Faithful (9 page)
Authors: Stephen King,Stewart O’Nan
And is there a reason to drag all this history into a book about the 2004 Red Sox? There sure is. More than one, actually. First, baseball is a
game
of history, and those who don’t learn from it are condemned to get drubbed by it. Second, even in a much improved American League East, the Yankees and Red Sox still seem, at this point in the young season, like the two dominant teams.
[10]
The tradition and history will hang over each of these matches like grandstand shadows over the infield at 5 P.M. The Red Sox half of the tradition, unfortunately, is one of losing the big games. The history half is one of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as on the night of October 17th, 2003.
Looking the other way, into the future (into the outfield, where the shadows have not yet reached, if you will), is the simple fact that the landscape of the American League East
has
changed since 2003; even two weeks into the season, that seems apparent. The lowly Tampa Bay Devil Rays (the previously lowly D-Rays) are at .500, and the previously lowly Baltimore Orioles are in first place. Those things will very likely change, but I think it’s likely that the Blue Jays, also improved, won’t finish thirty games below .500, as they would if they continued along at their current pace.
What all this means to the Sox/Yanks rivalry is that one team is apt to be called when the postseason bell rings, but probably not both. And that makes the knees of every Red Sox fan tremble, no matter what they may tell you, no matter what sentiments they wear on their T-shirts, no matter what vile canards they may call down upon Yankee outfielders from the Monster seats high above.
There is no calculus here; the math is simple. We all hate what we fear, and sensible Red Sox fans fear the Yankees. Now, on the eighteenth of April, the Red Sox lead the nineteen-game regular-season series two games to one. A great many other games will be played with a great many other clubs before the dust settles and the 2004 season is in the record books…but in my heart, I believe the American League East will come down to Them, or to Us. And because we fear what we hate, in my heart I always dread it when they come to us. The only thing I dread more is when we must go to them. I suppose it would be different if I could play, but of course I can’t; I’m helpless, doomed to only watch. To believe in the Curse of the Bambino even though I don’t believe in it. And to think of the late Stephen Jay Gould, who somehow rooted for
both
teams (maybe in the end that was what killed him, not the cancer), and who once said, “The deepest possible anguish…[is] running a long hard course again and again to the very end, and then self-destructing one inch from the finish line.”
Postscript—April 19th
This is Patriots’ Day, which is a holiday only in Maine, where it chiefly means no mail delivery, and Massachusetts, where it means the Boston Marathon and an 11 A.M. Red Sox game at Fenway. Today the Red Sox spotted the Yankees leads of 3–0 and 4–1, but “Bronson Arroyo settled down and pitched a good game,” in ESPN
SportsCenter
argot, and the Red Sox won it by a final score of 5–4.
[11]
I’m happy to report that A-Rod’s woes continue; he went 1 for 17 in the four-game series (hee-hee), the one hit was a meaningless single, and he made a throwing error in today’s tilt that basically cost the Yankees the game. So now we’re 3-1 with the Yanks, and can get back to the more normal business of playing baseball.
Whew.
April 20th
I read in the paper that in his first home game Dauber hit two homers, leading the PawSox to a 3–2 victory over Rochester. And to replace Frank Castillo, the Red Sox have activated lefty Lenny DiNardo, giving us four lefties in the pen for the first time I can remember. Must be setting up for this weekend’s series in the Bronx, that short porch in right. I hope these PawSox can get it done. I’d start resting Embree now.
The crowd in the Skydome tonight is around 6,000, despite the Pedro-Halladay rematch. The Maple Leafs are playing the Ottawa Senators in Game 7 of their playoff series, and at one point Eric Frede, NESN’s new man-in-the-stands, says there are more people in the concourse watching hockey than there are in the seats. Oh, Canada.
Pedro throws well and we win easily, but there’s a little bad blood in the ninth when reliever Terry Adams goes up and in on Manny. Manny ducks away, tossing his helmet aside, and stands squared with the mound, arms out, calling, “What do you want?” Earlier, reliever Valerio de los Santos knocked Ortiz on his ass with a pitch aimed at his face, so it’s not an over-reaction on Manny’s part, as Jerry claims. When their no-name pitchers throw at your big three and four guys, it’s on. The benches clear, and while there are no punches thrown, it’s a signal that we’re not going to take that shit. Expect newbie Lenny DiNardo to dust someone like Delgado tomorrow, or Timlin to plunk Wells or Phelps.
SK:
Petey looked a lot better than Doc, didn’t he? Are the Yankees playing tonight? I tried to get ’em on the satellite, and they were playing some weepy old Thurman Munson short instead of the ChiSox. Red Sox win, Martinez goes 2-1. Time for Tom Caron and Bob Tewksbury, aka The Talking Board.
