Faithful (3 page)

We’re home, it’s snowing, and summer seems a long way off. Maybe it’s the weather, but that connection to the Sox that felt so strong just yesterday feels tenuous. I tell Steve it’s like getting a taste of high summer and then having it snatched away. By season’s end, I imagine it will seem Edenic, all possibility and perfect weather.

That night while we’re watching TV, Dunkin’ Donuts runs a commercial starring Curt Schilling. Schilling sits by his locker, eating a breakfast sandwich and listening to a language tape teaching him Bostonspeak. “Wicked hahd,” he repeats between bites. “Pahk. Play wicked hahd when I go to the pahk.” For several years now the spokesperson for Dunkin’ Donuts has been Nomar. Another sign he’s leaving?

I catch an interview with PawSock third baseman Kevin Youkilis at the practice fields. In Michael Lewis’s
Moneyball,
A’s general manager Billy Beane champions Youkilis as “The Greek God of Walks.” He’s the kind of player Beane loves: average glove, so-so wheels, but a great eye, quick bat and astonishing on-base percentage. Likewise, Bill James, the Sox’s statistical guru, is high on the guy’s numbers. The interviewer is optimistic about Youkilis’s chances of making the team, which I think is crazy. He’s fourth on the depth chart behind Shump, and Shump’s probably not going to make it.

Youkilis is positive but realistic. “Hopefully I’ll make it up to Fenway this year”—meaning a cup of coffee in September when they expand the roster. Clips roll of the Monster seats and Pedro going up the ladder on a flailing Devil Ray, and again I’m ready for the season to start.

Mr. Kim has a sore shoulder. I’m not surprised, with that goofy motion. Bronson Arroyo may take his slot, though the
Courant
says that during the first few weeks of the season the schedule’s spread out enough that we can go with a four-man rotation.

Steve’s not upset. He says Kim looked lost out there in the playoffs, as if he didn’t know where the ball was going.

“He’s only twenty-five,” I say, “and he’s already pitched in a lot of big games.”

“That’s part of his problem.” Stat maven Bill James found that the more innings pitchers threw before the age of twenty-three, the more problems they had later in their careers.

“What about Clemens?”

“James doesn’t count college. Clemens is actually one of the guys he uses to make his case. And Clemens is an exception, he’s a workhorse. Dan Duquette found that out when he looked at his stats and said his career was over.”

I don’t see how James can have it both ways—an example
and
an exception—and it seems notable that the only championship Clemens ever really led his team to was the College World Series, but even the devil can quote Scripture for his purposes.

* * *

In bed, in the dark, I match last year’s rotation to this year’s. Schilling’s a major upgrade from John Burkett, but who is Kim—now Arroyo—replacing? It takes me a minute to recall Casey Fossum—or Blade, as we called him, since he weighed about 140 pounds, his front literally concave. He was the guy we wouldn’t trade last spring to get Bartolo Colon, hoping he’d develop into a steady lefty starter. He was in and out all year with injuries and never got it going. Kim is an improvement on him, but Arroyo is in pretty much the same place Blade was two years ago, a triple-A player trying to earn that number five slot. We’ll be stronger, but there’ll still be a weak spot other managers can attack, stealing series by feeding their weaker pitchers to our aces, matching their ace against Lowe and then throwing their number two and three guys against Wake and Arroyo.

Should I be worrying about this now?

Terry Francona better be.

In the Sunday sports section are two pictures of Jason Giambi, a before and after comparison that makes me go, “Whoa.” In the one from last year he’s pudgy-cheeked, a pad of fat under his chin, his biceps filling his sleeves. The one from a couple weeks ago shows a drawn, scrawny guy, rock-star thin, as if he’s been hit by some wasting disease. My immediate reaction isn’t partisan but humane: God, I hope he’s okay.

I don’t catch the final of today’s game until the late news. Pedro had control problems and walked in a run, but Johnny D homered and we beat the O’s 5–2. I’m glad we won, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m more concerned with Pedro’s walk total from last year, and the trouble he had finding the plate in the playoffs. It’s been three years since he’s been consistently dominant, and I wonder if he’ll ever get back to that level.

Because back then, there was no doubt. In 2001, we went to a game he was supposed to throw against Seattle, when Seattle was the hottest team in the majors. The game was delayed by rain about two hours, and we were worried that Pedro wouldn’t start because of the cold. He came out in the first and got Ichiro on three pitches, then John Olerud on three pitches, and then Edgar Martinez on three pitches. Nine pitches, nine strikes. I looked at Steph like, what did we just see?

