Fenway Fever (2 page)

Sparked by the sale of Red Sox ace pitcher and long-ball hitter Babe Ruth, the Great Bambino, to the Yankees (of all teams!) way back in 1919, this phenomenal curse had spanned several generations, breaking millions of hearts along the way.

But those days were long gone now, Stats felt sure.

Seeing Mark take the customer’s money, Stats started his mental stopwatch—a game he often played while waiting on Pops. Mark punched the register, scratched out the change from his coin bins, added a few bills, and handed it all over. Then, using his hip, he clanged the cash drawer shut and pulled the food box close, shot a thick river of mustard on both Smokeys, spooned a scoop of relish on the footer, added ketchup and mustard, and folded each into their wrappers.

All in nine seconds! Not a record, thought Stats, but still remarkable by any measure.

Being younger, and a bit less coordinated in the hand-and-eye
department, Stats never begrudged Mark his dexterity and athleticism. Having been born with a damaged heart, Stats had long ago resigned himself to the world of mental gymnastics. The only thing that really irked him was when people would note that he was “rather small” for a boy his age.

Well, maybe he was, which any boy born with a balky heart might be. Still, he regarded such comments as “rather rude” and had learned to respond politely, but firmly.

“Actually, I’m not small for my age,” he would say. “The truth is, I’m rather old for my height.”

This, he found, usually shut the errant observers rather up.

He gave each of his kettles a stir. In one, he boiled several kinds of hot dogs in saltwater brine. In the other, he stewed fresh organic chili, which he ladled onto the all-veggie Chili Billee dogs, filling them
FULL OF BEANS
, as promised,
JUST LIKE THEIR NAMESAKE
.

Resting his stainless steel ladle against the black kettle rim, Stats slipped his hand into his front pocket and anxiously fingered his two game day tickets. Still there. His heart boomed.

These, you see, were not your ordinary everyday baseball passes. These were family heirloom tickets—
season tickets
—seats his grandfather, Papa Pagano, founder of the Red Sox Red Hots stand, first purchased for himself and his new American bride seventy-two years ago. Front-row, field-level seats, just past third base on the edge of the outfield grass.

“Heaven on earth,” Stats liked to call them.

Some days, Pops might pass the tickets along to various
associates of the family hot dog stand, and sometimes they might end up in the offering plate at St. Francis of Assisi’s or dropped through the mail slot of a homeless shelter in Southie. But today, the seats belonged to him and Mark.

And on such days, as soon as they heard “The Star-Spangled Banner” from their stations at the sidewalk stand in the shadow of the ruddy brick walls of Fenway, they’d slip off their long white aprons, wipe the mustard from their hands, sing out, “See ya, Pops,” and dash inside.

Needless to say, Stats and Mark Pagano were, by all decent and acceptable standards, the luckiest boys on planet earth.

This, however, was about to change.

As the afternoon wore on, Stats tended his kettles while Pops did his best to hustle up customers from the throng moving down the street.

“Get-cha Red Sox Red Hots right hee-ya!”

Pops Pagano sang his Bostonian-laden incantation loud and strong, as if he were a priest calling to his flock.

“Hey, getcha Red Hots, now.”

In fact, Stats often thought that if Father McNamara would hire Pops on Sundays to stand in the St. Francis bell tower calling the parishioners to Holy Communion, the church would be packed at every service. Although, knowing Pops, the call would be more like, “Getcha red wine hee-ya! Hey, now, fresh white wayfahs hee-ya!”

That approach would, most likely, garner a few complaints at St. Francis, but it was perfect for Papa Pagano’s.

And business at the sidewalk stand was booming.

“Here’s four more,” said Pops, depositing four Chili Billees
on toasted buns onto the workspace in front of Stats, who, in turn, smothered them in chili, wrapped them into their green paper sheets, and sent them sliding toward the front.

Mark stuffed the order into a box. “Put a jalapeño in it?” he asked.

“Go ahead,” said the man, who stuck a five-dollar tip into an old pickle jar, which was guarded by a stubble-bearded Kevin Youkilis bobble-head doll.

