Fenway Fever (3 page)

He winked, then grew serious. “Okay, bud, here’s what I’d like you to do next. Start tuning in to the vibe around here. Find out all you can about anything around this ballpark that could’ve knocked things out of whack.”

“Out of whack?” said Stats. “Like what?”

“Like anything. With all the recent renovations, who knows? Renaming the .406 Club could’ve done it, replacing all the solid oak seats with plastic might’ve done it, or even installing those three new HD video boards. And it might not be just one thing. They all add up, you know.”

“Add up to what?”

“To a new balance. Which means the old balance we had back in ’04 and ’07 may be long gone. And if that’s the case …” Billee lowered his voice. “I fear there may very well be a new Red Sox curse afoot.”

“Oh, you don’t really mean that, do you?” Stats could feel his heart plump up and flutter out a double beat.

The pitcher narrowed his eyes. “As far as I’m concerned, we’ll find out tonight. This game will be the real test. If the momentum shifts, if things start to turn around and go my way, then I’ll say, okay, maybe it will start to all even out. No harm, no foul balls. But if not, then—”

He took another bite, looking high over Stats’s lucky 2007 Red Sox cap, far into the clouds.

Stats turned around and looked up, too, but didn’t see much. “Then what?” he asked.

Billee chewed slowly, pondering.

“Then it’ll be up to guys like you and me to stop this new curse.”

After an exhausting three hours, the action at Papa Pagano’s had finally slowed to a “one-man stand,” as Pops called it. Stats held wet towels in each hand like mitts, mopping up the countertops and storage bins, while Mark worked a wire brush over the still-smoldering grill.

As if on cue, Stats could hear the legendary Celtic rock band Dropkick Murphys begin singing the national anthem inside the ballpark, and Pops waved his hand.

“Get outta here,” he commanded.

The boys tossed their towels into the linen box behind the counter, then pulled off their aprons and slung them in, too. Mark lifted the escape hatch, snatching his ballpark glove off its hook. Stats grabbed his scorebook. And they both hustled away.

Now, Pops was a great Red Sox fan, too, don’t let anyone tell you different. Long before Stats was even born, Pops had attended games religiously, all the way through the 2007 World Series. Along with Mama Pagano.

When she got sick, however, everything normal came to a halt. When she died, everything changed.

These days, Pops was happy just to root from the outside, watch his tiny TV, listen for the roars, and know that he did not have to walk down that long aisle of narrow steps that leads to the front row of section 71. Nor did he have to pause at the foot of the aisleway, to see one seat waiting for him and the other one empty.

In the top of the first, Billee started his routine, which would tend to get replayed on the scoreboard and for the fans at home from time to time. First he tramped around the mound, scratching and smoothing the dirt. Then he turned his back to the catcher and held the ball to his face, saying something encouraging to it. Finally, he began warming up.

As was his custom, with each pitch Billee spun fully around, nodding at the infielders, before he uncoiled like a striking snake to deliver the ball to the plate. The fans loved it and responded with hoots and whistles after each toss.

When catcher Burlin Fiske received the final warm-up pitch, he rifled the ball to second, where it was zipped around the horn, only to be flipped ten feet high by Wadell Fens, at third, so Billee could snatch the “falling star” bare-handed. Tucking his glove under his arm, he then stalked around the mound, slapping and rubbing the ball with his left palm. Satisfied finally with the “feel” of the situation, Billee stepped to the rubber and looked in for a sign.

For the first hour, this highly hyped game between the top
two AL East Division teams became a pitchers’ duel, with no score through four.

Billee had to be happy. He looked unhittable. Stats could feel his heart calm and his breathing grow strong.

When Flasher Gordon, the Yankees’ leadoff man in the top of the fifth, went down on strikes, everyone rose. What a relief, thought Stats, to see the fans supporting Billee Orbitt once again. Lately the snarls and sneers had grown proportionate to the Red Sox’s slide out of first place. Last night, when things got rough for young True Denton on the mound, Stats had witnessed several in the crowd become a strange gang of hostiles, their faces rife with anger.

“Our team is our team,” Pops had always said. “Win or lose, they come to play and play their best. So why turn on them?”

Mark could, of course, offer a few reasons why, but Stats would always counter and help Pops hold his ground.

The next batter chopped one to the second sacker, Dusty Doretta, who promptly swept it up and fired to Sandiego Gunsalvo at first for out number two.

After Billee got ahead on the inning’s third batter, Dirk Scooter, the Yankee shortstop, he missed with the next three pitches. The count went full.

“Now he’s trying to be too fine,” said Mark. “He’s got to just stick to what he’s been doing. Use the buckler to set up the leaflutz and mix in the dipster to keep ’em honest. Right?”

“Right,” said Mr. McCord, a fellow season ticket holder, who sat one row behind.

The next pitch was, sure enough, a buckler that sailed in tight. But with two strikes, Scooter had to protect. He swung hard to fight it off and ended up launching a high pop fly straight up the elevator shaft behind third base. Continuing to rise, the white satellite began to tail off toward the stands.

“It’s coming our way!” shouted Stats.

Mark already had his glove high in the air.

“Wait!” Stats threw his arm across Mark’s chest. “Don’t cause interference.”

“I won’t. But if it’s out of play, I’m bringing it in.”

As the ball descended, both boys toed the barrier fence to watch.

Then the thunder began.

Not true thunder, exactly, but the next-closest thing. Stats lowered his gaze just in time to see gold-glove shortstop Rico Ruíz, maybe fifteen feet away, pounding the earth, rushing at them both full blast.