It was a strange realization, witnessing him strike out seventeen or spin a one-hitter. Then, when you were watching Pedro, you knew you were watching the best pitcher—out of the millions of people to pick up a baseball and try to throw it past a batter—in the entire world. But that was three years ago.

Tonight the high school dedicates Caitlin’s choral concert to a beloved custodian who died suddenly of a heart attack. The teacher reading a speech about him confesses that they bonded as Sox fans, and that “the morning after the Sox had blown another sure thing, we knew not to talk about the game until we’d had our coffees.”

An easel at the front of the auditorium holds a picture of him. He couldn’t be more than fifty-five, and I think how unfair it is that he never got to experience the Sox winning it all—like Trudy’s uncle Vernon, who died last year in his sixties. Whenever I saw him, we talked Sox. It was our one point of connection, a joshing, bitching camaraderie shared over beers. This summer’s going to be different without him, emptier. I think of the millions of Sox fans who rooted their entire lives and never felt that giddy vindication the Pats have given us twice now. There has to be a tremendous psychic charge built up from those faithful generations. This year, if we do it, we’ll be doing it for them too.

I don’t want to spend a long time maundering over mortality, but you know, when I was eighteen and Lonnie was pitching for the Sox, I
knew
I’d be around to see them win the Series. You know how it is when you’re eighteen and bulletproof. Now, holy shit, I’m fifty-seven, I’ve been hit by a car, I had a lung practically go up in smoke this winter, and I realize maybe it really won’t happen. And still I look at our team and sometimes wonder…
Who are these guys?
Oh well. I used to joke, you know, about having a tombstone that read: STEPHEN KING with the dates, and then, below that, a single sock, and below that: NOT IN MY LIFETIME. And below that: NOT IN YOURS, EITHER. Not a bad tagline, huh?

I’m shocked to read in the paper that Nomar is 0 for spring—0 for 8, really—and has missed four straight games with that bruised heel. Cesar Crespo’s seizing the opportunity, hitting .435. Maybe he can take that extra roster spot.

Trot flies out to L.A. to get checked by a specialist and looks doubtful for Opening Day. Kapler, who took a pay cut to stay with the Sox, must be cursing his agent.

Nomar shows up at the clubhouse with a boot on his foot. The trainer’s diagnosed him with Achilles tendinitis, but an MRI shows no structural damage. And Manny, I discover, is hitting .172. Now I’m glad we’ve got a few weeks to get things together.

The lottery for Green Monster seats begins, one entry per e-mail address. After getting aced out of regular tickets, I’m resigned, punching in our two entries.

Then I get an idea. I have dozens of friends who have no interest in Monster seats. I can use their names, and if by some chance they win, I can pay them face value for the tickets. I imagine scalpers are using dozens, even hundreds, of e-mail addresses.

The comparison’s unavoidable. Now I’m like them, bending the rules in my greed for the seats. It feels decidedly squirmy, and yet for the next few hours I span the continent, tapping Oklahoma and the Rockies and San Francisco and Edmonton for names, addresses, phone numbers and birthdays donated by pitying friends.

The team dwindles as Theo assigns seven players to the minors, including optioning Kevin Youkilis to Pawtucket.

Steve’s worried about Trot, and brings up Tim Naehring, our ill-fated third baseman of the nineties. Naehring was that agonizing player who’s vastly talented but always hurt. At 6′2″, 205, he wasn’t delicate, but he broke his wrist, he broke his ankle, he had a bad back. He was on the DL so much that he came to seem like a platoon player. When he finally retired at age thirty, it seemed possible that he was just hurt again. That’s not how Trot wants to go out.

This morning Philadelphia blew up the Vet. While Phillies fans remembered their one World Series win, Eagles fans hoped it would change their luck. Back when our old owners were planning to build a new Fenway, I heard the same kind of superstitious talk out of stalwarts like Ted Williams (who always hated the Monster’s effect on Sox pitchers). So, if we win, do we have to keep it as a good-luck charm? The Vet, like Three Rivers Stadium or the Kingdome, bit the dust not because it was unlucky or falling down, but because it just wasn’t a fun place to watch a ball game. That’s not true of Fenway, unless you’re stuck behind a pole or in line for the bathroom. The true test of a ballpark, and maybe a ball club, is percent capacity—how many butts versus how many seats—and Fenway’s aced that test every year since 1967.

