Faithful (46 page)

The “almost” qualification is easily explained. Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz are playing tonight. I don’t want either of them hurt, as Pedro Martinez almost certainly hurt his arm by throwing too hard in the 1999 All-Star Game.

The Los Angeles Dodgers were also 48-38 at the break, good enough to lead the NL West by half a game.

On the replay Varitek appears to be saying either “Take your fucking base” or “Get the fuck to first base.”

Mientkiewicz did his best to make Epstein look like a genius in his first game as a Red Sox, going 2 for 4, both singles. The second hit came in the top of the ninth against Minnesota—the only pro baseball team he’d ever played for until this evening—in a game which the Twins led by a score of 5–4. He got to second base—into scoring position, in other words—before Kevin Youkilis struck out to end the game. The other new Boston players should join the club tomorrow.

But the great thing about the wild card—what I absolutely love about it—is that it is, by its very nature, a slippery beast. If Oakland slides into first place in the AL West—hey, presto!—the Red Sox are wild-card-competitive again, only against a different team. There are baseball purists who hate the innovation for this very reason, but they would be folks who, for the most part, haven’t been stuck with George Steinbrenner’s bloated wallet for the last twelve years or so.

The decision to wave Roberts home seemed out of character for the usually cautious Sveum and more like his predecessor, Wendell Kim, known to the Fenway Faithful as “Send ’Em In” Kim.

Haven’t seen him at Fenway all year.

In this context it does not hurt to remind ourselves that
Globe
ownership,
New York Times
ownership, and Red Sox ownership all overlap. In other words, they’re all in it together. Time to put the tinfoil on the windows, line our baseball caps with lead, and check our phones for radioactive bugs.

How ugly? He was the first pitcher in seventy years to surrender six home runs and still get the win. The Tigers hit seven long taters in all, the last coming off reliever Mike Timlin. The Red Sox hit three, one from David Ortiz and two from Kevin Youkilis.

If the more analytical (and amusing) Dennis Eckersley had been teamed with Caron, he probably would have given this part of the Millar fatwa the horselaugh it deserved.

A trait he shares with stopped clocks.

Latest victim of the injury bug is Kevin Youkilis, who suffered a jammed ankle at home plate after being waved in from second by Dale Sveum in the final game of the Red Sox–White Sox series two days ago (Youkilis was out).

The Texas Rangers have won six in a row and show no sign of their usual August heat prostration.

In it, a dreamy Manny fantasizes about becoming the World Series MVP.

Back then, of course, it was Nomar’s fault; even while on the DL he was sticking pins in his Terry Francona voodoo doll.

The last time it happened was September 1940, to George Caster of the Philadelphia Athletics, who beat us despite six dingers.

For reasons he probably could not explain (it’s a fan thing), Stewart O’Nan calls the Red Sox knuckler not Wake but Tim-
MAY
. Hey, I don’t make the news, I just report it.

Call this a lie if you want to; I prefer to think of it as a part of my rich and continuing fantasy life.

In a 1993 game against Atlanta, Wakefield went ten innings for the Pirates and threw 172 pitches. In 1996, while pitching for the Red Sox, he threw 162 pitches in a game against the White Sox. Don’t dismiss these numbers by saying, “Yeah, but he’s just a knuckleball pitcher,” until you yourself have tried to throw 150 or so pitches, even soft tosses, the regulation distance of sixty feet and six inches from the pitcher’s rubber to home plate on a hot afternoon. I think by number 90 or so, your shoulder’s going to be feeling like a turkey drumstick on Thanksgiving day.

In this case, first and second place in the wild-card standings.

And to Jerry the Detroit Tigers are always the Tigizz.

A technical baseball term.

Fever Pitch
, based on a nonfiction book by Nick Hornby, describes a romantic triangle in which a young man must choose between his girl and his baseball team. He loves both madly, deeply, truly. That the baseball team turns out to be the Red Sox should come as no surprise. As pointed out elsewhere in these pages, the Red Sox is the team of choice for romantics. Can you imagine a poet writing an ode to the Yankees? As for
lovers
and the Yankees… good God, you might as well plight your troth in the lobby of the Marine Midland Bank as at Yankee Stadium, that symbol of baseball commerce. No, when it comes to romance and baseball, you pretty much have to have Fenway Park. Wrigley Field has its ivied outfield wall and a certain rusty exterior charm, but I think Fenway remains America’s true Field of Dreams.

With this one utterly unforgivable exception: don’t ever let me hear of an official (or a player) who takes money to tip a game in which millions have invested their hopes and the energy of their collective imagination.

The once more hapless Devil Rays, and please God may they (or the troublesome El Birdos) not poke a stick in our spokes as we race down this season’s home stretch.

That could change if Oakland loses its hold on first place in Outer Weird Pacifica, but even if the A’s do drop to second, our position
vis-à-vis
the wild card won’t change much. For the record, I think Oakland
will
hold on and win the West.

Unlike, let us say, the supposed Campbell’s Chunky Soup Curse, where I can only find four football players—Terrell Davis, Kurt Warner, Jerome Bettis and Donovan McNabb—who actually suffered injuries after appearing in the ads, despite all the rumors.

Nine is the number that comes to mind, but you know what Ole Case said: “You could look it up.”

I am allowed to say stuff like this, because according to John Cheever, the belles lettres version of Ole Case, “all literary men must be Red Sox fans.” My reputation as a literary man is actually in some dispute, but I
am
a man, a Red Sox fan and a writer, so…fuggit. I think Norman Mailer said that, in
The Naked and the Dead
.

