Faithful (16 page)

It’s the revenge of the header: MUSSINA LEADS YANKS PAST ANGELS, 6–2. We lose ugly to a last-place club while they beat the team with the best record in baseball (and on top of that, beat their ace, Colon). At least the O’s lost; otherwise it would be a total wipeout.

I’m trying to be optimistic and look ahead, but tonight it’s Arroyo versus Halladay. Our travel day knocked the two rotations out of sync, so Pedro’s facing the lefty Lilly tomorrow. On Sunday, the game we’ll be at, we get the far less interesting Wake versus Miguel Batista. We need two out of three from these guys, but right now the pitching matchups are in Toronto’s favor. Halladay’s stronger than Arroyo, and we have trouble against lefties and historically don’t give Pedro much run support. Wake-Batista’s a toss-up.

Maybe it’s just last night’s game that’s bothering me. If Arroyo can match Halladay and get us to their pen, we should win, and Pedro’s flat-out better than Lilly. Batista’s ERA’s around 5 and, like Zambrano, he walks a lot of batters. If we hit and Wake has the knuckler fluttering, we could sweep.

The off-field news is that Johnny’s shaving his beard for a literacy program at the Boston Public Library. Gillette’s sponsoring the event to kick off their new line of razors. A crowd gathers on the plaza by the Prudential Center to watch some hot models lather him up. He sits still while they take the blades to his face, but in the end he finishes the tricky spots himself. He looks younger, baby-faced, and with his long mane he’s got the Elvis-as-Indian-brave thing going on.

Dee-Lowe was dee-readful, but tonight the Red Sox are back at the Fens, and for the first time this year I’m in the house. It’s a beautiful night for baseball, too, sixty-nine degrees at game time.

Ray Slyman, who works for Commonwealth Limousine and has been driving me and my family to Red Sox games ever since the kids were small, is usually an optimist about Boston’s chances, so I’m surprised—no, I’m shocked—to find him sounding downbeat tonight, even though last night’s loss coupled with the Yankees’ win on the West Coast has left us only half a game out of first. It makes me uneasy, too. Partly because Ray’s in the car all day and listens to all the radio sports shows (discounting the crazies who call in as a matter of course); thus he’s hip to all the current gossip. Mostly because Ray’s one smart cookie. It’s from Ray that I first hear the idea that Nomar should be back
right
now, and DH-ing. It’s also from Ray that I hear a lot of fans are beginning to lose patience with Nomar; once the season begins, major league baseball quickly becomes a game of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, and in Boston, cries of “Play him or trade him!” are beginning to be heard.

Coming into the ballpark, lots of folks tell me hi. Most call me Steve.One woman tells her boyfriend, “Look, there’s Steven Spielberg!” This is more common than you might think, and I sometimes wonder if people point at the famous director and tell each other that it’s Stephen King. The guy selling programs just outside Gate A pauses just long enough in his spiel to ask me how I’m feeling. I tell him I’m feeling fine. He says, “Do you thank God?” I tell him, “Every day.” He says, “Right on, brutha,” and goes back to telling people how much they need a program, how much they need a scorecard, just two dollars unless you’re a Yankee fan, then you pay four.

Do you thank God?

Every day.

Yes indeed I do. I’m blessed to be alive at all, and have the sense to know it. It’s especially easy to give thanks walking into Fenway Park under my own power on a beautiful spring night in May. (“We’re inside the TV,” I once heard a wondering child say after getting his first look at all that green.) I’m still considering the novel idea of Nomar Garciaparra as the designated hitter when a woman cardiologist throws out the first pitch. She may be a hell of a doc, but she still throws like a girl. We all give her a big hand, and we give the Red Sox a bigger one when they hit the field in their fine white home uniforms. I feel the same thrill I did when I saw them go out there for the first time, at the age of eleven or twelve, on an afternoon when the Tigers were their opponents and Al Kaline was still playing for them, and my arms prickle when John Fogerty starts singing “Centerfield” over the PA. They prickle again at the end when the Red Sox put away the Jays, 11–5, and the crowd starts out with the Standells singing “Dirty Water.”

