Faithful (21 page)

It’s still wet when the gates open, so there’s no batting practice today. I hang around the first-base line and watch the grounds crew roll the tarp off. Mike Timlin signs, and Lenny DiNardo, and just before game time Nomar walks over. I’m in the first row, and the crush is enormous. Little boys scream and plead for an autograph—rock star Nomar. I’m a foot away from him, and think he’ll actually sign the pearl I’ve brought, but he only does a couple before scooting down about twenty feet.

I poach the corner seat at the end of the camera pit—a great spot for foul balls—and am immediately rewarded by David Ortiz, tossing me a warm-up ball. I get the boot early, and go over and join Steve and Owen. Bronson Arroyo’s pitched way better than his 2-6 record, but today he’s consistently behind hitters. Youk misses a foul pop by the visitors’ on-deck circle, then can’t handle a throw by Johnny; he chases it down, only to gun it too high for Tek to put a tag on the runner. Jim Thome hits a monster opposite-field shot. Arroyo muffs an easy grounder. Later in the same inning Millar kicks a double-play ball into right field. The Phils score five runs, making it 7–1, and the Phillies fans chant. The Sox are putting the leadoff man on nearly every inning, then stranding him. Late in the game, the stands are half-empty.

“It’s not just that they’re bad,” Owen says. “They’re boring.”

So I cued up some good CDs and made the three-and-a-half-hour run from our little town in western Maine to Boston, pumping up for the drive into the city by playing Elvis’s “Baby, Let’s Play House” and “Mystery Train” at top volume about nine times, and do I succeed in spraying my fresh can of Whip-Ass on the Red Sox? I do. Sort of. We lose the middle game, 9–2 (the Sox commit a numbing four errors), but Pedro wins on Friday night and Schilling wins on Sunday when the Red Sox bounce back from a 3–0 deficit. Pedro’s eighth win; Curt’s tenth. The former was a totally righteous 12–1 drubbing shortened by thunder and lightning in the eighth inning.

The best thing about the weekend is that my youngest son came up from New York to share the Sox with me. These were his first Red Sox games of 2004, his first regular-season games in two years. It was great to be with him, swapping the scorebook back and forth just like old times, catching up on what we’ve been doing. Stewart O’Nan joined us on Saturday and that was good, too—it made an essentially boring game fun—but there was something especially magical about just the two of us. One of the things baseball is made for, I think, is catching up with the people you used to see all the time, the ones you love and now don’t see quite enough. In our family, baseball and swapping scorecards—sometimes bought from a vendor outside the park, sometimes from one in the concourse, sometimes a homemade job scrawled on a legal pad—have always been a constant. I’ve got a drawer with almost thirty years’ worth of those things saved up, and I could tell you what they mean, but if you’ve got kids, you probably know what I’m talking about. When it comes to family, not all the bases you touch are on the field.

The Yankees, thrifty baseball housekeepers for sure, are busily sweeping up the Mets in a Sunday day-night doubleheader, which means we’ll go into our final series of the month with the Bombers five and a half games back. Not an enviable position, but one we’ve been in before.

* * *

A gorgeous Sunday afternoon. It’s Visor Day, and they’re giving out posters with Tek and Wally promoting reading. Pokey takes BP, a reason for optimism. I’m in my favorite spot for BP, hauling in balls, when Placido Polanco rips a hooking liner our way. “Heads UP!” I bellow, because it’s going to be a few rows into the crowd behind me. I expect it to bang into a plastic seatback, like most screamers, but this one hits skin—and not the fat smack of a thigh or biceps, but a spongy, fungolike sound, unmistakable: it nailed somebody in the head. The ball ricochets at a right angle another ten rows into the stands, and a bald guy in his late fifties who was coming down the aisle reels sideways into the seats, still holding his two beers.

He wobbles like a fighter trying to stay upright until people take him under the arms and sit him down. He looks dazed, mumbling that he’s all right. I’m already waving to security to get a trainer out here, medical staff, somebody.

Former Sox pitching coach Joe Kerrigan has been pacing the wall all BP, warning kids to keep their eyes on the batters. He gets a ball for the guy, and is standing there talking to me about how dangerous this place is—how Yankee Stadium’s the same way down third—when Polanco stings one right at us. It skips once on the track, Joe backs off a step, and I glove it.

When BP ends, I check on the bald guy. He’s sitting down, surrounded by security and a couple first-aid guys. On the side of his dome he’s got a purplish knot the size of a fried egg. I think he should go to a hospital—at the very least he’s got a concussion—but he’s talking with them, giving them his information. He wants to stay for the game.

Trudy’s over at Steve’s seats. She saw all the hubbub; people around her thought it might be a heart attack.

She shows me that the souvenir-cup makers have fixed the SHILLING. “He must have a good agent,” she says.