Tanyon Sturtze, for instance, lately miserable in middle relief for the Yankees (he went two-thirds of an inning in his last appearance), was utterly brilliant last night.

That would be roughly seventy-five hundred, most of them equipped with Yankee hats, Derek Jeter T-shirts, and upturned middle fingers for people wearing Red Sox gear.

Sorry, Blue, but that slo-mo replay has no mercy.

Ah, but under the circumstances, the
always
crafty Joe Torre really had little choice; by then it was a fool’s mate.

Three out of five rather than four out of seven.

The Indians at Jacobs Field, the Rockies at Coors, and the Giants at Pac Bell.

For the record, I think that hitting Millar was an accident. But, accident or on purpose, Kazmir did the Boston batters one hell of a favor by dealing himself out.

It would be their fifth win in a row.

Loathsome El Birdos.

NAH—it’s just a common sports malady: choking disease. SK

But of course, as Red Sox fans, we can no more
not
worry—even with a six- or seven-run lead—than we could not blink if you were suddenly to jab your fingers at our open eyes.

For the record, so do I—I grew up watching Bob Gibson pitch in the World Series, and listening to Sandy Koufax on my transistor radio earphone. Those were the days when the games were still played in the afternoon and pitching the batter high and tight was considered standard operating procedure.

Earlier in the season she threatened to write the team a letter saying, “You better do it this year, or I can’t promise to be around.” I don’t know if she carried through on that or not.

Yogi Berra was a Yankee, but how could you not love a man who said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”? My favorite Yogi Berra story features Hank Aaron. Yogi was a catcher, of course, and when he was crouched behind the plate, he’d always talk to distract the hitter. During the 1958 World Series, he kept telling Henry Aaron to “hit with the label up, Hank, you don’t want to do it that way, hit with the label
up
.” Finally Hammerin’ Hank looked back over his shoulder and said—not unkindly—“I came up here to hit, not to read.”

On the night after the final game against Anaheim, I dreamed that Johnny Damon and I were digging through mounds of discarded equipment—gloves, pads, shin guards—in some filthy, forgotten equipment shed, looking for a magic pitching machine. I think that hitting a few balls thrown by this machine turned you into Mark McGwire. We never found it.

It needs to be pointed out that, due to Boston’s ferocious late-inning assault, not even those 6 runs were enough to assure the Yankees of the win. Due to the baseball scoring system—and we could argue about whether or not it’s fair to Father Curt in this case; there are points to be made either way—Schilling takes the loss, but the runs which really sank us were the two driven in by Bernie Williams, against Mike Timlin, with two out in the bottom of the eighth.

The good news: by the bottom of the fourth inning, all but the most abysmally drunk Yankee fans—the twenty-year-old naked-to-the-waist males with large blue-black entwined NYs painted on their chests, in other words—had given up on the mocking “Who’s your Daddy?” chant. The bad news: Pedro was behind 1–0 from the first inning (Derek Jeter, the first batter he faced, scored), left trailing 3–0, and eventually took the loss, 3–1.

The fact that we had to open there at all is something I blame on the LEBs—Loathsome El Birdos.

In the only one I can remember, I was trying to work some kind of trade with George Steinbrenner, who was laughing at me and telling me—this is probably the only interesting part, and surely the most significant—that I needed a haircut.

Clark, a Red Sox castoff who specialized in strikeouts and earnest postgame interviews while with Boston—which sounds snottier than Clark, one of the game’s truly nice guys, probably deserves—played first for John Olerud last night. Olerud was struck by a bat during the Saturday Night Massacre and showed up at the park Sunday on crutches.

On second because Roberts flat out stole it off Rivera and Posada, both of whom knew he was going but could do nothing to stop him from getting into scoring position. Without this steal, our season’s over, and Roberts made it look easy. Theo’s very last trade before the deadline—Roberts straight-up for PawSock outfielder Henri Stanley—may have been his best of the year. SO

Thanks a pantload, Baltimore.

Not to mention one cannibalette. That would be Jackie MacMullan of the Boston
Globe
, who spanked Manny Ramirez for keeping the bat on his shoulder too much after Boston’s twelve-inning 6–4 victory in Game 4. In that game all Manny did was reach base five times in six at-bats, including the walk which preceded Big Papi’s walk-off.

I have an acquaintance from Brooklyn who says that he and his friends call Rodriguez “Show Pony,” because of the seemingly ostentatious way he runs.

And for all of you Hanshin Tigers fans out there, a measure of revenge: Johnny’s granny, like Jefe’s two-run shot, goes over a sign on the wall touting the Yomiuri Corporation.
Ganbatte!

And monster props to Terry Francona for engineering this matchup. It’s like Bill Belichick drawing up a play that isolates our hot receiver on their weakest corner. It’s a flat-out mismatch, and at an absolutely crucial time. After Game 3, Francona’s consistently outmanaged Joe Torre, whether it’s using the pen, changing the lineup around, or bringing in pinch runners and defensive replacements. Every move seems to have worked out for Tito, while Joe, with a deeper bench and pen, keeps fucking up. George, are you watching? Are you taking notes?

No word yet on whether or not Menino is considering a ban on pepper-spray-filled plastic balls, which seem to incite Boston police.

All right, I’m no ingrate: he saved our bacon in extras in Game 5, holding the Yanks scoreless for three nervous, passed-ball-filled innings and picking up the win.