Faithful (20 page)

A worrisome article in the Sunday paper: Schill has a bone bruise on his right ankle (his push-off foot) and is start-to-start. He’s been taking Marcaine shots before throwing and wears a brace on days off. What else can go wrong?

Interleague play, my ass—why not call it a marketing ploy, which is what it really is? It fills the stadiums, and I suppose that’s a good thing (even the somehow dingy Tropicana Dome was almost filled yesterday, as the temporarily-not-so-hapless Devil Rays won for the eighth time in their last ten games), but let’s tell the truth here: fans are paying to see uniforms they’re not used to. Many of the players inside of those exotic unis (Shawn Green, for instance, a Blue Jays alum who now plays for L.A.) are very familiar. Or how’s this for double vision: In last night’s contest (an 8:05 EDT/ESPN-friendly start), you had Pedro Martinez starting for the Red Sox. He used to pitch for the Dodgers. And for the Dodgers, you had Hideo Nomo, who used to pitch for the Red Sox (only before the Red Sox, he used to pitch for the Dodgers). I’m not saying life was better for the players before Curt Flood—it wasn’t—but rooting was both simpler and a lot less about the uniform. One of the reasons I’m such a confirmed Tim Wakefield fan (and am sorry his last couple of starts have been disasters) is because he’s been with the Sox for ten years now, and has done everything management has asked of him—starting, middle relief, closing—to
stay
with the Sox.

Meanwhile, we won yesterday evening’s game, 4–1. Pedro (the one who used to be with the Dodgers and probably
won’t
be with the Red Sox next year) got the win, with a little defensive help—a lot of defensive help, actually—from Pokey Reese, who made a jaw-dropping leap to snare a line drive in the seventh inning and save at least one run. “Play of the week” ain’t in it, dear; that was a Top Ten Web Gem of the
season
.

Today we have off. We ended up taking two of three from the Pod People and two of three from the Dodgers, and
still
the Yankees mock us. Yesterday the Padres led the Yanks 2–0 going into the bottom of the ninth and blew that lead. Led them 5–2 going into the bottom of the twelfth and blew
that
lead, as well. The Yankees ended up winning, 6–5, to maintain their three-and-a-half-game edge. I looked at that this morning and reacted not with awe but a species of superstitious dread. Because that kind of thing tends to feed on itself.

The rest of the AL East, meanwhile, is bunching up behind the Red Sox in interesting fashion. Baltimore’s in third and Tampa Bay’s in the cellar; both to be expected. What’s
not
to be expected—except maybe I did, sorta—is that at this point, approaching the season’s halfway mark, those two teams are only two games apart, Baltimore 11.5 out and Tampa Bay 13.5.

When I turned in last night at 11:15, the Red Sox were down a run to Colorado, 4–3, but I had a good feeling about the game, and why not? The Rockies have been horrible this year. Besides, I’d gotten a call from my publisher saying that
Song of Susannah
was going straight to number one on the
New York Times
best-seller list, and that’s the sort of day that’ssupposed to end with your team winning—it’s practically a national law.

I wake up this morning at 6:45 and turn on
SportsDesk
, feeling like a kid about to open his Christmas stocking. Unfortunately, what I get in mine is a lump of coal. Red Sox lost; Yankees won.

The Christing Yankees won
again
.

I can hardly believe it. Jayme Parker is telling me these bozos now have the best record in baseball, which is no news to me. I’m thinking they must have the best record in the entire
universe
. The Red Sox aren’t doing badly; by my calculations, we would have won the wild-card spot by two full games, had the season ended yesterday. But I am just so
sick
of looking at the Yankees’ collective pin-striped butt in the standings each and every day, so sick of realizing that we’ll still be in second place even if we sweep them when we see them later this month.

There’s nothing better than waking up to find your team won and the other guys lost. Conversely, there’s no worse way to start the day than finding out your team lost and the other guys won. It’s like taking a big swig of the orange juice straight from the carton and discovering that it’s gone over.

The Red Sox are now back to full strength, or almost (Pokey Reese is day-to-day with a jammed toe, as a result of that spectacular catch on the thirteenth). Trot Nixon returned to the lineup with a bang last night, stroking a home run to what’s almost the deepest part of Coors Field. So all’s right with the world, right?