SO:
Rain delay. The Yanks scored 7 in the first, so maybe that’ll get erased.
Tewks! You’ll notice he changed his hair from that ’50s style to something from the mid-to-late ’70s. And where the hell is Bob Rodgers? Do they have him in a cage under Car Talk Plaza?
SK:
I think I’ll Google the sumbitch.
SO:
Google away, dude, but I think Carmen Sandiego is working him over in a dank room with a DieHard and some piano wire. Long live TC and the new man-in-the-stands who looks like Ross Perot’s love child.
SK:
According to the
Globe
(March 2nd, 2004), Rodgers left Fort Myers to coach a Whitman-Hanson boys’ basketball game in the MIAA Tournament. He left a recorded
SportsDesk
segment but did not get permission to do this. Both NESN and Red Sox management weren’t happy, and although the public word is that Bobby the Serial Killer “has left NESN to pursue other opportunities” (Sean McGrail), the fact is they canned his ass. According to
Globe
writer Bill Griffith, Red Sox management “has sent a message that there are new sheriffs in town.”
In a totally unrelated development, you should know that ex–Red Soxer Mo Vaughn is going to be the Grand Marshal of the fifteenth annual Hot Dog Safari on May 16th, at Suffolk Downs. It’s being billed “The Hit Dog and the Hot Dog.”
How the mighty have fallen.
By the way, Stew, Google also reports that a Bob Rodgers is reffing college soccer in the Boston area, but that may not be the same one.
SO:
So he’s just out there somewhere, like Michael Myers.
SK:
Dude! That’s it! Or Jason, only with a wimp-mask, sorta.
April 21st
A package arrives from the Souvenir Store (which is in fact Twins Enterprises now; the Sox have made it their official store) with the glossy 2004 yearbook, a blue windbreaker made in Korea and a T-shirt made in Uzbekistan. Now I’m outfitted for the summer. The yearbook must have been put to bed in late March, because there, sharing the same page, are Shump and Tony Wo.
UPS brings another present, a rough cut of a future episode of
Kingdom Hospital
called “Butterfingers.” The story line is familiar to Sox fans: Earl Candleton, the first baseman for the long-suffering New England Robins, drops a pop-up that would have won them the ’87 World Series. From then on he’s hounded by fans who call him Butterfingers and pelt him with balls. He descends into alcoholism, living in a fleabag of a mission in Lewiston. When the Robins go to Game 7 of the Series, with the game on the line in the bottom of the ninth, Earl holds a revolver to his temple. If the Robins win, he lives; if they fold, he dies.
Of course, they fold and he pulls the trigger and drops into a cobwebby purgatory as the doctors and kinder spirits of Kingdom Hospital try to save him. (The F/X haven’t been matted in yet, so there are scenes where a grip follows the waif ghost Mary around with the head of the benevolent beast Antubis on a stick.) In the end, the spirits, with the help of Peter, the artist in a car-crash-induced coma, allow Earl to go back to that moment in ’87 and make the catch, changing himself and the world. The two Down syndrome dishwashers who serve as oracles have the last word: “Baseball’s not always a sad game. Sometimes the good guys win.”
Tonight the matchup is Wake versus Ted Lilly, who beat us on Opening Day. Wake’s sharp and Doug Mirabelli, happy to be starting, wallops two homers to give us a 3–0 lead, but the Jays chip away.
SK:
3–2 in the sixth. This is turning into a nail-biter. Damn, I hate seeing all those .250 hitters in the lineup. Thank God for Douglas “Miracle” Mirabelli. Speaking of hockey, did you see his shot off the glass?
SO:
Doug also came through big-time Friday night against the Yanks. Amazing that he can be this hot when he sits four days between starts. And Tek’s hot too. But Pokey, oh my, he’s just struggling.
It’s still 3–2 in the eighth when Tosca brings in Valerio de los Santos once more to face David Ortiz. Last night de los Santos put David on his ass; tonight he hangs a breaking ball that David stings down the right-field line. It bounces fair and caroms off the stands right to the right fielder Reed Johnson, and David has to sprint for second. He’s a big man, and looks silly running way up on his toes, arms pumping. He slides headfirst, bouncing off the dirt, and he’s in there. We shouldn’t laugh but can’t help it. Part of it is how sweet his revenge is. De los Santos is scowling as Tosca comes to take the ball from him. David hustles over to third on a long sac fly by Manny (only a great leaping catch against the wall by Johnson saves extra bases), then, on a wild pitch, scoots for home, sliding feetfirst this time, safe, adding an earned run to de los Santos’s stats (the camera finds him brooding in the dugout).