Every ballpark has its eccentricities. One of my Fenway faves—many fans hate it—is the late-inning playing of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.” I have no idea when this started or why fans took it to their hearts (it’s such a
forgettable
song), but there you are; it’s just a Fenway Thing, like The Wave.
[14]
The first
notes
of this song cause great excitement.When Neil sings
“Sweeeeet
Car-o-
line!
” in the chorus, thirty thousand people respond at once (and with no apparent prompting),
“WHOAHO-HO!”
at the top of their voices. And when he adds, “Good times never seemed so good!” the crowd responds,
“So good! So good! So good!”
How do these things get started? There’s simply no telling, but such things—which occur when the TV-watching world is stuck with yet another “Meet me at Foxwoods” jingle—are very much a part of not just
the
ballpark experience but
your
ballpark experience: what makes home home.

Man, I had a great time tonight. Manny Ramirez hit a moonshot, Mike “The Hardest Workin’ Man in Showbiz” Timlin got the win, and I was there to see it all with my friend Ray. Oh, and Kevin Youkilis, aka The Greek God of Walks, was up to his old tricks. In the bottom of the second inning, after getting behind 0-2, he fouled off a bunch of pitches from Roy Halladay, last year’s Cy Young winner, and finally worked a walk. He scored. Later, in the eighth, he walked and scored again.

It’s an OBPC thing: on-base per centage.

When they don’t announce the game-time temperature at Fenway, you know you’re in trouble, and tonight they didn’t. It was overcast and raw at 7:05 P.M., when the game started; raw and downright cold
[15]
when it ended at about ten past ten. I still haven’t warmed up. At 10:45, I’m typing this with hands that feel like clubs.
Tingly
clubs. Still, it’s all good. We won, the Yankees lost down in Texas, and all at once there’s a tiny bit of daylight (a game and a half) between us and second place.

Ted Lilly pitched extremely well for the Blue Jays tonight, and had a two-run lead going into the sixth inning. That was when Manny Ramirez launched his second home run in the last two games over the left-field wall and into the night. It’s the big dinger that’ll get the ink in the newspapers tomorrow, but the key hit of the inning—and probably the key to the whole game—was Mark Bellhorn’s infield single in the sixth, which caromed off Lilly’s shin, hurried him from the game, and thus got us into Toronto’s less than reliable bullpen. Without Bellhorn on first, no chance for Manny to tie things up; QED. And an inning later, Youkilis, the rookiewith the big on-base-average reputation, led off with a single and scored what proved to be the winning run. Keith Foulke was once more lights-out in the ninth—nine saves in nine opportunities—and I’m two for two this year at Fenway Park.

And my hands are finally starting to warm up. See? It’s all good.

It’s Vermont Day at Fenway, and we’re the first ones in Gate E. Last time out I was discouraged by my net play, and the usher in Section 163 told me not to give up. He’s glad to see me back, and I’m glad for the support. Steph thinks I’m nuts.

We get the good spot on the corner, but there’s a portable screen set up at third base so only a hooking liner can reach us. And the security guy says I can’t go after any balls in fair territory, a rule which seems arbitrary to me.

The only balls I’ll have a shot at will be liners that bounce off the Monster and back along the wall, and about ten minutes in, that’s exactly what Nomar hits. The ball rolls to a stop twenty feet behind us. No one can reach it from the high wall there, but I should be able to drag it closer and scoop it. I climb over the seats and section dividers until I’m in position above it. I can’t quite reach it, and stretch as far as I can with one hand, just nudging and then covering the ball—and drop the net.

It lies ten feet below me across the foul line.

What an idiot. Steph, I’m sure, is pretending he doesn’t know me. I figure the security guy will come out and confiscate it; at best, he’ll give me a lecture.

Gabe Kapler’s witnessed my embarrassment, and saunters over, shaking his head. I think he’s going to take the ball from under the net and toss it to someone more deserving to teach me a lesson, but he throws it right to me. Then he takes the net and jogs back out to left with it.

“He could have used it last night,” someone says.

