Fenway Fever (9 page)

Stats had never seen Pops act so nervous.

“Doc Roberts says you’re doing fine. You feel fine?”

“I would if I didn’t have all these tubes and wires all over me.”

Pops shook his head. “They gotta stay. Your oxygen level was down to eighty-one percent last night. They’re not taking any chances.”

“So when do I go home?”

Pops looked away as if avoiding Stats’s eyes. “Doc’s gonna see. Everything’s, you know, step-by-step. That’s how it’s gotta go. He’s waiting on the first tests to find out if he has to run some more.”

“Oh, man.”

Mark tried to help. “What’re you complaining about, Freddy? You know how hot your nurse is? I think I might check in just for a sponge bath.”

Stats cracked up. It felt good to laugh. That is, until he coughed.

Pops glared at Mark. “Hey, hey, don’t get fresh. You’re not in the dugout here. Show some manners.”

Mark grinned sheepishly. “But Freddy looked so sad.”

“Alfredo,” said Pops. “You’ll come home as soon as possible. Don’t worry. Everybody’s just being careful.”

“I know.” What he really knew was that the Sox had a travel day today, so there was no game. But if he didn’t get out by tomorrow night, he’d be stuck watching their road games in here. No good-luck popcorn in his lucky bowl, sitting in his
lucky chair, wearing his ’07 World Series hat with his favorite photo of “The Kid,” aka Ted Williams, stuck inside. How could he start a rally without his KidLid? It was horrible timing to be stuck in this place, and besides that, he had no idea which nurse Mark had been talking about.

He bit into the sweet roll while keeping one eye on the door.

Pops was right about the tests. All afternoon, Stats was wheeled around the cardiac floor, where they not only took blood from his arm, but measured how fast the blood pumped into the little glass vial when they took it. He had breathing tests, stress tests, reflex tests, and heartbeat tests.

None of it was any fun.

Pops and Mark had stopped by for another visit, but Stats felt so tired, they left when he dozed off after dinner.

The next morning they were back.

“Test results look fine,” said Pops, who did not quite sound as if he believed it. “A couple more today, Alfredo, then you should be coming home tomorrow.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Doc says your heart is always running on low. That’s why you can’t exert yourself. He just wants to figure out the best thing to do for it.”

Stats nodded. What could he say?

“See the sports page yet?” asked Mark.

“No.”

“A guy at the
Boston Globe
thinks the Sox are falling into the same scenario they had back in 1919, when The Curse began. A few years of success, then
boom
, the big collapse.”

“He said that? Where? Can you get me a copy?”

“Be right back.” Mark hustled out.

Pops settled himself into a chair against the wall, then scooted it forward, but in so doing, he dropped a small pile of papers from his lap.

Stats could not see what the papers were, but the calculator among them caught his eye.

“Whatcha working on, Pops?”

“Oh, nothing. Just doing a little figuring.”

“That’s my department. What do you need to find out?”

“No, forget it. Not important.” He tried to gather and sort the pages, placing a couple on the breakfast tray, then folded the rest up small enough to stuff into his shirt pocket.

Stats saw dollar signs. “Is that how much all this is gonna cost?” He knew about medical bills. Mark once mentioned that even though insurance paid most of Mama’s bills, it still cost the family a ton.

“Oh, no, no.” Pops shook his head. “Insurance is so much better nowadays. This is …”

Mark walked back in, distracting him a moment as he tossed the sports pages onto the bed.

Stats did not take them. “This is what, Pops?”

“Oh, like I say, it’s nothing.” Pops quickly folded the remaining pages into another square. “I just thought maybe our season tickets could help me pay down some of that debt.”

Stats and Mark exchanged glances.

“How much are they worth?” asked Mark.

Pops seemed resigned to addressing the subject. He sat back. “Well, they’re not cheap. They run about eleven thousand dollars a year.”

“Oh, my gosh!” Stats cradled the sides of his head with his hands. “I never knew it was so high. That’s five thousand five hundred dollars each!”

Pops shook his head. “No, no. Eleven thousand—that’s per seat. It adds up to over twenty-two thousand potatoes a year.”

“Whoa!”

“Well, they are very good seats.”

“Does that include play-off and World Series tickets?” asked Mark.

“Oh, those. Don’t ask.”

Stats took a moment to imagine all the money Pops shelled out for the tickets. No wonder he couldn’t afford to meet his bills.

Pops slumped. “Problem is, we need a lot more than those tickets are worth.”

Stats thought a moment, knocking the numbers around his head. “Well, maybe not.”

“Oh?” Pops smiled. “What do you suggest?”

“I know.” Mark already had a plan. “Why don’t you give the
tickets to the bill collector to sort of ‘lose’ your file? He’s gotta be a Sox fan, right?”

Stats appreciated the ease of that solution. “Yeah, bribe the guy.”

“Ah, geez,” said Pops, “what am I raising, a couple of mobsters?”

“Well …” said Mark. “It could work.”

Stats kept figuring. “No, but wait, Pops. I was thinking something else. What if you sold the tickets for what they’re really worth?”

His father looked at him with a start. “They’re worth more than what I pay?”

