me two field boxes for this year’s opener and a chance to buy two more.
But so far I’ve been having trouble getting through to Naomi. My great fear is that she’s changed jobs and we’ll be stuck watching the game on TV.
February 28th
I vet the depth chart on the website as if I’m Theo, trying to figure out who to keep, who to cut, who to ship to Pawtucket. We’ve brought the expanded forty-man roster to camp, along with twelve nonroster invitees. By Opening Day, management will whittle these fifty-two down to twenty-five, and of the twenty-five spots, twenty are already filled. Essentially, thirty-two players, most with big league experience, are fighting for five spots reserved for middle relievers and backup position players.
One guy who I hope makes it is Brian Daubach. Even though he’s a millionaire, fans still see him as a scrappy blue-collar player. He paid his dues in the minors with the Marlins and Devil Rays before getting his chance with the Sox, and played well as a platoon guy before getting demoted for Tony Clark (who he outplayed to win his job back), then dumped for the awful Jeremy Giambi. “We want Dauber!” we’d shout after Giambi struck out looking again.
Now he’s back, and his main competition is David McCarty, a good defensive first baseman we picked up from Oakland at the end of last season. As a lefty hitter with power, Dauber has the edge, but since David Ortiz already fills that bill, McCarty’s glove might be more valuable in the late innings. McCarty, weirdly, also plans on trying to pitch, and we’re so desperate for lefties that Francona’s going to let him.
SK:
Dauber was a real old-time Red Sox player. Like he was born to play for the Red Sox. Millar is that way; and Varitek, of course. And you know, Pedro Martinez wasn’t born a Red Sox guy, but has become one. He finished his becoming in the seventh game of the ALCS last year, don’t you think? Came out covered in mud and blood and shit, soul brother to Pumpsie Green. Man, I root for the Dauber… but I don’t give him a dog’s chance. Sure wish I had my DAUBACH IS MY DADDY shirt. I’d wear it to the Sox/BC game. God, no one ever tried harder in the clutch.
SO:
And, like Fisk, he always took it out on his old clubs. He wore out Tampa Bay, and last year when he beat us he was smiling for Tom Caron [NESN’s roving on-field reporter] like a new dad. No doubt Pedro’s paid his dues. Manny, well, it’s close. Johnny D’s still too new, and Bill Mueller (pronounced Miller), and David Ortiz. The Sox need more Sox!
SK:
Some of what happens to Daubach is down to pure luck—who gets hurt and who stays healthy. But you know he’s on the edge of being back in civvies. Or a minor league uni. Hope he made some good investments over the years.
February 29th
Reporters following Byung-Hyun Kim say he stays till 1 A.M. working out, but that he naps at all times. I wonder if BK’s regimen is like the Japanese, who throw two hundred pitches a day. He’s young and talented, with that weird submarine delivery, but he’s never thrown a full season as a starter. If he can give us two hundred innings and twenty quality starts, we should win the East. The worry is that he’s a head case. He gave Fenway the finger when we booed him during the introductions before the ALCS, and in the off-season he smashed a photographer’s camera. I guess he’s this year’s Oil Can Boyd or Cowboy Carl Everett.
March 1st
Steve calls as Trudy’s microwaving her lunch. I can barely hear him through the Geiger-like static. For the BC game, we’re parking in the players’ lot and sitting in the owner’s booth. As a bleacher rat, I’m a little nervous. What do you say to an owner—“Way to own”?
March 2nd
Oops—Yankees Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield received steroids from Barry Bonds’s trainer, according to the ongoing federal probe. Giambi showed up at camp looking shrunken. Sheffield says he’ll pee in a cup anytime anyplace, but when a reporter produces a cup, Sheff backs down. Makes me wonder if Steinbrenner went out and got A-Rod and Travis Lee in case the league suspends the BALCO Boys.
March 3rd
All day an unreal, nearly paralyzing feeling. It seems so impossible that we’re blowing off work and school that we have to keep repeating the news to each other like lottery winners: “We’re going to Florida!”
In the Charlotte airport, waiting for our connection to Fort Myers, I look around the gate for fellow pilgrims, but the one kid wearing a cap is a Brewers fan. It’s only when we’re on board that the hard core begin dribbling in—four single guys in their twenties, all big enough to be players, in various Sox hats.
We get in after midnight and the airport’s crazy. In the long line at the rental-car center, half the people are in Boston garb. Fort Myers is an endless grid of strip malls and stoplights, and everyone drives like they’re either having a heart attack or trying to find an emergency room for someone who is. We fly past Mattress World, Bath World, Rug World. It’s Hicksville, Long Island, with palm trees and pelicans.
Our hotel has personality—unfortunately it’s the personality of a lunch lady turned crack whore. Bikers and twentysomethings early for spring break wander the parking lot, knocking back Coronas and margaritas to the thumping of a ragged cover band. The hotel’s assurance on their website that they don’t rent to anyone under twenty-one seems less a defensive measure now than an admission of a long-standing problem. It’s one-thirty and the music is thundering up from the stage, one floor below our balcony. The song ends and the drunk girls scream. The drunk guys go “Wooooo!”
