Faithful (27 page)

I rarely in my life wanted to be at Fenway as much as I wanted to be there for the three-game series between the Red Sox and the Yankees that just concluded. Not because John Kerry threw out the ceremonial first pitch in prime time last night; not because there’s always a chance the two teams will go at it (as they did, and full-bore, on Saturday); not even because the atmosphere when these two teams play is always crazy-scary-electric, like Victor Frankenstein’s lab about twenty seconds before the monster on the slab opens its eyes. I wanted to be there because it was an absolutely crucial series for the Red Sox, if they are to maintain any thin chance of winning the AL East. Lose two, I thought, and the players can probably forget about that part of it; get swept, and the fans can start questioning the team’s commitment to winning
anything
.

Well, wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first—I think Mahatma Gandhi said that. Instead of being in Boston, I found myself on the West Coast, three thousand miles from Fenway Park, speaking to a bunch of doctors about how it feels to get hit by a small van (not good) and how long it takes to get over it (quite a while).

Still, Red Sox fans can’t escape the Red Sox; that is the basic fact of our existence. Even in L.A., I went to bed sick at the 8–7 loss on the night of the 23rd. Distance didn’t lessen the pain; it made it worse. With no NESN, I was reduced to the coverage in the Saturday
Los Angeles Times
—which, due to their ridiculous infatuation with the Dodgers, was skimpy. Still, there was enough to make it clear that Curt Schilling and Keith Foulke—our supposed Yankee-killers—both played a part in the loss. It’s hard to blame Schilling, who all season has worked like a railway yardman in need of overtime and has been consistently effective. It’s also hard to blame Foulke, but easy to be exasperated with him. I think that goes with the role of closer. And of course it had to be Alex Rodriguez, The One Who Got Away, who delivered the game-winning hit.

Ironically, it was also Rodriguez who seems to have galvanized the Red Sox since, and all because he couldn’t just put his head down and trot to first. Nope, he had to jaw at Bronson Arroyo, who plunked him on the shoulder pad. Jason Varitek got between pitcher and batter, telling A-Rod in “a few choice words” (Varitek’s version) to take his base.
[29]
Rodriguez told Tek where he could stick his base, Tek pushed A-Rod’s pretty face, and the rumble was on. By the time it was over, Yankee pitcher Tanyon Sturtze had sustained a healthy cut on the side of his face (David Ortiz might have had something to do with that), four or five players had been ejected, and Varitek ended up sitting out Sunday’s game. Probably just as well, from a catching standpoint; John Kerry threw out the first pitch, and while he may be a helluva politician, his slider needs serious work. (Can you even trust a politician with a good slider?—just asking.)

Following the rhubarb, the donnybrook, and the ejections, the Sox finally woke from their stupor, winning one of the most thrilling games of the year in the bottom of the ninth on a Bill Mueller walk-off home run. They won Sunday’s game 9–6, and are schooling the Orioles tonight behind Pedro: the score is 12–5 in the bottom of the seventh. If this is the place where the season turns around—and stranger things have happened—then you can give Jason Varitek the MVP for getting in Alex Rodriguez’s face.

Trot’s on the DL, I discover, having aggravated the quad. The team makes it sound like a brief stay, just to let him rest, and to make room on what’s now a crowded roster. Yesterday in Pawtucket I watched Cesar Crespo play badly, and I wonder if it’s the effect of us signing Ricky Gutierrez, knocking Cesar that much further down the depth chart.

My neighbor Dave was at the Saturday brawl game and says one reason why the fight started wasn’t shown on TV: after A-Rod started barking, Bronson Arroyo walked toward home plate, tugging at his crotch. Ay, I got ya 252 million right here.

Three days from the trading deadline, the papers say the Yanks are close to finalizing a deal for Randy Johnson, and the Twins and Pirates are ready to swap former Rock Cat Doug Mientkiewicz and Kris Benson. Theo so far has been quiet. Whether that means he’s being secretly effective or coming up empty remains to be seen, but it would not bode well if our big midseason acquisition was Terry Adams.