Steve couldn’t even scrounge a ticket to the Sox-Jays game yesterday—at
their
place.

I call up the website and find we’ve shipped Tony Womack to the Cards. With Womack gone, we don’t have a designated late-inning base-stealer, unless Shump is showing flashes of his old speed. I feel bad for Womack, his salary and Lamborghini notwithstanding. He bunted and ran better than anyone on the team this spring, but not being able to play the field, he never had a chance.

Shump takes advantage of this break by straining a hamstring in the night game. So after finally outlasting Womack, he essentially hands McCarty the twenty-fifth spot.

The drawing for Monster seats was yesterday. All morning I avoid opening my e-mail, not wanting to jinx our shot. It’s noon when I finally check, expecting dozens of forwards from my co-conspirators. There’s a piece of spam from priceline.com, that’s it.

At five there’s still nothing, good or bad.

The Sox are playing the Yanks on NESN. Trudy says I can watch it, but there’s an interesting documentary on, and I say, “That’s okay. It’s just pre-season.”

The documentary’s short, and we catch up to the game late. We’re behind 8–5, but when we rally in the bottom of the ninth, there aren’t enough Yankee fans left to overcome a hearty “Let’s go, Red Sox!” chant. It’s a classic Red Sox moment, that refusal to give in, even with Lowell Spinner Iggy Suarez stepping to the plate as our last hope. Iggy, feeling it, singles. With two on and two out, Dauber hits a flare to left, and it’s 8–6 with men on second and third and Hyzdu coming up. The chanting grows frantic, like we might actually pull it out. Hyzdu’s batting .173. He shows us why, taking three late, waving swings, and for the second time this spring we lose to the Yankees.

I turn the channel. I know it’s only exhibition, and that it’s classier not to chase after meaningless wins, but it’s irritating.

By midnight I still haven’t gotten any e-mail about Monster tickets. I think that can’t be good, but, like losing to the Yanks, there’s nothing I can do but eat it.

I’m hoping/expecting to shove all the work off my desk and get down to City of Palms to see the Sox on Saturday. I’ve got an invite to watch the game with Dan “Curse of the Bambino” Shaughnessy, the writer most New England fans (at least those who read the Boston
Globe
) most readily associate with the Olde Towne Team. And this Curse thing has really entered the New England stream of consciousness, as I’m sure you know—it’s right up there with the Salem witch trials and Maine lobstah, up there to the point where some wit with a spray can (or tortured sports fan/artist, take your choice) has turned a traffic sign reading REVERSE CURVE on Storrow Drive into one reading REVERSE THE CURSE. Ofcourse you and I know the so-called Curse of the Bambino is about as real as the so-called Books of Mormon, supposedly discovered in a cave and read with the help of “magic peekin’ stones” (true!), but like all those Mormons, I kind of believe in spite of the thing’s patent absurdity.

At three the remaining Green Monster seats go on sale. Considering we went 0 for 34 during the online lottery, I can’t imagine there are any left, but at 2:57 I’m watching the seconds tick off on the Weather Channel. I’ve enlisted Trudy, against her will, to take the other phone, and at exactly three we bombard the old info line.

Forty minutes into it, Trudy breaks through and hands over the phone. “I did my duty.”

I wait through “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” and Boz Scaggs’s “It’s Over,” and “(Na Na Hey Hey) Kiss Him Good-bye.” When I finally get a human, he says there are actual seats left, which I think is wrong.

“Anything for the Yankees?”

“I can get you second row for April eighteenth.”

“I’ll take ’em,” I say, thinking I’m getting away with something.

Now they’re saying Nomar probably won’t make the opener. Francona, trying to play it down, says Nomar would be starting if it were September—as if he doesn’t know all the games count the same.

The Yomiuri (Tokyo) Giants, who Matsui played for, are Japan’s answer to the Yankees—based in the largest city, with dozens of championships. My friend Phil in Tokyo has told me the Hanshin Tigers from Osaka-Kyoto are their Sox, a hard-luck club with fans who are devoted beyond all reason. Last year they won the Central League, beating the Giants, then lost a heartbreaker of a Series to the Daiei Hawks. For a couple weeks, people all over Japan were wearing their Hanshin Tigers gear, even in Tokyo.

It makes sense—Osaka-Kyoto is like Boston, a proud, much smaller city in the shadow of a megalopolis, and like the Yankees, the Giants have the most money and generate the most media coverage.