March 4th
I want to get up and be at the practice fields by nine. I expect it’ll be just me and Steph, but Trudy comes too, driving while I navigate. We peel off the Tamiami Trail and in a few blocks we see City of Palms Park. According to the website, the training complex is two and a half miles straight down Edison, but there’s no parking. You’re supposed to park here and ride a shuttle bus to the practice fields.
City of Palms Park is understated and classic from the outside, a plain white concrete facade three stories tall, with flags for all the AL teams flying atop the roof, and one window-sized Sox logo over the green main gates. There’s no one on the plaza in front, just the stalky palm trees. I don’t see anywhere to park, so I tell Trudy to go ahead and cruise the practice fields.
We get lucky—the lot for the practice facility is half-empty. The clear-coated monster trucks and chrome-wheeled Escalades are obviously the players’. We park in a far corner and head for the nearest gate. AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY, a sign says. As we walk through, I look for other fans, but only see a few people who might be players’ relatives.
There are five fields and, closest to us, a roofed arcade. Someone’s in there smacking balls, but it’s too dim to see who, and we’re trying to act cool. We head for a field where the players are stretching. No one challenges us. When we reach the team, we see why—it’s not the big club but the rookie and minor league invitees, guys with no shot this year, but who may develop and move up through the system.
The pitchers run bunt drills. The outfielders handle line-drive singles silently fired from a rubber-wheeled machine. Former players Luis Alicea and U L Washington coach the infielders, tossing short-hops the players have to backhand barehanded. The range of skill is evident. Some never miss while others are lucky to pick one cleanly.
Summers, we see a lot of the triple-A PawSox over in Pawtucket and the double-A Portland Sea Dogs when they visit New Britain, but the only player I recognize is Hanley Ramirez. He’s the number one prospect in our farm system, a shortstop with speed and power. He’s only twenty, and rumor is he might be promoted from single-A Augusta to Portland, with an eye towards taking Nomar’s place in 2005. One problem is he made 36 errors last year and hit only .275 after batting over .330 at lower levels. Another is that he’s a hothead, earning a ten-game suspension for making an obscene gesture to the crowd. Here, in practice, he moves like he’s already a superstar, cool and loose and slouchy.
There are three seniors watching with us, a woman and two men, one of whom is wearing a Springfield Elks cap. The woman has a camera, a couple signed balls and a handful of minor league cards. She wants to get Jamie Brown to sign his. She knows all the players taking batting practice. This is what they do, she says. They’re mad at the Sox for forcing them to buy ticket packages that include three crummy games to get the one good one against the Yanks, so now they just come to the complex and watch the kids.
BP wraps, so we ramble along the road beyond the last field. It’s hot, and Steph’s cheeks are red. We’ve circled the entire complex, and walk through the lot just as two women in a ’69 Firebird convertible pull up. They’re older than any of the guys here, but beach-tanned and gym-tight. I don’t think Steph’s seen
Bull Durham
or knows what a Baseball Annie is, but he probably wouldn’t be interested anyway.
We come back in the players’ entrance, which has a Boston
Globe
honor box beside it. The batting alleys are full of guys getting extra swings in. By the backstop, the old lady is getting Jamie Brown to sign. We’ve only been here a few hours, but it’s enough. It’s only our first day and we’re already wilting.
After putting in some beach time, we get caught in traffic and are nearly late for the night game. Hammond Stadium holds only 7,500, but it seems they’ve all brought their cars. The Twins have elected to park the overflow on the outfields of their practice facility. We just shrug and follow the soft ruts in front of us and nose it in against the 330 sign by the foul pole.
“The temperature at game time here in Fort Myers is seventy-nine degrees,” the PA announcer informs us, to applause. “In Minneapolis, it’s thirty-four with a mix of rain and snow.”
Besides the ailing Johnny Damon and Trot Nixon sitting out, the starting lineup is most decidedly the A-team. Gabe Kapler, a solid backup outfielder, leads off, followed by last year’s surprise batting champ Bill Mueller, Manny, Nomar, David Ortiz, Kevin Millar, Jason Varitek, PawSock Adam Hyzdu subbing in right for Trot, and in the nine-spot, Pokey Reese.
The Twins roll out their postseason lineup, including outfielders Shannon Stewart and Torii Hunter, and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz, as well as phenom Joe Mauer at catcher.
It’s the first inning of the first exhibition game, but when Bill Mueller launches one to deep center, Torii Hunter gets on his horse and runs it down, diving at full extension like it’s the playoffs.
The intensity only lasts a couple of innings. By the fourth the substitutions are wholesale and the game takes on a double-A flavor. The Sox win on a broken-bat bleeder by prospect Jeremy Owens, and we leave happy, picking up our free grapefruit, two each in a yellow mesh bag. In the lot I spy an old orange VW bus with RED SOX NATION handpainted in red across the back window. Three guys in their early twenties are piling in the side door, and for a second I envy them the trip. Then I remember that I’m on it too.