At 45-54, the Orioles are sleepwalking through another disapponting season. You wouldn’t know it by the way they’ve played against the Red Sox, though. Behind Pedro, and still pumped up from beating the Yankees two out of three, we shellacked them two nights ago, but the O’s batters had touched Tim Wakefield for four quick runs last night before the game was washed out. Tonight they got four more against Curt Schilling, and sorry, no rain.

We are 4-7 so far against Baltimore this year, and I’d love to be able to comfort myself by saying we just play lousy against the Birds, but it ain’t so, Joe. The fact of the matter is that the Birds play lousy against the rest of the league and like World Champions against us. Schilling (12-4) against Dave Borkowski (1-2) was a mismatch on paper, but for the last time, baseball games aren’t played on paper and tonight Borkowski—who we’d already beaten once this year—pitched like Steve Carlton in his prime, setting down the first thirteen Red Sox batters to face him before giving up a single to Nomar in the fifth. He pitched seven strong and left the game with a two-hit shutout. The only Boston run came on an Ortiz dinger with two out in the ninth, and Javy Lopez—a Red Sox nemesis from his Atlanta Braves days—hit a pair off Schilling, getting three of the four Baltimore RBIs.

So we’re a game behind Oakland in the wild-card race, and we have the unpleasing prospect of three games against the red-hot Minnesota Twins in the immediate future and
eight
more against the O’s before the season is over. And if we finish the season series with them at something like 7-12, and lose the wild card by two games, we can blame the Birds. Hell, it beats blaming the Bambino.

Now the papers say Theo might try to piggyback that Twins-Pirates deal, shipping Youkilis to Pittsburgh for Mientkiewicz. Just the idea makes me queasy. Trading Lowe or Nomar would be bad enough, even if we have no intention of signing them, but Youk’s the future. After what happened with Freddy Sanchez (though he’s been hurt the last year or so), they ought to know better.

The Sox have a travel day, so to get my daily dose I take Steph and the boys over to Norwich for a doubleheader against the Trenton Thunder. Like New Britain, Norwich has a pretty little park that holds around six thousand, but the food is better here. I get a ball during warm-ups and have former Sox closer and current Norwich pitching coach Bob “The Steamer” Stanley and his former batterymate and current first-base coach Roger LaFrancois sign it.

The Thunder are the Yanks’ double-A club. They used to be ours before we acquired Portland from the Marlins, and the Navigators used to be the Yankees’, so for long-term fans there are some mixed (if not to say confused) feelings. But it’s Camp Day, so most of the fans are too young to care. It’s a brilliant blue afternoon, everyone receives a coupon for free ice cream, and as we leave, the ushers hand out flyers telling us Willie Mays is coming next week. Makes me wish I could be here for it.

It’s the big party for Trudy’s parents’ fiftieth anniversary, a real production, and I can’t get away with the sneaky Pirates radio and earphone. A good half of the guests are New Englanders and diehard Sox fans—the men mostly, with memories of the ’46 club, and the old Braves. To a man, they think Francona’s just another patsy. “The last manager we had with any spine was Dick Williams. You saw, everywhere he went he was a winner.” The women roll their eyes.

After the band’s packed up, we have a nightcap downstairs in the bar. The TV’s silently playing
Extra Innings,
and Eric Friede and Sam Horn and Jayme Parker are all smiling, so my guess is we won. The Yanks did too, and the Rangers, so we’re behind the A’s again.

They also list a pair of big trades. The Mets have won the Benson sweepstakes. Not only that, but in a five-team deal, somehow they also picked up Tampa Bay ace Victor Zambrano and put themselves in a position to win the wimpy NL East. The other trade is an eight-player swap between the Marlins and Dodgers, the principals being Brad Penny and Charles Johnson, Guillermo Mota and Paul Lo Duca.

No news from Theo.

The Yankees have reversed themselves on Giambi’s intestinal parasite and are now saying he has a benign tumor and may be out for the season. Also, during Fox’s Yankee Game of the Week, an announcer says that Trot will miss the rest of the year (instead of the week or two the Sox originally reported). If that’s true, we’re screwed.

