Fenway Fever

by John Ritter

  “Ruu-eez!”

  No one, however, bellowed with more gusto than Stats and Mark Pagano, who pumped their fists into the warm night sky as Mark’s favorite player of all time, Rico “the Breeze” Ruíz, approached the plate.

  Hitting an amazing .369 through today, May 12, and representing the tying run, Ruíz slowly, calmly strolled to the dish.

  “Here comes an RBI single,” Stats announced. “Guaranteed.”

  “Only a single, Freddy?” yelled Mr. McCord. “I’ll bet he parks it.”

  A retired music teacher, Mr. McCord always brought lucky drumsticks with him. No, not wooden drumsticks, but the frozen ice cream kind, which he and Mrs. McCord passed out for good luck to Mark and Stats and anyone else who sat nearby. And for extra luck, in the middle of the eighth inning, they would hand out Mrs. McCord’s freshly baked double fudge brownies, which she called “Sweet Carolines.”

  Oh, oh, oh. The brownies were so good—and long gone by now.

  Mark answered for his kid brother. “Anything, Mr. McCord, anything. We don’t care.” Mark, who was also a shortstop and was regarded by local coaches as one of South Boston’s brightest young stars, idolized the Puerto Rican ballplayer, especially the way Ruíz always seemed to come through in the clutch.

  He leaned over. “What do you say, bro?”

  Stats pointed to Ruíz’s line in his well-worn scorebook.

  “He’s due. Oh-for-six with a walk, counting last night. Three-for-eleven in the series. He’s overdue.”

  The first pitch from the Yankees’ closer, “Goose Egg” Page, came high and tight, forcing Ruíz to flinch back.

  The boos rained down like a June monsoon.

  “Whaddya ’fraid of, you rag arm?” came one shout. “Throw the ball o-vah!”

  Other fans joined in. “Hey, Page! Show him that inside heat again and your goose egg’ll be cooked.”

  The second pitch fell off, low and away, and the tall, trim left-handed slugger with home-run punch barely moved. Again, a cascade of boos.

  “They’re pitching around him,” said Mark. “Not gonna give him anything to hit.”

  Stats had already figured that. Even with the cleanup batter on deck, first base was open. Why throw anything decent to the league’s best hitter? If he walked, it would at least set up a force play on the bases.

  “Playing the percentages,” he said, mostly to himself.

  Jorgi Berron, the Yankees’ catcher, moved his target inside this time, probably hoping that Ruíz, anxious for a key hit, might swing at a pitch in on his fists and pop it up.

  Fat chance, thought Stats. Rico was a student of the strike zone.

  Instead the nimble lefty with lightning hands got out ahead of an inside slider and drove a rocketing line drive into the right-field corner.

  The crowd exploded as the Breeze blew around first base, digging for two, while Davíd jogged home from second with Boston’s first run.

  But this would be no two-base hit. As the ball smacked against the base of the curvy fence line the old-timers called “the belly,” it took a good-luck bounce—straight up. Rico never broke stride, rounding second and digging for third.

  Stats stood dumbstruck, his eyes wide, as he took in the grand moment. Running with the precision and balance of a full-tilt motocross biker, Ruíz arced toward deep short, then angled back, driving now on the sides of his shoes and carving out a track toward third.

  He did not stop there, though. The relay from deep right was airmailed over the cutoff man, scooting past the shortstop, and bounded all the way to the wall behind third.

  In fact, the ball kicked straight up the barrier fence in front of Stats, just beyond the on-field media pit, spinning like a curve ball in front of his nose. It was all he could do to keep from reaching out and grabbing it.

  “Go!” he shouted at Ruíz. “Go!”

  That’s when the strangest thing happened.

  From out of nowhere, the pitcher raced up, and, as if the ball had been suspended in midair waiting for him, he grabbed it bare-handed, spun, grunted like a goose, and fired a bullet toward home. The shot flew past Ruíz’s shoulder just as he was beginning his dive.

  This play would be close. Stats and Mark flung themselves halfway over the fence to get a better view.

  Headfirst slide. Catcher’s swipe. Flashbulb lights. Stats squinted to take it all in.

  Crouched nearby to get the best angle on the bang-bang play, umpire Jim Joyce immediately pointed at the plate and then, in a backlash motion, raised his forearm and fist.

  Out at home. Game over. Just like that.

  Groans of disbelief shook through the park, rattling the stands like a late-night cargo flight out of Logan.

  Stats could not believe it. His stomach tightened. A wave of sadness rolled through him.

  He began recalling the scene right away, as much to figure out how to score it as to relive the mad dash toward third and the up-close action that followed. It was a trick he liked to use to postpone feeling crushed by the surprise ending of a comeback attempt cut short. Not to say that it worked. But it was better than nothing.

  “That was wicked crazy,” said Mark, his voice filled with disbelief. “Woulda been an inside the parker.”

  “He had to go for it,” mumbled Stats. “Rounding third, two outs.”

  “I know. But what a way to lose a game.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said Mr. McCord. “They’ve got plenty more ways than that. And I’ve seen most of them.”

  Stats bent over his scorebook and began to record the play. He circled the 2B on Ruíz’s line, giving him a double, then wrote “E-9” between second and third base, showing Ruíz’s advance had come on the right fielder’s throwing error. Between third and home, he drew a hash mark, then wrote the number “3” and circled it to indicate Mark’s hero had been the third out. Next to that he wrote “1-2,” showing that a throw from the pitcher to the catcher had done it. Carefully, he darkened the diamond in Davíd’s box to highlight the lone Red Sox run.