Wrong. The Sox got behind early again and couldn’t quite come back, Schilling lost (television viewers were treated to the less than lovely sight of Father Curt, the staff’s supposed anchor, pounding the shit out of a defenseless Gatorade cooler after giving up a key two-out hit), and the Yankees won for the 730th time in their last 732 games. Consequently, we’ve fallen five and a half games out of first place. These will be hard games to make up, assuming they can be made up at all (probably they can), and what hurts the most is that the last two losses have come at the hands of the Rockies, currently major league baseball’s worst team. But the Red Sox have a talent for making bad teams look good, I sometimes think; we have done some almighty awful franchises the favor of making themlook terrific for their fans, especially during the two or three weeks after Memorial Day.

For this is almost certainly the beginning of that yearly Red Sox rite known as the June Swoon. Longtime fans know it so well they can set their calendars by it, if not their watches; it begins when the NBA finals end. During this year’s Lakers-Pistons finals,
[22]
the Sox were busy taking two out of three from both the Padres and the Dodgers, who are vying for the top spot in the NL West. Now that the finals are over, they are busy getting their shit handed to them by the lowly Rockies and their lead in the wild-card race—yes, even that—has melted away to a mere single game.

If it
is
the Swoon, I don’t think I can bring myself to write about it…but I’ll be watching it happen. Have to do it, man. It’s my duty, and not because of this book, either. It’s because that’s the difference between being a mere fair-weather fan and being faithful. Besides, July’s coming, and the Red Sox always turn it around in July.

Usually always.

I take the Fenway tour in the morning, hoping to catch BK working out. He’s not. The grounds crew is doing something to the track in left; they’ve dug up the corner and pulled some padded panels off the wall. We can’t go down to field level—a drag, since I wanted to walk the track and peek in the scoreboard. We hit the press box, then the .406 Club. While we’re listening to the guide’s spiel, I notice two members of our tour being escorted to the mound far below. A man and a woman. The man goes to one knee. KELLI, WILL YOU MARRY ME? the scoreboard flashes. She kisses him, and the tour applauds.

We cross the Monster for the big view. I’m surprised by how many tours are running at once, and how much activity there is. There are several school groups circling the top of the park the opposite way. Under the bleachers, a crew is setting up a catered job fair; in the right-field grandstand, workmen are replacing old wooden seats.

The last stop is the right-field roof tables, an anticlimax, and we walk back down the ramp to Gate D, looking down on the players’ lot. The guard there says BK should be in any minute.

* * *

Back home, the schedule makers sneak today’s game by me. It’s a 3:05 start, 1:05 mountain time, and when I tune in to NESN at nine o’clock they’re showing Canadian football, complete with the 55-yard line and Labatt’s ads painted on the astroturf. I check the website: 11–0 Sox. Lowe threw seven strong, getting 17 ground-ball outs. Ortiz put it out of reach in the sixth with a three-run shot. It figures—the one game I miss.

ESPN notes that Lowe’s shutout was only the second of the Rockies at Coors in their last four hundred games. And the Yanks lost to the D-backs, so we gained ground.

Francona kept Wake out of the Colorado series, citing knuckleballers’ poor history there, so Wake opens against the Giants at Pac Bell (SBC, if you want to be a stickler). As in his start against the Dodgers last Saturday, he’s got nothing. The Giants run on him at will, and Marquis Grissom takes him deep twice for a 7–2 lead in the fourth.

I’m at the beach, watching with my nephew Charlie.

“Why don’t they take him out?” Charlie asks.

“Because we don’t have anyone else.” And there’s Malaska warming.

With the 10:05 start and all the offense, it’s late, and we don’t want to keep the rest of the cottage up.

My father-in-law, stumping to the bathroom in his skivvies, asks how we’re doing.

“Ah, we’re getting crushed,” I say.

The local edition of the
Providence Journal
only stayed up as late as I did. They have the score 7–2 in the fifth—as if that helps anyone.

“They won,” Charlie says, shrugging. “The score was something like eleven to eight.”

