Faithful (23 page)

After losing the other night, Anastacio Martinez is shipped back to Pawtucket, making room for Theo’s newest acquisition, former Pirate Jimmy Anderson, a finesse lefty who last pitched for the Iowa Cubs. He’s not the solution to our middle-relief problems, and I think Theo’s pulling a Dan Duquette, trying to get away with cut-rate band-aids. If he really wants a quality arm, he’s going to have to give up something.

I’m reading on the beach when my nephew Charlie says the Sox are winning 4–1. I wander into the house to see for myself and watch as Lowe gives up a walk, an infield single, another walk, a groundout by pitcher Mike Hampton that scores a run, a single, a double, a single. We’ve all seen how quickly Lowe can melt down, and throughout this sequence we’re begging Francona to lift him, yet for most of it there’s no one warming up. Francona lets him throw to lefty Chipper Jones, who predictably sticks one in the bleachers. It’s 8–4, and everyone around the set is swearing. Francona finally calls on new guy Jimmy Anderson, who walks his first batter on four pitches, then gives up a double to Andruw Jones and a triple to Charles Thomas. I’ve only been watching for ten minutes and Atlanta’s sent ten guys to the plate.

“Can they fire a manager in the middle of the season?” Charlie asks.

At least the Mets sweep the Yankees (their fans chanting, “We’re not Boston”)—and on a horrible call. Late in a close game, Cairo hits one to the right side that Piazza can’t reach. It gets by him and hits Posada. The first base ump rules him safe; the crew chief overturns it. Torre comes out to argue, to no avail. The rule is that if a fielder’s had a chance to handle the ball, then the runner’s safe. The crew chief decided that Piazza hadn’t had a chance in the official sense, and that the second baseman might, and was therefore deprived of the chance to put Cairo out by the ball hitting Posada. Torre protests the game. And while the Yanks were the recipients of dozens of homer calls from the umps during our last series (including the noncall on that 0-2 count to Cairo that would have ended Wednesday night’s game), I can’t help but be annoyed at the incompetence. Get it right, Blue.

The All-Star teams are announced. Schilling, Manny and David Ortiz made it—no surprise. What
is
shocking is that the three players implicated in the BALCO scandal—Bonds, Giambi and Sheffield—are all starting. Nice job, fans. Way to clean up the game.

Is life simpler, as Americans like to believe, down on the farm? We’re hoping, driving through a monsoon to see the PawSox, whose ticket office assures us the weather will clear up and they’ll get the game in. They almost do. At one point the grounds crew has the tarp off and is raking sawdust into the infield dirt, and Anastacio Martinez and Ramiro Mendoza and Frank Castillo and Mystery Malaska warm up down the third-base line. But by the time we have the ceremonial pitches (it’s Latino Day) and Dauber and Adam Hyzdu and Big Andy Dominique come out to stretch, it’s misting again, then straight-out raining, and two hours after game time, they call it, to halfhearted boos. So it really is a day off: no baseball at all.

Tonight the Sox open a three-game series with Oakland, one of their chief wild-card opponents, and for the time being, at least, Boston’s postseason hopes are all about the wild card. Tonight will also be Boston’s eighty-first game of the year, which puts them almost exactly at the halfway point of the season.

Any real analysis of the first half will have to wait until the All-Star break, but I think it’s fair to say that I have rarely seen the feeling in my little corner of New England turn so quickly, so decisively, and so almost
poisonously
against our only major league club. Who knows, by the time the All-Star break comes around, I may be willing to drop the
almost
. This sea change isn’t that hard to understand. What we have here is a team filled with high-priced talent, much of which started the season on the disabled list. The team did well out of the gate nevertheless, contending in rather spectacular fashion in large part with the scrappy hit-’n’-field skills of guys like Bellhorn, Youkilis and Reese to complement the booming bats of Ramirez and Ortiz.
[26]
Then, just as the big boys started getting well, the team got sick. If it’s going to get better again, the convalescence must begin soon.

How bad is it right now in what sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy has dubbed Red Sox Nation? I peeped in at NESN’s
SportsDesk
this morning (I felt I could do this without too much fear of damaging my fragile sports superego because the Sox were idle yesterday) and was horrified to hear Sox-approved commentator Mike Perlow bandying Red Sox–Marlins trade rumors concerning Nomar Garciaparra and Derek Lowe. Of course there will be trade gossip as long as there’s pro baseball, but because NESN is a quasi-official arm of the Red Sox organization, one is tempted to sense palsied fingers (perhaps on the hand of Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein) creeping toward that red button marked PANIC.

My decision to tune in NESN (Channel 623 on my satellite hookup) was clearly foolhardiness masquerading as bravery. The thought of Nomar in a Florida Marlins uniform is dismaying, almost nauseating. After no more than five minutes, I made haste to Soapnet and
All My Children,
where Erica is currently enduring the world’s longest alcohol intervention,Babe is in the hospital recovering from something her boyfriend JR (with a nickname like that you know he’s a rat) put in her drink, and no one, so far as I can tell, is in danger of getting traded to
General Hospital
. Right now that makes it a safer, comfier world.

Wake versus Barry Zito doesn’t sound fair, but in the second, Billy Mueller launches a three-run Monster shot. Zito loads the bases in the fourth and walks in two runs, then, after a smoked liner to third by Nomar, Millar doubles down the left-field line, scoring two more. It’s 7–0 and Zito’s thrown over 100 pitches. A’s reliever Justin Lehr gives up four more in the fifth, and it’s a laugher.

