Faithful Read online

  “Do you think Nomah could play right field?” was the first.

  “Nomah who?” was the second.

  And today I complete the experience by driving out of Boston on the first bona fide day of summer, temperatures in the mid-nineties, me in a Hertz Rent-A-Car I picked up at Logan Airport, driving up Route 1 as I have after so many games at Fenway Park, since my first one in 1959. There’s something just totally balls-to-the-wall about driving north past Kappy’s Liquors unhungover at 9:45 in the morning under a gunmetal sky; you’ve got that almost flawless two-hit, 1–0 win under your belt, and there are almost four more months of baseball to look forward to. I’ve got a cold Pepsi between my legs, the radio’s turned up all the way, there’s a U2 rock-block going on, and “Angel of Harlem” is pouring out of the speakers of my little Mercury Something-or-Other. Call me a dope if you want, but I think this is as good as it gets with your clothes on.

  June 10th

  Last night was #5 Night at Fenway Park; the Return of Nomar. The crowd gave him a vast roar of a standing O, and Nomar, obviously moved, saluted them right back. He took the first baseball to come his way flawlessly, starting a 6-4-3 double play. In his first at-bat, he singled smartly into left field, to the crowd’s vast delight. The only problem was the Red Sox lost and the Yankees won, coming back from an early 4–0 deficit in their game with the Colorado Rockies. The Sox are now down three and a half games.

  I find this out this morning, having given up on the Sox at 11 P.M., when a rain delay (it eventually clocked in at two hours and fifty minutes) progressed from the merely interminable to the outright absurd. The loss wasn’t entirely unexpected, as the Red Sox were down a bunch when the rains came, but the fact that the Yankees won yet again came as a rather nasty shock. They are starting to look more and more like those monolithic Yankee teams from the mid-to-late fifties that inspired the late DouglasWallop (a Washington Senators fan) to write The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, which became the musical Damn Yankees.

  A final note. In a move that may make sense to manager Terry Francona but seems incomprehensible to lowly fans like me, the Red Sox have sent Brian Daubach down to Pawtucket. Andy Dominique started for the Sox last night at first base. After blanking the Padres for four innings, a provisionally rejuvenated Bronson Arroyo found himself with two men on and two out. Brian Giles hit a grounder deep in the hole, which Garciaparra fielded, going to his right. He then made one of those patented across-the-body throws that have nailed so many surprised runners at first. Not last night. The throw was accurate enough, but a little short. The ball bounced first off the dirt, then off the heel of Dominique’s glove. My opinion? Maybe Ortiz doesn’t make that play, but David McCarty almost certainly does…and so does The Dauber. My question?

  What’s the guy with Show experience doing in the minors when we’re in a pennant race?

  With all the network Thursday-night shows over, it’s easy to claim the good TV. I’ve got revisions to do, and settle in. The Yanks have already won, completing their sweep of the Rockies this afternoon, so once again we need to keep pace.

  Schilling’s pitching, and I’m shocked when leadoff batter Sean Burroughs doubles and scores in the first. Ismael Valdez (a seaworthy name if I ever heard one) throws blanks till he meets Pokey Reese in the bottom of the third. In BP, Pokey has to work to reach the wall, but Valdez finds the perfect spot up and in and Pokey loops it into the first row of M7. The next inning, Valdez hangs a curve to Manny with David on first, and Manny goes over everything and into the parking lot.

  Meanwhile, Schilling’s throwing 94 with authority, striking out a bunch. In the fifth, Youk’s RBI double off the scoreboard chases Valdez.

  CUT TO: crazy handheld zooms of heavyset goateed man in familiar Western shirt gorging on bucket of KFC to raucous music. It’s Millar, in the same shirt he wore to the movie premiere. EXTREME CLOSE-UP of bucket with SFX of chicken pieces disappearing one by one. “Going, going…” Millar says.

  When we return, reliever Brandon Puffer intentionally walks Manny to load the bases. Nomar steps in to a standing O and knocks one off the Monster for a 6–1 lead. Millar follows with a double to the left-center gap—“Chickenman!” me and Steph yell.