No one can verify it, so I get on my father-in-law’s laptop and hit the website. 14-9 was the final. Ortiz and Manny went back-to-back and Millar had a pinch-hit three-run shot over Barry Bonds—all in the top of the fifth. Son of a bitch. All we had to do was stay up another ten minutes.

“Fair-weather fans,” Trudy says.

“No,” I say. “It’s the opposite. When I watch them, they lose. I turn it off and they win.”

7:45 A.M.: Today’s game against the San Francisco Giants will mark the end of interleague play for the nonce, and I’m glad. I don’t like it because I think it’s a marketing stunt, but that’s secondary. A New England team has no business on the West Coast, that’s what I really think.

Still, it should be an interesting contest—the rubber game in a three-game series the Red Sox would dearly love to win. For one thing, it would send them home with a .500 record for the trip. For another, they’d go back to Boston four and a half behind the Yankees, only three and a half if the Dodgers can beat the Yankees again today. And Sox pitching has pretty well muzzled Barry Bonds, who strikes me—admittedly an outsider, but sometimes outsiders see with clearer eyes—as one of the game’s more arrogant and conceited players. His fans in left field hang rubber chickens when Bonds is intentionally walked, but they haven’t hung many in this series.

Oh, and by the Ray—the
Devil
Ray, that is—those Tampa Bay bad boys have now won a franchise-best
ten straight
. And you know what that makes them, don’t you? Right.

Hapless no more.

4:00 P.M.: It’s Father’s Day, and I’m right where I belong, with a blue western-Maine lake just to my left and the Red Sox ready to start on TV in front of me. I’ve got my book—a really excellent novel by Greg Bear called
Dead Lines
—to read between innings, and all is okey-fine by me. It’s Jason Schmidt against Bronson Arroyo, a mismatch on paper, but as pointed out both on ESPN and in these pages, baseball games aren’t played on paper but inside TV sets. So we’ll see. One of these things we’ll see is whether or not Schmidt can strike out ten or more (he struck out twelve Blue Jays in his last start), and whether or not Arroyo (currently 2-5) can keep the ball around the plate.

4:30 P.M.: Bronson Arroyo (whose goatee unfortunately
does
make him look a bit goatlike) finds his way out of a bases-loaded jam in the first, partly by inducing Barry Bonds to pop up. Bonds continues to be an offensive zero-factor in the series. By the way, you have to give it to the people who designed SBC Park; the only ugly thing about it is the name.
[23]

5:00 P.M.: Arroyo settles down, but the Red Sox still don’t have a hit. Kevin Millar took Schmidt deep, but Bonds snared that one, flipping it backhand into the crowd in almost the same motion. The gesture is graceful and arrogant at the same time. Watching Barry Bonds play makes me remember the late Billy Martin muttering about some rookie, “I’ll take the steam out of
that
hot dog.” Bonds is no rookie, but I think the principle is the same.

5:30 P.M.: Kevin Youkilis breaks up Jason Schmidt’s no-hit bid with a hard double. Arroyo fails to bunt him over, but then Giants catcher A. J. Pierzynski drops strike three. It’s just a little dribbler, but
Pierzynski forgets to throw down to first
. A couple of batters later, the Sox find themselves with runners at the corners, two out, and Ortiz at the plate. Big Papi, who leads the AL in runs batted in, stings the ball, but first baseman Damon Minor (who’s even bigger than Ortiz) makes a run-saving stab, and Ortiz is out to end the inning.

6:20 P.M.: After a disputed call at third base that goes against the Sox (and gets Terry Francona thrown out for the first time this year), the Giants win the game, 4–0. Edgardo Alfonzo won it yesterday with a two-run shot off Alan Embree; today he gets the grand salami off Mike Timlin. On the whole, I sort of wish Signor Alfonzo had stayed with the Mets. Them we don’t play this year. In any case, Bronson Arroyo’s best performance of the season was wasted and the Red Sox can finally go home after a disappointing 2-4 road trip.

But hey—it’s Father’s Day, the first day of summer, and I’m by the lake with my family. Also, there
was
baseball. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.