“Thanks!” called Mark. “Next!”

“Hit me with your best shot, Stat Man.”

That order did not come from the front of the line, but from a curly-headed young man standing just outside the booth next to Stats. He was wearing aviator sunglasses, a white cowboy hat with a Red Sox logo, a blue Red Sox hoodie with the hood up, purplish tie-dyed drawstring pants, and white moccasins. To Stats, the guy appeared to be a cross between a ’78 “Buffalo Head” and an ’04 curse-breaking “Idiot”—two of the more colorful eras of Red Sox players.

However, beneath this way-out attire stood Boston’s number three starting pitcher and their number one star attraction. Although, as far as Stats was concerned, this goofball lefty’s biggest claim to fame was that he, Billee Orbitt, was the only active Red Sox player to have a Papa Pagano’s hot dog named in his honor.

“My best shot,” said Stats, “has your name written all over it.” He snagged two red-hot freshly charred veggie dogs off of Pops’s grill.

“What the heck are you doing out here on a game day, Billee? Aren’t you starting?”

Mark and Pops kept working, as they usually did at these moments, to let the two “kids” talk. Billee Orbitt frequently visited Papa Pagano’s on his off days to grab a few dogs, a good-luck ritual he had begun last year—which he claimed “worked like a snake charm”—but Stats could not ever recall him stopping by on a day he was scheduled to pitch.

He pointed at the pitcher’s weird clothes. “You got your uniform on under that?”

“Half of it.” Billee grinned, looking himself over. “Just trying to shake things up a bit and break my routine. Besides, I’m starving. Red Sox have no food left in there.”

“Shake what things up?”

“You kidding? Look, I’ve lost four in a row, and my ERA’s still around 3.20. What does that tell you?”

Stats thought a moment. “It’s 3.13, actually, but what’s wrong with that? Allowing three runs per game is not a bad average at all.”

“I agree, which proves I’m throwing about as good as I ever have, with nothing but a lousy one-and-four record to show for it. Last game, for example, I was zoned, baby. Zoom, ziggy, zoom.” He wing-waddled his hand through the air. “But it wasn’t enough. And not only that, we have gone from four games in front of the Yankees to one game behind in, what, ten days? We’re not that bad of a team, Stat Man. Something else is going on.”

“Like what?”

“I have to believe there are some outside forces at work here. After all, it’s
2012
.”

Stats had heard that talk before. Actually, a lot of people believed this year, 2012, was supposed to be earth-changing—maybe even the end of the world as we knew it.

“Hasn’t been all that bad,” offered Stats, who put very little stock in the whole 2012 doom-and-gloom scenario.

To be honest, Stats, as well as zillions of devoted members of Red Sox Nation, preferred to see it this way: If the holy game of baseball was coming to an end during the year of the Fenway Park Centennial, then they figured it would be only fitting that their Sox should win not just the 2012 American League pennant, but the world’s last World Series to boot.

“Hey, you win tonight,” Stats continued, “and we stop the slide. We’re back even with the Yanks, with a chance to split the series tomorrow and regain first place. Besides, the last time you pitched, what was it? You left in the fifth, game tied four–four, right? Then a seeing-eye single and a pop flare scores two? Not your fault we lost. In baseball that stuff happens. But it always evens out over time. And I got the stats to prove it.”

He grinned widely.

Billee shook his head. “Wish that were true, Stat Man. But this year’s different. It’s not just a bad bounce here, bloop hit there. A boot, a bobble. Most of the time, that stuff does even out. But this is pure bad luck. And it’s all one-sided. Plus, it’s only getting worse. One thing goes wrong, then two, then three.
Before you know it, I get hung with an ‘L,’ the team goes downhill, and, buddy”—he waggled his cowboy hat—“it’s driving me ba-zerko.”

Ah, thought Stats, so that’s what does it. But he decided not to say anything. He did have to admit, though, Billee had a point.

Last year, during his rookie season, Billee was baseball’s star attraction, a twenty-one-year-old phenom. People packed the parks in every city he pitched just to watch his ninety-three-mph “buckler ball” buckle a batter’s knees, his “dipster ball” dip and dash, and his world-famous slo-mo “leaflutz” pitch flutter like a falling leaf, while hitters flailed away, smacking nothing but air.