“Duck!” Stats covered his head with his forearms and fell to the concrete floor, knocking against Mark, who obviously had the same idea.

The shortstop crashed into the wall. Stats cringed. Then the great Red Sox hero tumbled into the stands, headfirst, his feet somewhere high in the sky. Stats and Mark, hunkered against their folded seats, shared the brunt of the man’s fall, pushing Stats one way and Mark the other.

As Stats slid away, he felt his knee snag onto something, then jolt forward. He opened his eyes and slipped his hands
from his face. Folded up as he was with his head tucked into his chest, Stats had a perfect view.

First, he saw black leather. Then he saw white.

The ball lay on concrete, trapped under the shortstop’s black glove. Right where Stats’s knee had knocked it.

The “snag” had been the tip of the shortstop’s glove.

Oh, no! thought Stats.
I made him drop it
. All that hustle, all that trouble for nothing!

He closed his eyes, still adrift in the moment’s awe. “That was unbelievable.”

Those last words went unheard, buried by the roar that erupted next. Why are they cheering? he wondered.

That’s when he spotted the veteran Ruíz holding the ball high in the palm of his glove.

A
catch.
He was claiming he’d caught the ball.

Yes! thought Stats. He did. That is, he would’ve if I hadn’t knocked it loose.

But the umpire had been right there, on top of the play. He shook his head, bending at the waist, swinging his arms sideways. In an instant, that “no catch” gesture rolled into a two-palms-up juggling motion showing the crowd that Rico never had full possession of the ball.

That, of course, caused Rico to feign indignity, but the ump, Jim Joyce, was known for his keen eye and accuracy, and the Boston fans soon settled into acceptance.

On the very next pitch, the lucky batter walked. In a bid to get ahead of the Yankees’ cleanup hitter, Reggie Marruth, Billee
grooved a fastball, and hard-hitting Reggie jacked a rocket into the right-field seats. Two-run homer. In a flash, all of Billee’s keen, methodical work had turned into two bad-luck runs. Not insurmountable, but if not for Stats’s knee, the game would still be tied, 0–0.

Billee came out of the game after going seven full innings, with the Sox still trailing 2–0.

That score held until the bottom of the ninth, when Kenny “Hawkeye” Jensen pinch-hit for Drew Evans and singled up the middle, bringing the top of the Red Sox batting order to the plate.

“Hey, Rico’s gonna hit this inning,” said Mark. “One on, no outs. He’s in the hole.”

“Unless they get a double play,” Stats said quietly. There was something about having caused your home team to lose an out—which then cost them two runs—that saps the optimism from your heart.

The pinch hitter on first gave way to a pinch runner, speedster Robertos Davíd, who promptly stole second.

“Tough to double him up now,” said Mark.

Stats only watched, willing the batter, Wadell Fens, the Sox’s leadoff man, to drive the run in with a clean base hit and get a rally going. The Sox needed more than one run to stay in this game.

Stats took off his hat, turned it inside out, and put it back on.

It seemed the lucky rally cap strategy didn’t help much. Fens went after an off-speed pitch and lofted a soft flare to deep short, which Dirk Scooter tracked down. One away. The next guy, Doretta, grounded out to third, freezing the runner at second. Two out.

The Sox were now down to their last hope. Luckily, it was their best hope. Walking in from the on-deck circle came Boston’s leading hitter. The crowd was already rising.

“Now batting for the Red Sox,” came the rich, resonant voice over the ballpark’s loudspeakers, “the shortstop, Rico Ru-íz!”

From the kelly-green girders high above home plate to the thirty-seven-foot Green Monster wall in left field, the elegant ballyard built a century ago shook in the thunderous roll of one long tuba-like drone.

“Ruu
-
eez!”

No one, however, bellowed with more gusto than Stats and Mark Pagano, who pumped their fists into the warm night sky as Mark’s favorite player of all time, Rico “the Breeze” Ruíz, approached the plate.

Hitting an amazing .369 through today, May 12, and representing the tying run, Ruíz slowly, calmly strolled to the dish.

“Here comes an RBI single,” Stats announced. “Guaranteed.”

“Only a single, Freddy?” yelled Mr. McCord. “I’ll bet he parks it.”

A retired music teacher, Mr. McCord always brought lucky drumsticks with him. No, not wooden drumsticks, but the frozen ice cream kind, which he and Mrs. McCord passed out for good luck to Mark and Stats and anyone else who sat nearby. And for extra luck, in the middle of the eighth inning, they would hand out Mrs. McCord’s freshly baked double fudge brownies, which she called “Sweet Carolines.”

Oh, oh, oh. The brownies were so good—and long gone by now.

Mark answered for his kid brother. “Anything, Mr. McCord, anything. We don’t care.” Mark, who was also a shortstop and was regarded by local coaches as one of South Boston’s brightest young stars, idolized the Puerto Rican ballplayer, especially the way Ruíz always seemed to come through in the clutch.

He leaned over. “What do you say, bro?”

Stats pointed to Ruíz’s line in his well-worn scorebook.

“He’s due. Oh-for-six with a walk, counting last night. Three-for-eleven in the series. He’s
over
due.”

The first pitch from the Yankees’ closer, “Goose Egg” Page, came high and tight, forcing Ruíz to flinch back.

The boos rained down like a June monsoon.

“Whaddya ’fraid of, you rag arm?” came one shout. “Throw the ball o-vah!”

Other fans joined in. “Hey, Page! Show him that inside heat again and your goose egg’ll be cooked.”

The second pitch fell off, low and away, and the tall, trim left-handed slugger with home-run punch barely moved. Again, a cascade of boos.