The pregame ceremonies pay tribute to all the middle-aged guys who took part in the Sox’s pricey fantasy camp. They fill the baselines, stepping forward and doffing their caps as Carl Beane announces their names. No one except their families is paying attention until two guys on the third-base line unfurl a messily spray-painted bedsheet that says YANKEES SUCK. It gets a big hand, but, in typical Fenway fashion, when the guys walk by us on their way off, someone behind me hollers, “Is that the best you could do with the sign?”

Both the Sox and Yanks wanted Freddy Garcia, but the White Sox got him, for a second-string catcher and a pair of prospects. Like the A’s, even if they don’t take their division, they’ll be in the wild-card hunt, and they’ve made themselves stronger. Theo’s got another month to cut a deal. One more solid starter would solve a lot of problems. Jeff Suppan, who we let walk after last year, is 6-5 with a 3.75 ERA for the first-place Cards. (And Tony Womack, one of our spring-training invitees, is hitting .300 for them and running all over the place.)

Tomorrow we start a three-game set with the Yankees in the Bronx. Short of a sweep by either team (unlikely), it won’t change the standings much, but it could set the tone of the All-Star break. Looking back at the first half of the season, I’d say we’ve played well with a banged-up club. Ten games over .500 isn’t great but it isn’t bad either, given the team we’re putting out there. And yet they do seem like the same old Sox: a couple of great hitters surrounded by mediocre guys, zero defense, inconsistent pitching, and the usual June swoon. It could be 1987 or 1996 or 2001.

Both Lowe and Vazquez have thrown well lately, so the opener’s an even matchup. To show how big of a game it is, Vice President Dick Cheney’s crawled out of his hidey-hole and is sitting in the front row.

Johnny D sets the tone, leading off with a home run. The Ghost of Tony Clark gets it back in the second with a two-out RBI single. To prove it wasn’t a fluke, Johnny hits another out in the third, and we’re up 2–1.

In the bottom, Lofton leads off with a ground ball to Millar’s right. He drops it, and by the time he recovers, Kenny’s beaten Lowe to the bag. Jeter singles, and Lofton scoots to third. On the first pitch, Sheffield flies deep enough to left-center to tie the game. Jeter steals second easily. A-Rod singles off the third-base bag, the ball popping straight up so that Bellhorn has to wait for it, and Jeter holds at second. With Matsui up, Jeter and A-Rod pull the double steal on 2-2—unforgiveable, with a lefty batting. On a full count, Matsui knocks a curveball that’s down and in (terrible pitch selection to any lefty, but especially this guy, who cut his teeth on breaking stuff in Japan) into right. It’s 4–2, and the rare weeknight sellout crowd is on its feet.

In the Yanks’ fourth, with one down, Lowe walks former Cardinal Miguel Cairo, who, on the very next pitch, steals Tek’s sign for a curve and swipes second.

“Does Varitek throw
any
runners out?” my father-in-law asks, and I have to defend him. Like Wake’s knuckler, Lowe’s sinker is a tough pitch to dig out.

With two down, Nomar kicks a grounder from Jeter that should end the inning, and Sheffield takes Lowe out to left-center for a 7–2 lead.

The next inning, Pokey
(Pokey!)
muffs a double-play ball, and Tony Clark goes long. It’s 9–2, and all the runs have come from hired guns: Sheffield, Matsui, Clark. Lenny DiNardo is warming, and short of a miracle, this one’s done.

Ortiz homers, and the Yanks tack on a pair for an 11–3 final. It’s hard to blame Lowe entirely, when he got enough ground balls to at least keep things close. By now I expect the occasional error by Millar (wherever you put him), and Pokey’s got a splint on his thumb, but Nomar’s got to do better. And, with credit to Vazquez (another new hire), three runs don’t cut it in Yankee Stadium.

It’s just one game (just one of those games, like the one against the A’s, or the Dodgers, or the Phils), but we’re six and a half back and playing badly, and being embarrassed there annoys me even more.

I didn’t want to write this down, but after last night’s crushing loss to the Yankees, I suppose I really ought to. About five days ago—just before my trip to Boston, anyway—I discovered a nearly perfect crow-shit Yankees logo on the windshield of my truck. This is a true thing I’m telling you.

You’re asking do I have photographic proof?

Are you
crazy?

What the windshield washer wouldn’t take care of immediately, I got rid of with a filling-station squeegee just as fast as I could (and it took a distressing amount of elbow grease; those big woods crows shit
hard
). Itold myself it wasn’t an omen, but look at last night. Dick Cheney shows up in a Yankees hat, the Red Sox commit three more errors, the Yankees hitters are patient, the Red Sox hitters aren’t. Derek Lowe, who has lately shown signs of his old craftiness, last night looked like an escapee from that old Spielberg film
The Goonies
.

Any halfway knowledgeable baseball fan will tell you there are three aspects to the game: you have to be able to throw the ball, catch the ball, and hit the ball. Last night, the Red Sox did a bad job on all three. And the Yankees have changed since April; this is Frankenteam. But there is good news, and it isn’t that I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. The crow-shit Yankees logo is no longer on my windshield, and at midnight tonight, June is officially over. I’m expecting the Swoon to be over with it. This team is just too good to keep playing as it has over the last dozen games.