  It’s 8–1, and the rest of the way’s uneventful, save a woman being ejected below Don and Jerry. While the camera’s not allowed to watch her, the crowd is. She must flash them, because there’s a roar, and for the next three minutes Don and Jerry can’t stop laughing. “I wonder how that looked on high-definition,” Jerry says.

  In the ninth, a momentary scare when Nomar bangs his bad foot off second base as he comes across to make a play, but he seems fine. McCarty lets us forget it by making a brilliant diving stop on a hopper down the line, reaching high to snag a bounce that should get over him. Lenny DiNardo’s frozen on the mound, so the runner’s safe, but it’s the kind of play (after Andy Dominique last night) that makes me want to see McCarty play more.

  June 11th

  In his first two games back, “Nomah” is batting in the five-hole. In last night’s game, the Padres elected to intentionally walk Manny Ramirez with one out in order to face Garciaparra with the bases loaded and the force-at-any-base situation in effect. #5 rewarded this strategy (which, the Padres’ manager would probably argue this morning, made sense at the time, with Garciaparra having been on the DL for the entire first third of the season) with a double rocketed off the left-field wall. That baseball-battered Monster giveth and taketh away, as Fenway fans well know. Last night it tooketh from Nomar Garciaparra: in parks with lower walls, that ball surely would have carried out for a grand slam. Oh well, we beat the Pods, 9–3.

  The Yankees won again, of course. They have now won thirteen straight in interleague play. Damn Yankees is damn right.

  June 12th

  Baseball’s most delicious paradox: although the game never changes, you’ve never seen everything. Last night’s tilt between the Red Sox and the Dodgers is a perfect case in point. With two out in the top of the ninth, it looked as though the Sox were going to win their second 1–0 shutout in the same week. Derek Lowe was superb. Even better, he was lucky. He gave way to Timlin in the eighth, and Timlin gave way to Foulke in the ninth, all just the way it’s s’pozed to be. Foulke got the first two batters hefaced, and then Cora snuck a ground-ball single past Mark Bellhorn. Still no problem, or so you’d think.

  That’s when Olmedo Saenz came up and lifted a lazy fly ball toward Manny Ramirez in left field. Saenz flipped his bat in disgust. Cora, meanwhile, was motoring for all he was worth, because that’s what they teach you—if the ball’s in play, anything can happen. This time it did. Manny Ramirez hesitated, glanced toward the infield, saw no help there, and began to run rapidly in no particular direction. He circled, back-pedaled, reached…and the ball returned gently to earth more or less behind him. Cora scored, tying the score and costing Derek Lowe the victory in the best game he’s pitched this year. David “Big Papi” Ortiz eventually sent the crowd home happy in the bottom of the ninth, but what about that horrible error by Manny? How could he flub such a routine fly? Here is the Red Sox center fielder, with the ominous explanation:

  “I was the one person closest to the action,” Johnny Damon said after the game, “and I saw all these weird birds flying around. I think they definitely distracted Manny’s attention when he needed it most. That really wasn’t an error at all. It was a freak of nature.”

  As one of the postgame announcers pointed out, this may have been the first use of the “Alfred Hitchcock Defense” in a baseball game.

  Manny was even more succinct. “There goes my Gold Glove,” he said.

  June 13th

  A worrisome article in the Sunday paper: Schill has a bone bruise on his right ankle (his push-off foot) and is start-to-start. He’s been taking Marcaine shots before throwing and wears a brace on days off. What else can go wrong?

  June 14th

  Interleague play, my ass—why not call it a marketing ploy, whic
h is what it really is? It fills the stadiums, and I suppose that’s a good thing (even the somehow dingy Tropicana Dome was almost filled yesterday, as the temporarily-not-so-hapless Devil Rays won for the eighth time in their last ten games), but let’s tell the truth here: fans are paying to see uniforms they’re not used to. Many of the players inside of those exotic unis (Shawn Green, for instance, a Blue Jays alum who now plays for L.A.) are very familiar. Or how’s this for double vision: In last night’s contest (an 8:05 EDT/ESPN-friendly start), you had Pedro Martinez starting for the Red Sox. He used to pitch for the Dodgers. And for the Dodgers, you had Hideo Nomo, who used to pitch for the Red Sox (only before the Red Sox, he used to pitch for the Dodgers). I’m not saying life was better for the players before Curt Flood—it wasn’t—but rooting was both simpler and a lot less about the uniform. One of the reasons I’m such a confirmed Tim Wakefield fan (and am sorry his last couple of starts have been disasters) is because he’s been with the Sox for ten years now, and has done everything management has asked of him—starting, middle relief, closing—to stay with the Sox.