I only have to see three at-bats of this one. Caitlin’s birthday dinner eats up the first six innings; it’s the bottom of the seventh when I tune in. We’re up 3–1, so Schilling must have thrown well. Johnny’s on second, Bellhorn’s on first, one out, with David Ortiz at the plate. He lines a double off the center-field wall even Torii Hunter can’t get to, scoring Johnny. With first open, Ron Gardenhire goes by the book, intentionally walking Manny, except now the number five guy isn’t Tek or Dauber or Millar, it’s Nomar. Reliever Joe Roa dawdles on the mound, and Nomar steps out. He steps back in. Roa delivers, and Nomar blasts one to center that bounces off the roof of the camera platform and ricochets into Section 34. 8–1 Sox, and Nomar’s got his first homer of the season and only our second granny. 9–2’s the final, with Foulke leaving them loaded.

And Theo finally picks up some middle relief help, former Royal Curtis Leskanic, a thirty-six-year-old righty with arm problems. He was 0-3 with an 8.04 ERA this year before KC cut him. Okay, now tell me the
good
news.

The Sox, clearly happy to be back from the West Coast, put a hurtin’ on the Minnesota Twins last night. The newly returned Nomar Garciaparra hit a grand salami of his own to dead center field. And NESN, in slavish imitation of its bigger brother, Fox Sports (even the name of the feature’s the same—Sounds of the Game), decided to mike a player and pick up some ambient audio. The player they picked was the
also
newly returned Trot Nixon, a wise choice, since Trot, like Mike Timlin, is long on
Praise Jesus
and short on
Y’oughta knock ’is fucking head off for that
. It was a noble experiment, but a failure, I think. When Nomar’s home run brought the capacity Fenway crowd to its feet, cheering at the top of its lungs, the TV audience was treated to the sound of a laconic Trot Nixon: “Go, ball. Go on, now.
’At’s
right.” And, greeting #5 as he crossed the plate, these immortal words: “Good job, Nomie.”

Nomie?

Well, everyone has his walk in life, or so ’tis said—the sportswriters have one, the ballplayers another. Maybe that’s the point.
[24]
And we kept pace with the Yankees. That might also be the point.
And
the hapless-no-more D-Rays won their twelfth straight.
And
Kevin Youkilis sat last night’s out while Mark Bellhorn did not do too much at third base.
And
Brian Daubach is still hitting meaningless home runs for the triple-A PawSox. Those things might also be the point. Multiple points
are
, after all, a possibility; even a probability in this increasingly complex world, but—

Git out, ball?

Caitlin’s graduation takes place on the high school’s baseball field. The stage is just beyond first base, and we’re sitting in shallow right. I’ve brought a pocket radio the Pirates gave away in the early ’80s with a single sneaky earbud, and as the speeches drag on, Minnesota loads the bases with no outs in the first. Lowe gets two ground balls, but again, we can’t turn either double play, and the Twins go up 2–0 without hitting the ball out of the infield.

Later, at the graduation party at our house, I tune in to find the Twins up 4–2 in the eighth. Pokey hurt his thumb and left the game early. It’s a worry because it’s the same thumb that put him out nearly all of last season.

The Twins hold on to win. I catch the highlights: Torii Hunter hit a two-run shot in the fifth to put them up 4–0. We got solo shots from Trot and Bellhorn, that was it.

Miraculously, the O’s beat the Yanks, so we’re still four and a half back.

We’re the first in Gate E for today’s businessman’s special, and nab the spot in the corner, hauling in five balls during BP. Pokey doesn’t hit, but Bill Mueller’s here, joking and taking grounders at third. One gets by him and rolls right to me. Thanks, Billy!

I hang around the dugout and get Manny to sign my glove, and Gabe Kapler and new guy Curtis Leskanic to sign my all-purpose pearl. I notice Pokey’s wearing a brace on his wrist and hand—another bad sign.

Wake looks better today. He doesn’t have that scuffling first inning, and David Ortiz gives us a lead in the bottom with a towering homer down the right-field line that goes over the Pesky Pole. I’ve poached a seat at the far end of the Sox dugout, right behind the camera well, and I have to look to the first-base ump for a fair call; behind him, Twins first baseman Matthew LeCroy is signaling foul.

