Faithful (19 page)

7:30 A.M.: The Red Sox won last night. Schilling (now 7-3, God bless him) stopped the bleeding at four games and the Yankees lost, so for the time being, all’s well as it can be.
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It’s funny, though, how being a fan takes over your life. Ronald Reagan died at 1 P.M. yesterday. At the time he left for that great Oval Office in the sky, he was ninety-three—the oldest living ex-president. And, I realize, he would have been seven the last time the Red Sox won the World Series.
Hmmm,
I think.
That’s old enough to have a rooting interest. Wonder if The Gipper was a fan?

You know what Ole Case would have said, don’tcha? Right. You could look it up.

The latest Pedro worry is that he showed up at the clubhouse yesterday wearing a wrist brace on his pitching arm. When asked why he had it on, he told reporters, “Because it looks good.” Lately he hasn’t been able to throw his curveball, so this just sets off a wave of speculation that something’s physically wrong. We’ll find out Tuesday, when he’s scheduled to take on David Wells and the Padres.

Nomar should be back for that game. Last night in Toledo he went 2 for 4 with a homer and a two-run double. I expect to be on Lansdowne Street Tuesday afternoon, trying to catch one of his batting practice home runs.

5:30 P.M.: This was a good afternoon for we the faithful. First, the team Nomar Garciaparra is likely to rejoin on June 8th will be ten games over .500, thanks to today’s win. Second, Lowe went five respectable innings and then lucked into the win when his teammates scored five runs in the top of the sixth (the only inning in which they managed to score
any
runs). Third, and maybe most important, I finally saw signs that, yes, Derek Lowe cares. After giving up a two-run gopher ball to KC Royals batter Mike Sweeney in the first (“A ball that just screamed ‘hit me,’” commentator Sam Horn said in the postgame show), the camera caught a look of weary disgust on Lowe’s face that summed up all of his feelings about what must seem a nightmare season to a big-money player in his walk year.
What have I got to do to get out of this?
that look said. Or maybe
What have I got to do to make it stop?

Work is the answer to both questions, of course, and following the Sweeney home run, Derek Lowe worked quite hard. He’s clearly got along way to go—and at 5-5, he’s not looking like the answer to any team’s 2005 prayers—but at least he now looks like he’s
awake,
and that’s an improvement.

Then there’s Mike Timlin, who’s old-time tough and has the looks to match, with his red socks pulled up almost to his knees and his no-nonsense low leg-kick and stride delivery. Timlin is, in my humble opinion, worth a Lowe and a half. He came on in relief of Derek, pitching a perfect three innings before turning the ball over to Keith Foulke. And if Mr. Mike wants to give all the credit to the Lord, more power to him.

Oh, and by the way—did I happen to mention that Kevin Youkilis was last week’s Pepsi Rookie of the Week? Yep. Yesterday he hit his second home run. Today the Greek God of Walks just…walked.

Hey, it’s good enough for me.

I had a big day yesterday. The sixth of my Dark Tower novels,
Song of Susannah,
was officially published, and I was in New York to do promotion (mostly those morning-radio drive-time shows—not glamorous, and grueling as hell when you pile them up, but they seem to work). The original idea was to fly in from Maine on the evening of the 7th, get a night’s sleep, get up early, do my thing, and fly back late the next afternoon. Instead, I rearranged things on the spur of the moment so I could go to Boston instead. The attraction wasn’t so much the opening night of interleague play—this year the San Diego Padres are in Fenway for the first time—or Pedro Martinez, who has been less than stellar this year, as it was the bruited return of Nomar Garciaparra.

Funny thing about that bruiting. Not only was Nomar not in the Red Sox lineup, he wasn’t even in Boston. He was in Rhode Island, where he played six innings for the PawSox and went 0 for 3. And no one seemed sure just how everyone got so sure he was going to make his major league debut last night in the first place. As I settled into my seat on the third-base line—call last night’s locale halfway between Kevin Youkilis and Manny Ramirez—I couldn’t even remember where I had gotten the idea. I even played with the notion of skipping the game altogether. I’m really,
really
glad I didn’t. Last night’s tilt would certainly have to go on my list of Steve’s Top Ten Games at Fenway Ever.

The thing is, you
never
know when you’re going to be reminded whyyou love this game, why it turns all your dials so vigorously to the right. I’ve been at Fenway for three 1–0 shutouts, and the Red Sox have won all three. Wes Gardner, an otherwise forgettable Sox righty, pitched the first under a gorgeous full summer moon one night in the eighties; Roger Clemens pitched the second on a sweltering weekend afternoon in the early nineties; Pedro Martinez and Keith Foulke (who worked a one-two-three ninth) combined on the third last night.