For a while Gabe keeps his glove on and holds the net with one hand, but then he says the hell with it and tosses the glove. Manny and Nomar are up, spraying the ball around. When a Manny liner bounces to the side of him, he stabs at it and misses cleanly. See, it’s not as easy as it looks. After about five minutes of just standing there with the net, he brings it back over. I get a picture of him—proof for Trudy.

Another guy comes by and asks if that was me he saw up on the Monster a few weeks ago, and I find that I like this minor celebrity. Steph says a Sox photographer just took a picture of me.

We’re also visited by Chip Ainsworth, the reporter who interviewed me the first time I brought the net. He says we should see a game together from the press box. I worry a little about that blurry line between journalist and fan, but then I think: man, the press box!

Steve arrives in his YANKEES HATER cap, and I go over to hang out with him and Steph. On the endpages of the John Sandford novel he’s reading, he’s scored the last two games. It’s been a while, and we fall to talking, interrupted from time to time by folks who want to take a picture of him.

We’re sitting there discussing Manny’s hot streak and Wake’s last few starts when one of the Sox comes out and signs along the wall two sections down. From the inch-high brush cut, it can only be Tek. It’s his day off, with Mirabelli catching Wake. I excuse myself and climb over the section dividers and then wait in the crush. “Go ahead and take the sweet spot,” I tell him. “It’s all yours.”

Tek’s signature is neat and readable. Thanks to eBay, I’ve seen it dozens of times, both authentic versions and fakes. He never finishes the final kick of the k, so it reads
J Varitel, #33.
On the pearl it looks superclean, and I thank him and carry it by the seams like some weird breaking ball, making sure not to smudge the ink.

“I got a shot of you,” Steph says.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “we got a picture of you pushing those little kids out of the way.”

“Hey, they were pushing
me.
”

Wake looks good in the first, striking out his first two batters. Batista looks awful, walking Johnny on four pitches around his ankles. Orlando Hudson doesn’t help him, booting Bellhorn’s easy grounder, and David Ortiz scorches a ground-rule double into the seats just past the Pesky Pole. 1–0 Sox. Manny Ks chasing a 3-2 pitch, Dauber walks, then Millar walks in a run. Batista’s thrown 25 pitches, only 7 for strikes.

After Youkilis strikes out, Mirabelli comes up with bases loaded and fouls one behind him, high off the facade of the .406 Club. Last year, a ball hit in that same spot ricocheted off the glass at an angle and landed in the row behind us. I turn, keeping my eye on it, and here it comes, right at me (Steph thinks I think this about every ball). The sun is blinding, and I’m not wearing shades, so all I see as it falls is a tiny black dot surrounded by white light. It’s going to be just short, and I reach above everyone. I feel it hit, then feel nothing, and I think it’s gone, that I’ve missed it—then look down, and there it is in my glove. Maybe because it’s the first inning, or because it was a crazy angle, or because the bases are loaded and we’re up two runs, but the crowd goes nuts. I hold my glove up and take in the applause—unexpected and exhilarating—and slap hands with Steph and Steve. When I sit down, my heart’s pounding and I’m shivery inside my skin. I thought I’d missed it, so it’s a guilty thrill—a freak accomplishment I doubt even now.

I don’t have time to think about it, because Mirabelli fouls off the next pitch the exact same way—caroming off the same pane of glass and dropping two rows behind Steve. I’m up and ready in case it bounces my way, but it’s smothered and picked up.

Batista gets Mirabelli and gets out of it. In the second he has to strike out Dauber to leave them loaded again.

“This guy’s terrible,” I say. “We should be up at least four nothing.”

“We’re not hitting with men on,” Steve complains, and Mason, a neighbor in the front row, shows us a thirty-page stat sheet that has the season completely broken down. So far with the bases loaded, we’ve hit two doubles and twelve singles. Johnny and Pokey have the doubles. Johnny and Pokey also have the most hits with bases loaded, three each. Kapler and Bill Mueller are 0-4, Ortiz, Dauber and Crespo 0-3.