The Twins get two on a strikeout and passed ball and a pair of wall-ball doubles to go up 2–1. In the sixth I snag a foul ball from Bellhorn, a two-hop chopper that clears the NESN camera in front of me. It’s the easiest play I’ve made all day, a chest-high backhander, so I’m in an even better mood when David Ortiz brings us back in the seventh, singling in Youk and Johnny.

For some reason, Francona leaves Wake in to pitch the eighth. He gets in trouble, giving up yet another wall double, but Scott Williamson comes on to shut the Twins down. Foulke throws a clean ninth, but we do nothing with our half, and go to extras.

Leading off the tenth, speedy Cristian Guzman hits a roller far to Nomar’s left. Nomar gloves it behind second, then spins to get more on his throw. It’s wide. Millar lays out but can’t keep it from going in the dugout. Jose Offerman bunts Guzman over to third, giving Lew Ford the chance to knock him in with a soft sac fly.

In our half we’ve got David Ortiz, Manny and Nomar. David flies to right, Manny waves at a third strike a foot outside, Nomar pops foul to the catcher, and we lose 4–3 on an unearned run. Pokey and McCarty make that play. At the very least, the throw doesn’t end up in the dugout. Millar also went a very bad-looking 0 for 4. I have no idea what he’s doing out there instead of McCarty after the seventh.

7:50 A.M.: The Red Sox have won exactly one game in each of their last three series, making them three for their last nine. Pokey Reese is injured. The pitching staff is struggling. Our position
vis-à-vis
the Yankees has for a second time sunk to a season-worst five and a half games out of first place, only this time we’ve lost our lead in the wild-card race (the Red Sox are currently tied with Oakland for that dubious honor). At the general store where I do my trading during the summer and fall months, people have started asking me “what’s wrong with the Red Sox.” (Because I have been interviewed on NESN, I am supposed to know.) I am also asked when I’m going to “go on down there and whip those boys into shape.” I guess I’d better do it this weekend. I’ll write for a couple of hours, then throw some clothes and a fresh can of Whip-Ass in a bag, and leave at 1 P.M. this afternoon. From the lake over here in western Maine, Fenway’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive. The weather looks murky, but what the hell; the way the Sox have been playing, a rainout would be almost as good as a win. Besides, Michael Moore’s polemic
Fahrenheit 9/11
opens tonight. If all else fails, I can go see that.

The Carlos Beltran trade finally goes down, a three-way deal that sends him to Houston and Astros closer Octavio Dotel to the A’s while the Royals pick up three prospects. It’s a bad deal for the Sox. Dotel’s a hard thrower, and the way things are going we may end up battling Oakland for the wild card.

Friday night and we’re in a local pizza place. I see the game all the way across the restaurant on a TV above the bar. I can barely make out the score: 2–0 Sox in the fifth, and Pedro’s working. I figure we’re in good shape, since he’s gotten past the first.

We’re talking, and when I look up again, Manny tags one to deep right. It looks out, but Bobby Abreu goes back hard and leaps at the wall, banging into it as the ball lands in his glove. He falls, hanging on to the wall with one arm—he’s got it. Manny just smiles and jogs back to the dugout. I notice it’s 3–0 now, so I’ve missed something. Trot walks, Millar singles. New pitcher. Tek singles, knocking in another run. It’s 4–0 and we’re paying the check.

Driving home, it’s still the sixth inning. Youk sends a double off the wall in left-center and takes third on the throw home. 6–0. Bellhorn legs out an infield hit, scoring Youk. New pitcher.

We get home and I click on NESN and it’s
still
the sixth. The new pitcher has walked Ortiz (who I discover led off the inning with a solo shot) to load the bases for Manny (who has a home run and an RBI double besides being robbed). Manny slices a liner to right that carries over Abreu into the corner. It takes a hop toward a fan at the wall who whiffs on it with both hands, knocking over his beer in the process. The ball caroms off the wall, still live, and all three runners come in. 10–0 Sox, and this one’s done, except for a brilliant diving catch by Manny in the seventh that has Pedro pointing with both hands, giving him props.

Pedro goes seven, giving up two hits. Curtis Leskanic throws his first inning as a Sock, and then in the bottom of the eighth the rains come, and the ump calls it.

In the Bronx, the same rain wiped out the Mets and Yanks, so we pick up a half game to make it five even.