All the friends who came to last night’s party are here for a day at the beach, and there’s a revolving audience for the Yankees-O’s game. A-Rod takes home on the back end of a double steal that the Orioles fall for, and for the rest of the day the announcers crow about how A-Rod stole home as if he’s Jackie Robinson.

I’m just watching the game for any late trade news, since the deadline’s almost upon us. Soon it’s past four—no news—and the Yanks are winning, so I go pack my things to drive Steph home for a friend’s birthday party.

I get the news from my daughter-in-law, a once-upon-a-time Yankee fan (like once-upon-a-time Protestants who convert to Catholicism, lapsed Yankee fans who become Red Sox partisans are the ones who REALLY MEAN BUSINESS), and she sounds the way I feel: shocked but somehow not all that surprised.

The player most commonly identified with the Boston Red Sox, the one whose number most fans probably expected to see someday up on the wall along with Williams’s, Pesky’s, and Yaz’s, is no longer with the Red Sox. Number Five has been traded, and probably the only consolation to be taken by fans who place tradition and heart above salary and statistics is that he’s been traded to the one other team in baseball whose long World Series drought has become not just the stuff of history but that of myth. That’s right folks; at game time tomorrow, Nomar Garciaparra—Boston’s surviving marquee player from the days of Dan Duquette—will take the field as a Cubbie.

Does the deal make sense? I don’t think so; I think that two years from now it will look like a panic move made by a young GM who saw his high-priced (and supposedly high-powered) baseball team treading water eight or nine games behind the monolithic Yankees in the AL East and a game or two behind the Oakland A’s in the wild card (but still more advantageouslyplaced than their closest competition). In other words, I think that Theo Epstein probably pulled the pin on a big deal at the trading deadline mostly because everyone in Boston’s howling oh-God-my-ass-hole’s-on-fire sports community was yelling for it to happen

!!OH JEEZ!!

!!BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!

What exactly did we get for our usually dependable, sometimes brilliant, and (I admit it) at times erratic shortstop, who was batting .321 at the time of the trade? We got two Gold Glove infielders, one with a name that can be both pronounced and spelled—that would be Orlando Cabrera—and the other with a name that can at least be pronounced: Doug Mientkiewicz
(man
-KAY-
vitch)
. Putting the bat on the little white ball has seemed a little harder than catching it for these gentlemen, at least so far this season. Both are hitting around .250.

According to Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein, the fact that Cabrera and Mientkiewicz currently have batting averages seventy points below Garciaparra’s doesn’t matter. As a disciple of Billy Beane and a follower of Bill James, he likes these men for their defense and their on base per centage (OBP).
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He also likes them because Nomar Garciaparra is in the last year of a contract currently paying him $11 million a year, and resigning him probably would have been
très
expensive. Stories about how Nomar’s feelings were hurt during the failed A-Rod deal are probably no more than the usual baseball bullshit, but here’s something that isn’t: both Nomar and his agent know that baseball is a business. They also know that an athlete’s period of top earning ability is severely limited when compared to, say, that of a corporate CEO (or a best-selling novelist), and I have no doubt that Nomar and his man of business were determined to Make ’Em Pay this fall, whoever
’em
turned out to be. Theo Epstein just decided
’em
wasn’t going to be
us
.

Does that make sense? I’m sure it does to Theo Epstein, and it probably does to those of the Billy Beane bent. It does, in other words, if you see big league baseball as a business…
and nothing else
. Who it does
not
make sense to is my five-year-old grandson, who was watching ESPN when SportsCenter announced the trade. Ethan is a big Nomar fan. He always pretends to be Nomar when he’s hitting in the backyard, when he’s throwing, when he’s running the bases.

So it’s Ethan I’m thinking about as I write this—not his mother (the converted Yankee fan), not Nomar himself, not even the Red Sox, the putative subject of this book. Nope, I’m just thinking about Ethan.