  Meanwhile, we won yesterday evening’s game, 4–1. Pedro (the one who used to be with the Dodgers and probably won’t be with the Red Sox next year) got the win, with a little defensive help—a lot of defensive help, actually—from Pokey Reese, who made a jaw-dropping leap to snare a line drive in the seventh inning and save at least one run. “Play of the week” ain’t in it, dear; that was a Top Ten Web Gem of the season.

  Today we have off. We ended up taking two of three from the Pod People and two of three from the Dodgers, and still the Yankees mock us. Yesterday the Padres led the Yanks 2–0 going into the bottom of the ninth and blew that lead. Led them 5–2 going into the bottom of the twelfth and blew that lead, as well. The Yankees ended up winning, 6–5, to maintain their three-and-a-half-game edge. I looked at that this morning and reacted not with awe but a species of superstitious dread. Because that kind of thing tends to feed on itself.

  The rest of the AL East, meanwhile, is bunching up behind the Red Sox in interesting fashion. Baltimore’s in third and Tampa Bay’s in the cellar; both to be expected. What’s not to be expected—except maybe I did, sorta—is that at this point, approaching the season’s halfway mark, those two teams are only two games apart, Baltimore 11.5 out and Tampa Bay 13.5.

  June 16th

  When I turned in last night at 11:15, the Red Sox were down a run to Colorado, 4–3, but I had a good feeling about the game, and why not? The Rockies have been horrible this year. Besides, I’d gotten a call from my publisher saying that Song of Susannah was going straight to number one on the New York Times best-seller list, and that’s the sort of day that’ssupposed to end with your team winning—it’s practically a national law.

  I wake up this morning at 6:45 and turn on SportsDesk, feeling like a kid about to open his Christmas stocking. Unfortunately, what I get in mine is a lump of coal. Red Sox lost; Yankees won.

  The Christing Yankees won again.

  I can hardly believe it. Jayme Parker is telling me these bozos now have the best record in baseball, which is no news to me. I’m thinking they must have the best record in the entire universe. The Red Sox aren’t doing badly; by my calculations, we would have won the wild-card spot by two full games, had the season ended yesterday. But I am just so sick of looking at the Yankees’ collective pin-striped butt in the standings each and every day, so sick of realizing that we’ll still be in second place even if we sweep them when we see them later this month.

  There’s nothing better than waking up to find your team won and the other guys lost. Conversely, there’s no worse way to start the day than finding out your team lost and the other guys won. It’s like taking a big swig of the orange juice straight from the carton and discovering that it’s gone over.

  June 17th

  The Red Sox are now back to full strength, or almost (Pokey Reese is day-to-day with a jammed toe, as a result of that spectacular catch on the thirteenth). Trot Nixon returned to the lineup with a bang last night, stroking a home run to what’s almost the deepest part of Coors Field. So all’s right with the world, right?

  Wrong. The Sox got behind early again and couldn’t quite come back, Schilling lost (television viewers were treated to the less than lovely sight of Father Curt, the staff’s supposed anchor, pounding the shit out of a defenseless Gatorade cooler after giving up a key two-out hit), and the Yankees won for the 730th time in their last 732 games. Consequently, we’ve fallen five and a half games out of first place. These will be hard games to make up, assuming they can be made up at all (probably they can), and what hurts the most is that the last two losses have come at the hands of the Rockies, currently major league baseball’s worst team. But the Red Sox have a talent for making bad teams look good, I sometimes think; we have done some almighty awful franchises the favor of making themlook terrific for their fans, especially during the two or three weeks after Memorial Day.

  For this is almost certainly the beginning of that yearly Red Sox rite known as the June Swoon. Longtime fans know it so well they can set their calendars by it, if not their watches; it begins when the NBA finals end. During this year’s Lakers-Pistons finals, [22] the Sox were busy taking two out of three from both the Padres and the Dodgers, who are vying for the top spot in the NL West. Now that the finals are over, they are busy getting their shit handed to them by the lowly Rockies and their lead in the wild-card race—yes, even that—has melted away to a mere single game.