Wake throws an easy third, and we finally cash in on Batista, scoring four. Ortiz has the big hit, a two-out, two-run double, making him 3 for 3 with 3 RBIs. It’s 6–0 and Batista’s thrown 90 pitches.

Now that Wake has a big lead, he gets sloppy, loading the bases with no outs and going 3-0 on Delgado. Delgado singles, bringing in two, before Timmy gets a double-play ball from Phelps and a first-pitch flyout from Hinske.

A sudden roar and wave of applause from the third-base side. It’s someone famous climbing the stairs between two grandstand sections. Because it’s Vermont Day, I think maybe it’s Fisk, a Vermont native, but the tall gray-haired man’s surrounded by so much security that I know without even seeing his face that it’s John Kerry. As if to prove his loyalty, he’s wearing a Sox warm-up jacket. Later, when he comes back from the concession stand, I see he’s in the second row, and I think: our seats are better.

We pick up another run in the seventh to make it 7–2, and Timlin and Embree close it with little difficulty, but two things happen that are worth noting. In the eighth, Cesar Crespo, who’s turned three double plays today, and missed a fourth only because Bellhorn’s throw pulled Ortiz off the bag, makes an error and is loudly booed. Then in the ninth, when Francona puts in the hands team and Pokey’s name is announced, the crowd gives him a sustained ovation. It’s taken Pokey three years to get here, but now that he is, he’s a favorite. Even among skeptics like Steph and Steve and myself, whenever a ball skips through the middle or drops in short center, we say, “Pokey woulda had it.”

We win, but on the out-of-town scoreboard, the Yanks are up 7–3 on the Rangers. In the car, it’s a final, 8–3 Yanks, so we’re still only a game and a half up.

When we get home, I find out that Bill Mueller wasn’t even there today. He was out in Arizona, getting a second opinion on his knee. Regardless of the result, it’s bad news. Youkilis better take some extra grounders.

My third straight game at Fenway and my third straight win. I’m starting to feel like if I’d been here from the start of the season, we’d be ten games in first (God will get me for saying that). Stewart came with his son, Steph, both of them equipped with gloves. Doug Mirabelli banged a foul off the glass facing of the .406 Club in the first inning; Stew turned, stretched and caught it neatly just as the sun came out. The crowd up the first-base line gave him a spirited ovation. Stew had class enough—and wit enough—to tip his cap. It was a nice moment, and I’m glad his son was there to see it.

So Wakefield gets the win, the Red Sox sweep the Blue Jays, and our bullpen was pretty much untouchable throughout. Kevin Youkilis? Glad you asked. The Greek God of Walks reached base three times (one fielder’s choice, two bases on balls) and scored once.

Seems like we always have a day off just when we’re getting hot. It gives me time to prepare for tomorrow’s first meeting with Oakland since last year’s Division Series—bound to be loud. It’s a sweet matchup: Schilling versus Tim Hudson, who’s 5-1 with a 2.90 ERA. It’s Foulke’s first game against his old club, and Terry Francona’s, and of course Scott Hatteberg will get a couple of hits, and maybe Johnny Damon. Mark Bellhorn was also an A once, though a low-profile one. With all the turnover lately (and Dan Duquette’s endless fire sale of our best prospects), it’s hard to find a club that doesn’t have some Sox connection.

Tonight’s the Nomar Bowl in Malden, where dozens of Boston sports celebrities and their fans get together at Town Lanes and roll a couple of strings for charity. My friend Paul’s wife Lisa is taking some balls for Nomie to sign, and one of them’s for me.

It’s eighty degrees in Hartford; in Boston it’s fifty. I thought I’d be warm enough in a corduroy shirt, but I’m not. Waiting with me outside Gate E is a guy with a giant black wig. I think he’s one of Damon’s Disciples, but it’s a Manny-as-Buckwheat wig, a wild, lopsided ’fro. He and a friend are sitting on the Monster; tomorrow they’re in the .406 Club—they shelled out for the very tickets I’d seen on eBay and seriously contemplated buying, just ’cause I’ve never sat there.