“Nomar’s a Cub,” he said, then watched the TV for a while. Then, very softly, he said: “I guess I like the Cubs.”

Good call, Ethan.

Very good call.

I’ve just finished my good-byes when my sister-in-law says I’ve got a phone call. It’s Steve.

“They traded Nomar,” he says.

“Aw shit,” I say, partly because they fooled me. It’s almost five o’clock. I thought I was safe.

“To the Cubs. I think we got their shortstop and maybe a pitcher.”

Alex Gonzalez is a decent shortstop, and we’ve been looking at starter Matt Clement, maybe to take Arroyo’s place or to assume the middle role. I relay the news to the boys, and they switch back to the game.

Steph runs in. “We got Cabrera and Mientkiewicz.”

“So it was a three-team deal.”

“So Nomar’s gone to Red Sox West,” Steve says. “My five-year-old grandson’s been in tears. ‘But I still like Nomar,’ he says. ‘I guess I’m a Cubs fan now.’”

I think we must have gotten Clement, since our real need is middle relief, but Steve can’t find anything on the website. Nomar for Mientkiewicz and Orlando Cabrera of the Expos (so it’s a four-team deal). It doesn’t seem like enough—and we’ve already got three first basemen and three journeyman shortstops. It must have been a panic move on Theo’s part, dumping Nomar before he could walk (it’s just like the Yawkeys: not wanting to pay a star top dollar and getting nothing for him).

While I’m still on the phone, Steph tells me the Yanks have gotten last year’s Cy Young runner-up Esteban Loaiza from the White Sox for Jose Contreras. It’s a steal, even with George’s three million thrown in—a panic move on Chicago’s part that doubly benefits the Yanks. So we got hosed on both deals.

Steve’s off to see
The Village
, I’m off to drive a hundred miles. After I hang up, I feel like the season’s over, like we’ve given up.

On the road we tune into ESPN radio and hear that we got speedster Dave Roberts from the Dodgers for outfielder Henri Stanley, who just signed balls for us in Pawtucket on Monday. It’s a good deal, but not large enough to make up for the loss of Nomar.

The Sox without Nomar. It seems like a defeat, whoever’s fault it is.

During the pregame, Theo talks about how we needed to fix our defense, as if that’s what drove the deal. Then, because we have nowhere else to put him, we start Millar in right even though Kapler’s been hot. (Steph notes that the music behind his highlights from last night is Tenacious D’s “Wonderboy.”)

The game is anticlimactic after the video of Nomar leaving the clubhouse for the airport. The announcers—all of them paid by the Sox—put the best face on the deal they can, picking at Nomar’s attitude and his heel. Where’s Eck when you need him? (Cooperstown, being inducted.)

Lowe throws okay, so does Radke. The biggest moment is when Doug Mientkiewicz steps to the plate for the first time in a Red Sox uniform. Mientkiewicz is a lifelong Twin, and the Metrodome rises and gives him a noise-meter-worthy ovation. He has to step out to collect himself, and I realize we never had a chance to say good-bye to Nomar (we didn’t know it, but that Sunday-night game against the Yanks was his last home game).

It’s a close game late, tied in the eighth when Embree comes in with one down and the bases empty to face lefty Jacque Jones. He gets behind him, then aims a fastball. Jones cranks it, flipping his bat away. The ball lands ten rows back.

Joe Nathan, throwing 98, closes with the help of Francona. Mientkiewicz singles to open the inning; Kapler pinch-runs. Millar, who should be bunting, swings away. On an 0-1 count, Kapler goes and Henry Blanco guns him by ten feet. Millar flies out. It’s a terrible at-bat on all counts, an embarrassment. Bill Mueller then steps in and pulls a long shot down the line—foul. He singles (it would have easily scored Kapler), then takes second on a wild pitch before Youkilis strikes out.

Overall, just a tough day to be a Red Sox fan. Seems like everywhere we turned we did something stupid and got our asses kicked.

There are sixty games left, and we’re pretty much where we were last year. It’s time to put a stretch drive together. Or else.