We win 4–2. After the postgame show, Steve and I are still debating hope and fatalism.
SO:
I think it’s neat how our attitudes are so different. After ’86, last year didn’t feel that drastic to me. I mean, sure, it hurt, but I’d been through worse, and we weren’t even supposed to get that far (we were at least three players away), so I thought everything after Trot’s shot was gravy and just dug the ride. This year I have higher hopes because of Schilling and Foulke.
And here’s some history: the Angels, prior to 2001, were all-time chokers. Remember? No, you can’t, at least not emotionally, because their win has forever changed the way we see the club and its past. It’s a line you cross, and when the Sox cross it, our hindsight will be softened, and all these close calls will lose their power to wound us. Like the Pats, we’ll no longer be hapless. Ask the old hard-luck UConn Huskies of Jim Calhoun, the 1980 Phillies, the last two Elway Bronco squads, etc., etc. So good-bye, Tony Eason, good-bye, Donnie Moore.
SK:
“Donnie Moore.” Now there’s a horror story.
I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve decided that the age difference makes a difference here. What is it, fourteen years between us? Which means I remember Williams and you don’t. I remember Maz leaping joyously around the bases when he hit that home run and you’ve only seen the kinescopes. I’m not trying to pull rank or make you feel like a kid, I’m just trying to get a focus on how we can approach this so differently. Maybe I’ve got it. I’ve been suffering fourteen more years. Why, that’s almost a generation!
SO:
I see it as partly geographical—that winning Pittsburgh experience—but part of it’s also that I waited for both the Oakland Raiders and New York Rangers to finally win their championships after years and years of their great (and heavily favored) teams choking, and for two truly hapless clubs, the Pats and Penguins, to win theirs (only to have lightning strike not once but twice). All four of these teams put a shit-load of history behind them with one big cleansing win, and that’s what the Sox will do too.
SK:
But don’t you see? Your very argument proves what a striking anomaly the Red Sox are. All the clubs you’ve mentioned—in all the various sports—in this and in previous e-mails have won it all at least once in the last eighty or so years. Do I need to finish this thought? I mean, hello? “One of these things is not like the others / One of these things just doesn’t belong / One of these things is not like the others / Tell me while I sing this song.”
SO:
By the same token,
all
of these teams were in our strikingly anomalous position (which we share with the Cubs, White Sox, Brewers, Mariners, Astros, Rangers, D-Rays, Padres, Expos, Rockies, not to mention dozens of NFL clubs (the St. Louis/Arizona Cards have never won one, or the Saints, or the Bills, the Minny Vikes, etc., etc.), dozens of NBA and NHL franchises, whole boatloads of NCAA Division I schools, etc.) up until t = +0, when all their troubled histories were redeemed by the one resource the world can count on: time. It’s inevitable. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but that just means our faith has to be strong.
Which is one reason why I dug “Butterfingers” so much—how you framed Earl Candleton’s life (and error) in terms of salvation or damnation. Take Me Out to the Ballgame/Shall We Gather at the River. Hail-Marymotherofgrace…“I thought I was in Hell.” You really made us feel for the guy, so when the dishwashing kids came out after you’d used the old rewind to redeem #11 and said, “Sometimes the good guys win,” damned if I didn’t get a little teary for Billy Buck and for all of us.
And Billy Buck, you know we don’t blame you. It was that lousy Schiraldi.
SK:
I think Schiraldi might have been in some form of analysis or therapy following that season—I’m almost sure of this. And he was my daughter’s first crush…a young man, and fair.
SO:
He shoulda gone into analysis before the Angels series. And McNamara should have had his head examined for using him in both.
I guess some young girls just dig troubled guys.
SK:
“Brewers, Mariners, Astros, Rangers, D-Rays, Padres, Expos, Rockies.” Johnny-come-latelies.
“But Pokey, oh my, he’s just struggling.” Yeah, but he’s a PR Mastuh!
SO:
I’ll cop to the Rocks and Rays being latecomers, but the Pods and Spos are looking at 30+ years of futility, the Stros at 40+, and the Rangers (as the Senators) have to go back to 1924 for their sole crown (compared to our five during that era).
Y’know, I just flat-out LIKE Pokey, despite him hitting .182 (67 points higher than Ellis Burks). He’s got a major league glove, and we haven’t seen much of that over the years.
SK:
So do I—you just can’t NOT like him, can you? And he’s been steady-Eddie with the glove.