“The Pods,” as they are called (as in Pod-people, from
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers
? one wonders), may be strangers to Fenway, but their starter, David Wells, knows it well…and we, the Fenway Faithful, know him. Never inarticulate, Boomer has often expressed his distaste for pitching in the Beantown venue. And with good reason. Until last night, fresh off the DL, I’d never seen him pitch well there.
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He made up for that in his first start as a “Pod Person,” giving up just four hits, all singles, and working ahead of virtually every batter. This year’s Red Sox hitters are a patient bunch, and they usually wear pitchers out. Not Wells, last night; most of our guys just ended up getting in the hole 0-2 or 1-2, and slapping harmless grounders in consequence. If Wells hadn’t been lifted so as not to overuse him in his return, the game might still be going on.

I think he was better than Pedro over the first five, and given Pedro’s postgame comments (“I want to build on this”), Pedro may have thought so too.
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Martinez certainly got great defensive backing from his teammates, who have at times this season been decidedly…shall we say
iffy
?…in the field. Johnny Damon made a leaping catch in center, and Mark Bellhorn made a diving, dirt-eating stop between first and second. The stop was good, but what reminded me again—forcibly—of what makes these guys pros was how quickly he was back on his feet again. “Quick as a cat” ain’t in it, dear; “if you blinked you missed it” is more like it. But the defensive play of the night once again belonged to Pokey Reese,who has flashed divine leather all season long. I won’t bother describing it, other than saying he went to his left at a perfectly absurd speed, and maybe—
maybe
—got a helpful last-second bounce. I
will
tell you that I believe no other infielder except Ozzie Smith could have made the play, and relate two overheard comments from behind me, Charlestown accents and all:

“Do you think Nomah could play right field?” was the first.

“Nomah
who?
” was the second.

And today I complete the experience by driving out of Boston on the first
bona fide
day of summer, temperatures in the mid-nineties, me in a Hertz Rent-A-Car I picked up at Logan Airport, driving up Route 1 as I have after so many games at Fenway Park, since my first one in 1959. There’s something just totally balls-to-the-wall about driving north past Kappy’s Liquors unhungover at 9:45 in the morning under a gunmetal sky; you’ve got that almost flawless two-hit, 1–0 win under your belt, and there are almost four more months of baseball to look forward to. I’ve got a cold Pepsi between my legs, the radio’s turned up all the way, there’s a U2 rock-block going on, and “Angel of Harlem” is pouring out of the speakers of my little Mercury Something-or-Other. Call me a dope if you want, but I think this is as good as it gets with your clothes on.

Last night was #5 Night at Fenway Park; the Return of Nomar. The crowd gave him a vast roar of a standing O, and Nomar, obviously moved, saluted them right back. He took the first baseball to come his way flawlessly, starting a 6-4-3 double play. In his first at-bat, he singled smartly into left field, to the crowd’s vast delight. The only problem was the Red Sox lost and the Yankees won, coming back from an early 4–0 deficit in their game with the Colorado Rockies. The Sox are now down three and a half games.

I find this out this morning, having given up on the Sox at 11 P.M., when a rain delay (it eventually clocked in at two hours and fifty minutes) progressed from the merely interminable to the outright absurd. The loss wasn’t entirely unexpected, as the Red Sox were down a bunch when the rains came, but the fact that the Yankees won yet
again
came as a rather nasty shock. They are starting to look more and more like those monolithic Yankee teams from the mid-to-late fifties that inspired the late DouglasWallop (a Washington Senators fan) to write
The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant
, which became the musical
Damn Yankees.

A final note. In a move that may make sense to manager Terry Francona but seems incomprehensible to lowly fans like me, the Red Sox have sent Brian Daubach down to Pawtucket. Andy Dominique started for the Sox last night at first base. After blanking the Padres for four innings, a provisionally rejuvenated Bronson Arroyo found himself with two men on and two out. Brian Giles hit a grounder deep in the hole, which Garciaparra fielded, going to his right. He then made one of those patented across-the-body throws that have nailed so many surprised runners at first. Not last night. The throw was accurate enough, but a little short. The ball bounced first off the dirt, then off the heel of Dominique’s glove. My opinion? Maybe Ortiz doesn’t make that play, but David McCarty almost certainly does…and so does The Dauber. My question?

What’s the guy with Show experience doing in the minors when we’re in a pennant race?