The .406 Club has rules: no jeans, and you have to bring a credit card to buy drinks (there’s a free buffet). During the standard tour of Fenway, the guide says when they finished construction, they realized that because of the thickness of the glass, the room is virtually soundproof. They had to install speakers so customers could hear the game. Any other day, I’d say the .406 Club is no place to watch the Sox, but tonight the idea of being inside is tempting.

The gates roll open and I hoof it down to the corner in left. I nab a couple of balls in BP and report my haul to my favorite usher Bob, then stop by Autograph Alley to see who’s signing. It’s Rich Gale, a pitcher who was with us briefly in ’84, then came back to coach in the early nineties. I remember that he pitched in Japan, and ask him to sign his picture with “Ganbatte!”

“You mean ‘Ganbatte mas!’” he says.

It turns out he pitched for the Hanshin Tigers.

“The Red Sox of Japan!”

“That’s right—and I was there in ’85, the first year we won it.”

“That must have been pretty wild.”

“
Oh
yeah,” he says, and stops writing, as if he hasn’t thought of that time in a while, and his expression is both ecstatic and guilty, as if he’s recalling infinite, ultimate pleasures.

I have him add HANSHIN TIGERS 85–86 and leave him with a loud “Ganbatte!”

Over at the seats, Steve’s reading a suspense novel. Our neighbor Mason delivers the bad news: Bill Mueller’s having arthroscopic knee surgery and will be out at least six weeks. It’s another blow, but Youkilis has done such a good job offensively that there’s no panic. If Nomar gets back soon, we can put Pokey at second, as planned, slide Bellhorn over to third, and still have a solid backup.

Again, we’re all thinking of that magical day when Trot and Nomar come back, when right now we’re playing fine without them.

“Temperature at game time,” Carl Beane announces, “forty-eight degrees.” It makes me think of spring training, and how happy those Minnesotans were to escape their weather. Here we’re proud of it. Forty-eight? It’ll get down to forty-two by game’s end. Tack on the windchill and we’re talking mid-thirties.

It’s overcast and
very
chilly tonight—shit, call a spade a spade, it’s
cold
. My colleague Stewart O’Nan is undaunted. He shows up apple-cheeked and grinning, toting a bag of scuffed balls he shagged in BP. (Proudest acquisition: a David Ortiz swat.)

The Weston High School Chorus—all nine thousand of them, apparently—line the first- and third-base lines to sing the national anthem, and the sound, which comes bouncing back from the Green Monster in perfect echoes that double each line, is spooky and wonderful. Stewart, meanwhile, is off trying to give Gabe Kapler a photo of Kapler holding Stew’s custom fly-shagging net… which, some wits might argue, Kapler could put to good use during his tours of duty in right field.

The Red Sox (who will go on to romp in this one) put up just a single run in the bottom of the first—not much, considering that they once again send seven men to the plate. The Sox stats this year with bases loaded and two out are pretty paralyzing: just 12 for 54, only two of those for extra bases (both doubles), all the rest mere singles. This time Kevin “Cowboy Up” Millar is the goat, grounding weakly to first. He leaves two more on base in the third, and leaves ’em loaded again in the fourth. The Sox score three that frame, but Millar has stranded eight men all by himself, and the game isn’t half over. I bet his agent won’t be bringing
that
stat up at contract time.

Even without Millar doing much (anything, really), it’s 9–1 after five, Tim Hudson’s gone, Oakland’s baked, and I’m on my way to my fourthstraight Fenway win. Mark Bellhorn gets 5 RBIs, Manny Ramirez hits another home run, and Kevin Youkilis reaches base four times in five at-bats, scoring twice.

There are lots of things to like about this game in spite of the cold. But maybe the best…there’s this little kid, okay? Ten, maybe twelve years old. And late in the game, after a lot of people have taken off, he grabs one of the front-row seats, and I spot him and Stewart deep in conversation, cap visor to cap visor. They don’t know each other from Adam, and there’s got to be thirty years between them, but baseball has turned them into instant old cronies. Anyone looking over their way would take them for father and son. And what’s wrong with that?