Yesterday the Hanshin Tigers pounded Donovan Osborne and the Yanks, 11–7. Their first baseman, with the un-Japanese-sounding name of Arias, has a sweet line in the box score: 4 2 3 5. Go Tigers!

Today the Yanks open the regular season there—in fact, with the time difference, they’re losing to Lou Piniella’s Devil Rays as I read the morning paper.

Before I’ve eaten breakfast, the Yanks have crushed the D-Rays 12–1, and the division’s knotted at .500 again. We play the Twins at Hammond tomorrow, then head to Atlanta for two against the Braves before opening in Baltimore.

By Sunday, the club has to make eleven more cuts to get down to the final twenty-five-man roster. On the bubble: Dauber, McCarty, Crespo, Hyzdu and Shump. Three of the bubble guys and one lucky pitcher (maybe a second lefty to go with Embree) should make the team, at least for the next month. The trouble is, we’re short on outfielders. Theo and Francona may have to keep Hyzdu, who’s had the worst spring of any Red Sock, and send down Shump and Crespo, who’s had the best.

On the very last day he could, Shump exercises an out clause in his contract and is free to sign with another club (eventually the Pirates), meaning Cesar Crespo, hitting .361, has earned a spot on the roster.

Met vet Bobby Jones and Tim Hamulack will fight for the final bullpen spot. They’ll both travel to Atlanta—as will Adam Hyzdu, who’s already been told by Francona he’ll start the year in Pawtucket. He’s the twenty-sixth man, the last one cut, and knows he could have made the team if he’d only hit the ball. With Trot out and Kapler starting, our backup outfielders are the thirty-eight-year-old, leg-injury-prone Ellis Burks, first baseman/aspiring pitcher David McCarty and fullbacks Brian Daubach and Kevin Millar.

The roster’s set, if not the lineup. The bench may not be as deep as the Yankees’, but it’s a good club, a 95–100 win club. My only worry now is health, with Nomar, Trot and BK already out. If we lose anyone else important, this could quickly turn into a lost season, like the Angels’ last year.

I drive to Boston to meet my friend Lowry’s lit class at Simmons College, right down Brookline Ave from Fenway. All the way up, I wrestle with the question of whether to drop in on Naomi. I don’t want to freak her out, but she hasn’t returned my calls, and we’re a week away from the home opener.

I’m early, there’s a parking spot, and I can’t resist. From the sidewalk, the office looks dark, but that’s just the tinted windows. The big tally board with all the games broken down by sections is covered with
X
’s. Everything’s sold-out except some August games against Tampa Bay and Toronto.

A young guy at a desk is on the phone with someone who got aced out of the Monster seats. “I’m sorry, sir,” the guy says, “but it did say first-come first-serve.”

I’m loitering, and he looks up from the phone in mid-conversation.

“Is Naomi expecting you?”

He calls her, then explains that she’s all the way on the other side of the park (there
is
no other side of the park—that would be where the batting cages are, under the center-field bleachers). She says not to worry, it’s going to happen. It’s going to be a day-of-game thing, I’ll have to pick them up at the Will Call window.

Outside, a crew is fixing pennants over Gate A. The one they’re working on as I pass says 1918 WORLD CHAMPIONS.

I go down Lansdowne and look up at the Monster seats. Green metal stools perch upside-down on the counters, like a bar after closing. I try to imagine sitting up there, but the wind’s so cold it’s hard to believe the season’s only two days away.

It’s after dinner when I finally catch up to yesterday’s game. We beat the Twins 4–3, taking three out of five from them to win Fort Myers’s Mayor’s Cup. The hero, ironically, was Adam Hyzdu, who homered to break the tie in the ninth. Too little, too late.

Last night we beat the Braves 7–3. Exhibition results mean even less the day before the opener, but I’m glad to see Manny pick up his first homer of the spring.

Today the Braves shut us out, 5–0, with Foulke giving up two runs in a third of an inning. I tell myself it means nothing, but neither does our 17-12 Grapefruit League record (a half game, I’m sorry to report, behind the Yanks).

In the last meaningful action of the spring, lefty Bobby Jones’s slider and 1.74 ERA win him the final roster spot over the less experienced Tim Hamulack.

The Weather Channel’s predicting snow here tomorrow night. In Baltimore, for the first pitch, it’s supposed to be thirty-nine degrees.