I hope.

That’s right,
I hope
. Because that’s what Red Sox fans do.

Gloom and doom from Sean McAdam in the
Providence Journal.
I can’t imagine how hard the
Globe
is riding the team. The Sox need to demonstrate some character, the Sox need to show why they have the second-highest payroll in baseball, you can judge a team by the way it responds to adversity, etc. Hey, Sean, maybe you’ve forgotten, but we’ve
had
our adversity, and we responded by leading the division for a couple months.

It’s a case of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, which for the beat reporter means a couple hours ago. We’re 6-2 against the Yanks so far, and we’ve played a big chunk of the season without Nomar, Trot and now Bill Mueller. As long as we stay close, we can pick it up in the second half like we did last year and make the playoffs, and in a short series, with Petey and Mr. Schill and Foulke to close, we’ve got a shot.

Tonight’s Wake-Lieber matchup is in our favor, considering how Timmy’s pitched in the Stadium. It goes that way through six, 2–0 Sox on a David Ortiz homer and RBI single. We hit Lieber but leave a lot of men on, while the Yanks can’t touch the knuckler.

In the top of the seventh, we load the bases with no outs, and Torre goes to his middle guy, Felix Heredia. He’s not a top-of-the-line pitcher, and we’ve got the top of the order up. With the infield drawn in, Johnny grounds to Tony Clark, who goes home to cut down the run—Kapler, running for Millar. Now, with one down, our man on third is Doug Mirabelli, the slowest guy on the team. Francona must want three more outs from Wake, because he doesn’t pinch-run, and Bellhorn’s fly to short left does nothing. On 2-2, David Ortiz takes an outside pitch and the ump rings him up. It’s a terrible call, and Ortiz stays at the plate, taking off his helmet and batting gloves, muttering, “Motherfucker,” while the ump walks away. When Ortiz takes the field, he’s still jawing at him.

I’m wondering where Francona is. Managers can’t argue balls and strikes, but there’s nothing more important, and we just got robbed. I don’t care if he gets tossed, he’s got to protect his players.

Wake hits Sheffield with his first pitch. After A-Rod Ks, BALCO Boy steals second. On 3-2, Wake walks Matsui on a borderline pitch that gets past Mirabelli. Francona goes to Williamson to get Bernie Williams, and he does, on a splitter down. Posada—so typical—works the walk, loading the bases for the switch-hitting Tony Clark. Clark’s a hundred points better lefty. We should have Embree warm, but he’s just getting up—and now Williamson’s complaining of arm pain, and trainer Jim Rowe, Dave Wallace and Francona converge on the mound. Either it’s ridiculous coincidence, or Williamson is acting. It’s ruled an injury, so our reliever can take as long as he wants to warm up.

I think it’s going to be Embree, but when we come back from commercial it’s Timlin. He gets Clark to hit a one-hopper to Ortiz, who stumbles as he bends to glove it, and the ball goes through him into right, and all I can think is,
He pulled a Billy Buck.

Two runs score, and we’re tied.

“Where’s McCarty?” I ask the TV.

Ortiz gets a new glove, as if that was the problem.

Cairo grounds out to end the inning, but they get two runs without a hit.

Tom Gordon throws a perfect eighth against Manny, Nomar and Trot, reaching 96 mph.

Lofton leads off their eighth with a grounder to the hole that Nomar backhands. He leaps, twisting, and throws. It’s short and to the right-field side, but well in time. Ortiz misses the pick and it ricochets off his arm and into the stands.

“Where is McCarty?” I yell.

Jeter bunts Lofton over to third, then Sheffield fouls off seven fastballs on 0-2 (later Eck will say, “I might think about mixing in a breaking ball there—you know, that’s just me”) before pulling one past Bellhorn for a 3–2 lead. Embree comes on to face Matsui, even though Matsui’s 3 for 8 lifetime against him. Make that 4 for 9, and we’re down 4–2.

Mo takes care of the ninth—ironically, McCarty’s the last batter, and never puts on his glove—and we lose one we should have won. The loss is on Ortiz, but also on Francona for not having his hands team out there late in a close game. You can always stick David at DH. Instead, he had the hobbling Trot at DH (obviously that quad’s still bothering him), Millar in right and Youk on the bench. His use of Timlin and Embree seemed a little whacky, and after Wake left the game, Timlin and Mirabelli had trouble communicating during Sheffield’s at-bat, shaking each other off several times before the last pitch. Why not go to Tek, who usually catches Timlin? And what about the philosophy of using your closer for the most important at-bat of the game? We didn’t even see Foulke warming. Terrible. If yesterday’s loss was embarrassing, this one’s humiliating. They didn’t win, we actively lost. Now Petey’s got to be tough if we’re going to avoid the sweep. That we’re 6-3 against them is no consolation, seven and a half back.