  If it is the Swoon, I don’t think I can bring myself to write about it…but I’ll be watching it happen. Have to do it, man. It’s my duty, and not because of this book, either. It’s because that’s the difference between being a mere fair-weather fan and being faithful. Besides, July’s coming, and the Red Sox always turn it around in July.

  Usually always.

  I take the Fenway tour in the morning, hoping to catch BK working out. He’s not. The grounds crew is doing something to the track in left; they’ve dug up the corner and pulled some padded panels off the wall. We can’t go down to field level—a drag, since I wanted to walk the track and peek in the scoreboard. We hit the press box, then the .406 Club. While we’re listening to the guide’s spiel, I notice two members of our tour being escorted to the mound far below. A man and a woman. The man goes to one knee. KELLI, WILL YOU MARRY ME? the scoreboard flashes. She kisses him, and the tour applauds.

  We cross the Monster for the big view. I’m surprised by how many tours are running at once, and how much activity there is. There are several school groups circling the top of the park the opposite way. Under the bleachers, a crew is setting up a catered job fair; in the right-field grandstand, workmen are replacing old wooden seats.

  The last stop is the right-field roof tables, an anticlimax, and we walk back down the ramp to Gate D, looking down on the players’ lot. The guard there says BK should be in any minute.

  * * *

  Back home, the schedule makers sneak today’s game by me. It’s a 3:05 start, 1:05 mountain time, and when I tune in to NESN at nine o’clock they’re showing Canadian football, complete with the 55-yard line and Labatt’s ads painted on the astroturf. I check the website: 11–0 Sox. Lowe threw seven strong, getting 17 ground-ball outs. Ortiz put it out of reach in the sixth with a three-run shot. It figures—the one game I miss.

  June 18th

  ESPN notes that Lowe’s shutout was only the second of the Rockies at Coors in their last four hundred games. And the Yanks lost to the D-backs, so we gained ground.

  Francona kept Wake out of the Colorado series, citing knuckleballers’ poor history there, so Wake opens against the Giants at Pac Bell (SBC, if you want to be a stickler). As in his start against the Dodgers last Saturday, he’s got nothing. The Giants run on him at will, and Marquis Grissom takes him deep twice for a 7–2 lead in the fourth.

  I’m at the beach, watching with my nephew Charlie.

  “Why don’t they take him out?” Charl
ie asks.

  “Because we don’t have anyone else.” And there’s Malaska warming.

  With the 10:05 start and all the offense, it’s late, and we don’t want to keep the rest of the cottage up.

  My father-in-law, stumping to the bathroom in his skivvies, asks how we’re doing.

  “Ah, we’re getting crushed,” I say.

  June 19th

  The local edition of the Providence Journal only stayed up as late as I did. They have the score 7–2 in the fifth—as if that helps anyone.

  “They won,” Charlie says, shrugging. “The score was something like eleven to eight.”

  No one can verify it, so I get on my father-in-law’s laptop and hit the website. 14-9 was the final. Ortiz and Manny went back-to-back and Millar had a pinch-hit three-run shot over Barry Bonds—all in the top of the fifth. Son of a bitch. All we had to do was stay up another ten minutes.

  “Fair-weather fans,” Trudy says.

  “No,” I say. “It’s the opposite. When I watch them, they lose. I turn it off and they win.”

  June 20th

  7:45 A.M.: Today’s game against the San Francisco Giants will mark the end of interleague play for the nonce, and I’m glad. I don’t like it because I think it’s a marketing stunt, but that’s secondary. A New England team has no business on the West Coast, that’s what I really think.

  Still, it should be an interesting contest—the rubber game in a three-game series the Red Sox would dearly love to win. For one thing, it would send them home with a .500 record for the trip. For another, they’d go back to Boston four and a half behind the Yankees, only three and a half if the Dodgers can beat the Yankees again today. And Sox pitching has pretty well muzzled Barry Bonds, who strikes me—admittedly an outsider, but sometimes outsiders see with clearer eyes—as one of the game’s more arrogant and conceited players. His fans in left field hang rubber chickens when Bonds is intentionally walked, but they haven’t hung many in this series.