Tonight Mark Belllhorn takes Mark Redman deep in the first for a 1–0 lead. Like Zito, Redman struggles. In the second he gives up a solo shot to Nomar, and then a batch of hits, including a big double by Tek and a two-out RBI single by Johnny, and we’re up 6–0 and on our way to a rare blowout behind Pedro.

It’s Game 83, two past the halfway mark, and for the very first time (including spring training) we field our real starting lineup: Schill and Tek; Millar, Pokey, Nomah and Bill Mueller; and Manny, Johnny and Trot, with Big David at DH.

The Schilling-Harden matchup’s in our favor, and goes that way early. Ortiz busts out of his slump with a tater over the Sox bullpen in the first, and Harden throws one at Manny’s head. In the third, Manny retaliates with a three-run opposite-field shot. By the fifth it’s 7–1 and this one looks in the bag.

But the A’s don’t roll over. Schilling’s had a twenty-five-minute wait before the sixth, and they get a pair off him. In the seventh, Timlin gives up a two-out double to Erubiel Durazo and an RBI single to Bobby Crosby, and it’s 7–4. Francoma (as the press has been calling him) leaves him in in the eighth; he gives up another run, and with one out, we have to go to Foulke. He gets Byrnes with a change-up for the second out, but on 0-2, Scott Hatteberg slaps another change off the chalk behind third and it’s a one-run game. Jermaine Dye, 0 for his last 15, skies one to left-center. Johnny goes back toward the corner where the Monster meets the center-field wall and leaps, but it’s off the Monster and bounces across center toward Trot. Hatteberg scores to tie the game. Dye’s into third standing up, and Fenway’s grumbling. Durazo chases strike three to end the inning, but our six-run lead’s history.

Foulke throws a one-two-three ninth. Octavio Dotel looks tough, getting them to the tenth, but the A’s pen has thrown too many innings this series. They go to Justin Lehr, who gave up four runs in a single inning Tuesday. He gets Tek and pinch hitter Mark Bellhorn, but Johnny singles to left. The A’s move their outfield back so nothing gets through. It’s a shrewd move, as Bill Mueller lines one to the left-center gap. Kotsay ranges over from center to cut it off in front of the scoreboard, but bobbles it. Johnny’s going to try to score anyway—at home you make them make the play. The crowd’s up and loud. The relay’s good, Crosby to catcher Damian Miller, but Johnny belly flops and slides a hand across the plate, and David Ortiz is there to call him safe and wrap him in a bear hug. The dugout rushes the field, mobbing Johnny and Bill Mueller, and it’s a sweep. We’re 46-37 and tied with Oakland for the wild card, and on
Extra Innings
, Eck is pumped. “Oakland’s not going to do it,” he says. “They’re showing me nothing. They’re done. Remember, I was the one that said it.”

Although things are heating up on
All My Children
, I was able to forego Babe’s struggles with the evil JR and JR’s equally evil (and well-heeled) daddy to relish the highlights of last night’s 8–7 Red Sox win over the A’s, completing the Sox sweep and returning Boston to a tie in the wild-card race. More important to me at this stage of the season, one three-game series away from the All-Star break, is the fact that we’ve managed to make up some ground against the Yankees, who have lost five of their last seven.

The papers made much this morning about Oakland’s surge in the late innings of last night’s game (they pounded out 17 hits, most of them against the bullpen and the key ones against Keith Foulke, who blew the save opportunity), but my take on it is more optimistic. Here’s a good Oakland team that gets blown out in the first two contests of a key series, their pitching touched up for 22 runs. Trailing by six runs in the final game, they do what good teams do: fight and scratch and claw their way back into contention, trying to come away with
something
. But in the bottom of the tenth, Johnny Damon singled to left, then scored when A’s center fielder Mark Kotsay bobbled Bill Mueller’s line shot. It was only the smallest of bobbles—only a step’s worth, surely—but Damon was running for all he was worth and that one extra step (and a hard slide across home) was just enough to win the game. It was a thrilling play, bringing the crowd at Fenway (and yours truly at home) to their feet, cheering. In the end, it was the good twin of the game Boston tried so hard to win against the Yankees and lost in thirteen innings.

So that’s three. That’s your little streak. Tonight we’re back to Arroyo. It’s up to you, Bronson: keep me away from
All My Children
.

Tonight it’s Bronson Arroyo versus the Rangers’ Joaquin Benoit at Fenway, yet another sellout crowd. In the dugout, the Sox are goofing with an oversized bobble-head doll of Pedro. The controversy is that Francona’s given him permission to go home to the DR, since he doesn’t pitch until after the break. “I bet a lot of guys would like to go home early,” Jerry grouses, and he’s right.

To start, Arroyo gives up a double to Soriano, but Kevin Millar makes a great snag of a liner at first to turn two and bail his pitcher out.

We win 7–0, and it’s a fast game, as quick as Pedro’s two-hitter against the Pods.

And in a briefly noted roster move, we send nice kid Lenny DiNardo down to Pawtucket and bring up veteran righty Joe Nelson, who didn’t pitch at all last year due to injuries. He’s the twenty-second pitcher we’ve tried in the first half.