The fans also loved to see Billee’s herky-jerky merry-go-round windup, known as the “Lefty Looey,” since it reminded the Boston faithful of a left-handed version of former Sox pitching great Luis Tiant.

Of course, it also helped that Billee was a local boy, born in Worcester, Mass., and raised in Northborough. In his year at triple-A Pawtucket, he was tagged the “Worcester Rooster,” as much for his habit of scratching up the mound between innings as the fact that around here, regardless of spelling, those two words actually rhyme. Later on, fans dubbed him the Spacebird, partly because of the rooster tag and partly because of his often-stated dream to one day fly through space and visit his ancestors.

Needless to say, the loony (as in
lunar
) left-hander became an overnight fan favorite. But as most folks would agree, last
year ended on a sour note, and Billee’s star was beginning to fade.

He grabbed the first chili dog Stats set on the counter, then walked over to pitch a wadded-up twenty into the tip jar. Billee never had to pay for his food—one of Pops’s rules—but he always left a generous tip.

“Hey, Pops!” called Billee, holding his chili dog high. “Have I ever told you this? Your hot dogs are a legend in their own brine.”

Pops threw his head back and roared. “About a thousand times, you Wiener schnitzel. Now, move along.” He pointed in Mark’s direction with his silver tongs. “Look how slow the line’s going with you standing around.”

Despite being incognito, the gangly, animated pitcher had been quickly identified by several fans, who started bunching up at the counter to gawk. The purple pants may have been a giveaway, if not the deerskin pouch full of herbs (mixed with Fenway Park grass trimmings) dangling from his neck.

Billee, however, simply scooped up the next chili dog and sent a wave to everyone as they, in turn, wished him luck. Then he began his customary stroll toward a small nook in the brick wall behind the sidewalk stand, where he and Stats often conferred. Stats slipped under the countertop to follow.

“All right, Stat Man,” said Billee. “Status report. What’ve you uncovered so far?”

As he straightened up, Stats felt his heart flutter. Closing his fist, he tapped his chest, then coughed. It was one of the
strategies he had discovered to overcome the swelling surge of palpitations he sometimes felt. The feeling left.

“Thought you’d never ask, Billee. I’ve had the whole Stat Pack helping me all week, and there’s one thing we came up with that you might be very interested in.”

Billee’s upside-down traffic cone of a goatee sprouted a full toothy grin from somewhere inside. “That’s why I hired you, kid.”

“Hired” was stretching it. But last week Billee had asked Stats to research a few things, and, as usual, Stats was happy to help.

His task was to scour the scorebooks and compile data on such things as uncompleted double plays that led to a run being scored; bad hop, “seeing-eye,” or fluke hits that scored key runs; and passed balls or wild pitches that advanced runners who later scored. Billee labeled these “bad-luck runs.” He wanted to know if, as he suspected, the Sox had lost more close games because of bad-luck runs (BLRs) than other teams up to this point—the first six weeks of the season.

“Okay, so, I sorted through all the data on all of the teams, and the Red Sox have already had six BLR losses this year. Which is more than any other team we know of.”

Stats paused while Billee chomped down into his chili dog and leaned against the ancient wall covered with posters shouting
FENWAY FEVER! 100º AND RISING!
He nodded.

Stats went on. “The interesting thing is, four of those losses happened when you pitched.”

“Well,” said Billee. “Maybe I’m not so crazy after all.”

Again, Stats thought it best not to comment. But he did feel compelled to inject an element of logic.

“Billee, I know what you’re thinking. You gotta remember what I said, though. In the long run, statistically speaking, there really is no such thing as good luck or bad. It pretty much evens out over time.”

Billee lowered an eyebrow and cocked his head. “And like I say, this is different. Trust me, Stat Man. I’m
tuned in
to stuff like this. They don’t call me Spacebird for nothing.” He set his fists against his temples, then extended both pointing fingers and wiggled them. “Voom, zoom.”