With all the network Thursday-night shows over, it’s easy to claim the good TV. I’ve got revisions to do, and settle in. The Yanks have already won, completing their sweep of the Rockies this afternoon, so once again we need to keep pace.

Schilling’s pitching, and I’m shocked when leadoff batter Sean Burroughs doubles and scores in the first. Ismael Valdez (a seaworthy name if I ever heard one) throws blanks till he meets Pokey Reese in the bottom of the third. In BP, Pokey has to work to reach the wall, but Valdez finds the perfect spot up and in and Pokey loops it into the first row of M7. The next inning, Valdez hangs a curve to Manny with David on first, and Manny goes over everything and into the parking lot.

Meanwhile, Schilling’s throwing 94 with authority, striking out a bunch. In the fifth, Youk’s RBI double off the scoreboard chases Valdez.

CUT TO: crazy handheld zooms of heavyset goateed man in familiar Western shirt gorging on bucket of KFC to raucous music. It’s Millar, in the same shirt he wore to the movie premiere. EXTREME CLOSE-UP of bucket with SFX of chicken pieces disappearing one by one. “Going, going…” Millar says.

When we return, reliever Brandon Puffer intentionally walks Manny to load the bases. Nomar steps in to a standing O and knocks one off the Monster for a 6–1 lead. Millar follows with a double to the left-center gap—“Chickenman!” me and Steph yell.

It’s 8–1, and the rest of the way’s uneventful, save a woman being ejected below Don and Jerry. While the camera’s not allowed to watch her, the crowd is. She must flash them, because there’s a roar, and for the next three minutes Don and Jerry can’t stop laughing. “I wonder how that looked on high-definition,” Jerry says.

In the ninth, a momentary scare when Nomar bangs his bad foot off second base as he comes across to make a play, but he seems fine. McCarty lets us forget it by making a brilliant diving stop on a hopper down the line, reaching high to snag a bounce that should get over him. Lenny DiNardo’s frozen on the mound, so the runner’s safe, but it’s the kind of play (after Andy Dominique last night) that makes me want to see McCarty play more.

In his first two games back, “Nomah” is batting in the five-hole. In last night’s game, the Padres elected to intentionally walk Manny Ramirez with one out in order to face Garciaparra with the bases loaded and the force-at-any-base situation in effect. #5 rewarded this strategy (which, the Padres’ manager would probably argue this morning, made sense at the time, with Garciaparra having been on the DL for the entire first third of the season) with a double rocketed off the left-field wall. That baseball-battered Monster giveth and taketh away, as Fenway fans well know. Last night it tooketh from Nomar Garciaparra: in parks with lower walls, that ball surely would have carried out for a grand slam. Oh well, we beat the Pods, 9–3.

The Yankees won again, of course. They have now won thirteen straight in interleague play. Damn Yankees is damn right.

Baseball’s most delicious paradox: although the game never changes, you’ve never seen everything. Last night’s tilt between the Red Sox and the Dodgers is a perfect case in point. With two out in the top of the ninth, it looked as though the Sox were going to win their second 1–0 shutout in the same week. Derek Lowe was superb. Even better, he was lucky. He gave way to Timlin in the eighth, and Timlin gave way to Foulke in the ninth, all just the way it’s s’pozed to be. Foulke got the first two batters hefaced, and then Cora snuck a ground-ball single past Mark Bellhorn. Still no problem, or so you’d think.

That’s when Olmedo Saenz came up and lifted a lazy fly ball toward Manny Ramirez in left field. Saenz flipped his bat in disgust. Cora, meanwhile, was motoring for all he was worth, because that’s what they teach you—if the ball’s in play, anything can happen. This time it did. Manny Ramirez hesitated, glanced toward the infield, saw no help there, and began to run rapidly in no particular direction. He circled, back-pedaled, reached…and the ball returned gently to earth more or less behind him. Cora scored, tying the score and costing Derek Lowe the victory in the best game he’s pitched this year. David “Big Papi” Ortiz eventually sent the crowd home happy in the bottom of the ninth, but what about that horrible error by Manny? How could he flub such a routine fly? Here is the Red Sox center fielder, with the ominous explanation:

“I was the one person closest to the action,” Johnny Damon said after the game, “and I saw all these weird birds flying around. I think they definitely distracted Manny’s attention when he needed it most. That really wasn’t an error at all. It was a freak of nature.”

As one of the postgame announcers pointed out, this may have been the first use of the “Alfred Hitchcock Defense” in a baseball game.

Manny was even more succinct. “There goes my Gold Glove,” he said.