“Pops,” said Mark. “These days? With the Sox selling out every game, every year since May 2003? If you sold those tickets on the open market, you could get, like, a thousand bucks a game. Maybe more. And there’s eighty-one games a year, not counting the play-offs.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Yeah,” said Stats. “The seats all around us get resold all the time. And I’ve heard the buyers talk about the prices they paid. Never less than four hundred dollars per seat. And sometimes a lot more.”

“Right,” said Mark. “The Yankees series is worth a mint.”

“Not only that,” Stats began, even as his mind whirled in calculation, “if you sold the remaining tickets for this season and, say, the rights to next year’s tickets—it could be enough to pay off the whole bill.”

Pops brought his fingers to his chin. “That much, huh?” Then just as quickly, he waved his hand, shooshing the suggestion right out of his brain.

“I could never do that. It’s not honest.”

“Actually, Pops, it is,” said Mark. “People do it all the time.”

“People do a lot of things. But my own father never made a profit on those seats, and I’m not about to start looking at them like pieces of merchandise.”

“But times are different now.”

Pops was not having any of it. “No, no, forget I ever brought it up. Those seats are sacred. Either
we
use them, or I give them away. That’s it. Besides, it’s good for business. My vendors always give me their best deals. So the seats end up paying for themselves in the long run.”

“But in the short run,” Mark argued, “they could really help.” Then he leaned over, picked up the newspaper, and gave it a flick. “Of course, if they keep losing like they are now, might be a time when you won’t even get back what you paid for them.”

Stats spent two full days in the hospital and not only had to suffer watching Tuesday night’s game against Baltimore on the small TV, but had to witness yet another loss.

On Wednesday night, home at last with his good-luck props, Stats watched the Sox barely preserve a lead, four runs whittled down to one by the ninth, to finally end their longest losing streak of the season at five games. They finished the night where they began, however. They now sat in third place, five games behind the Yankees, who had also won, and three behind the Rays.

In Baltimore on Thursday, Billee was scheduled to pitch. By then, Stats was feeling back to normal, and all he wanted to do was to cozy up to a bowl of Pops’s popcorn, watch Billee stymie the Orioles, and enjoy the game.

In the bottom of the first, when Billee took the mound in Camden Yards, the Baltimore fans rose in support. It was heartwarming to see. Close-up shots even revealed hundreds of Red
Sox fans who were either from the area or die-hard supporters who had made the trip south from Boston, cheering and holding signs of encouragement.

BEAM ME
UP
BILLEE!

ORBITT’S
IN A LEAGUE OF HIS
ZONE.

And three girls bounced a long colorful sign saying,
BILLEE’S
NUTS!
HERE COME DA LEAFLUTZ!

Well, the first batter for the Orioles should have taken note. He went down on strikes, thrashing wildly at “da leaflutz.” Sadly, though, it was the last batter Billee would retire.

He got shelled. Nothing seemed to be working. They crushed his buckler, they hammered his dipster. Even when his leaflutz pitch induced a dribbler from the Orioles’ cleanup hitter, the usually sure-handed Sandiego Gunsalvo at first base could not come up with it. And when he finally ran it down, he threw it away.

Run after run crossed the plate. Stats watched in horror. He saw poor Billee stand tall on the mound, looking up, repeatedly taking in deep breaths in order to calm himself and refocus. All to no avail.

Stats muted the sound.

Billee left the game in the first with only one out, bases loaded, and five runs across, four of them earned. The Orioles had batted around.

For once in his life, Stats was glad he was not at the ballpark. He did not watch the commercial that came on while the reliever warmed up, even though it was a Fen-Cent message
featuring Matt Damon, Jimmy Fallon, and Drew Barrymore romanticizing about their days at Fenway. He did not watch any more of the game.

So much for feeling “normal.” He could feel his heart straining under the stress of what he’d seen on TV, knowing what the Sox had just gone through.

“What’s the deal with Billee, Freddy?” Mark asked as he walked into the room. “I just flipped on the radio, and he was already gone. Seems worse than just some curse. He say anything about feeling bad?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“He got chewed, glued, and tattooed.”

“I know. I saw. What am I supposed to do about it?”

“Hey, don’t get mad at me.”

“I’m not. But how should I know? I’m not his pitching coach. I’m just a kid he talks to every once in a while.”

“Okay, sorry. I didn’t mean to …”

“He was off balance, that’s all. He’s been like that. It happens. Doesn’t mean he’s a lousy pitcher.”

“No one ever said that. Cheese, I feel bad, too, you know. I was just wondering.”

Mark wandered out of the room.

Stats lay flat across the sofa cushions, the better to let the “sludge” pump through his slow-moving heart.

A lot of possibilities ran through his mind. None of them gave him any comfort. Billee could be sliding, could be swirldraining his way into baseball oblivion. Countless pitchers had
done the same. They come up out of nowhere, dominate for a year or two, then for some unexplainable reason, they lose whatever magic they had and slip out of sight with hardly anyone even noticing.

But if he were sick or hurt or overworked, that stuff was at least fixable. Even if it was the sophomore jinx everyone talks about, he could bounce back from that. But if this was truly the harbinger of a new Red Sox curse, and tonight Stats had no reason whatsoever to doubt it, the thing had to be broken right away. Or else it could go on for a
long
time.