  Through the process of recording the play, he had preserved it for all time. Almost anyone reading the codes could re-create the play closely enough to understand, more or less, what had happened.

  There was no code, however, for a “wicked” hop, a weird spinning ball spookily held aloft just long enough for a gangly, slip-footed pitcher to run under it, grab it, and complete a nearly impossible play.

  Nor was there a code for “kid in stands kicks ball out of shortstop’s glove.”

  Stats sat back. Realizing Billee had just lost another one-run game due to sheer bad luck, for which Stats was hugely to blame, he perused his scorebook.

  Finally, at the bottom of the page, he added one more entry. Two words. Curse on.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Pagano family home comprised the top half of a two-story brick building located not far from Fenway Park, in a run-down commercial zone on Shawmut, near Lenox. The seventy-five-year-old tall, gray, rectangular structure held not only their modest two-bedroom apartment, but a small neighborhood grocery store below, which Mama Pagano had run up until the time she entered the hospital.

  Before climbing the creaky wooden stairway that ran along the exterior of the building, Stats decided to go into the little store.

  “Be right up,” he told Mark. “I’m gonna grab a box of cereal for the morning.”

  After removing the key from its hiding place behind a lone red brick lodged nine rows up, Stats unlocked and slowly pushed open the heavy wood-framed glass door. A tiny bell clinked.

  It was dark as usual, though a nearby streetlamp shed enough light for him to get around. The place had been dark for over four years, ever since his mother had died. In fact, Stats was just about the only one who’d bothered to enter the store in all that time. Often, he would do it to pick up an item they had run out of in the house above.

  Cereal, he had discovered, was one of several products, like certain canned goods and some juices, that kept quite well e
ven years after the expiration date. Stock was, however, running low, so these days Stats only came “shopping” when he absolutely had to.

  Of course, he visited for other reasons, too. He had learned some time ago that it was a good way to feel a bit closer to Mama Pagano. In fact, she was almost always there.

  “Just grabbing some honey-puffed rice, Mama,” he said, passing the first aisle. “Did you hear about the mission Billee and I are on? He thinks there’s a new curse. What do you think?”

  Stats paused, hoping to sense a response. After a direct question, she would often send a sort of “nudge” or an intuitive feeling to him right away. This time Stats felt nothing strong enough to take as an answer.

  He walked on. “Well, if there is, maybe you could give us a few tips on how to stop it.”

  That sort of request was normal for Stats. He had frequently asked his mother for ideas and help in whatever the family was interested in doing—or struggling to do.

  At the cereal aisle, he removed a box. As he returned to the door, he noticed an envelope the postman had slipped through the mail slot. This rarely happened anymore, but sometimes if the letter seemed “official” enough, the post office would deliver it.

  Stats debated over whether he should take it upstairs to Pops or leave it, as he normally did, on the dusty pile of mail that had accumulated at the checkout counter over the years.

  Pops, you see, was not yet ready to sort things out down here. In fact, Stats and Mark figured it was something they would have to do themselves one day.

  Quietly checking in again with his mother, Stats felt a strong urge to compromise, almost as if it were a direct order. He would leave the letter on the counter, but be sure to tell Pops about it—just in case it was important.

  “’Night, Mama,” he said, pulling the door shut. “See you later.”

  Awakening the next morning, Stats sat up and swung his legs to the bedside. But he didn’t get out of bed. For a moment he watched his brother doing his push-ups. Every day, the same thing. Exercise. Practice. Work hard. From the earliest times Stats could remember, Mark had dreamed of playing shortstop for the Red Sox. Probably lots of guys had that dream. But Stats knew baseball and he knew Mark’s stats. He was one guy who actually had a chance.

  Mark gasped out, “… ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred.” Then he collapsed and rolled over.

  “What’s up, lil’ bro?”

  Stats felt his heart skip the way it did sometimes when a valve misfired—or when he thought about something that worried him.

  “In the store last night,” he started, “I found an important-looking letter. I think I should tell Pops about it.”

  He fell back down onto his pillow. His heartbeats had slowed to a lazy throb as the pressure increased, then they pounded out a double thump against his middle ribs in a moment of great release. After that, he felt fine.

  Mark stood. “You okay, Freddy?”

  “Yeah.” He looked away as he felt Mark study his face.

  “Your heart?”

  “No. I mean, a little bit.” He hated having anyone make a fuss over him. “I’m okay.” And at the moment, that was true.

  Mark lingered at his bedside. “If you weren’t, you’d tell me, right?”

  Stats nodded.

  “Okay, then.” Mark backed off. “So, listen. Don’t worry Pops about any new letters or anything. He’s doing better now than ever. We’ll get down there one day and go through everything. All right?” He slapped Stats lightly on the jawbone. “Come on, get up. We got a day game at Fenway this afternoon.”

  While Mark and Pops worked the stand for Sunday’s early crowd, Stats headed down to Gate C, near right field, where he figured he could find Bull Brickner, a longtime usher—and a big Papa Pagano’s customer—who would let him dash in to do a little more field research for Billee.

  “Yeah, hey, bubba,” Bull greeted him. “Hop over and come on in.”

  Being just a bit over four feet tall, it was actually easier for Stats to duck under the turnstile, so he did. “Thanks, Bull. Be right back.”

  He hustled through the corridors, ending up in the seats behind the Red Sox dugout, trying to spot someone from the grounds crew. Leaning over the short fence near the media pit, he spied Paolo Williams down on the field battling a huge bag of something stuck in a wheelbarrow.

  “Hi, Paolo,” he called.

  The man looked up. “Say there, Freddy Ballgame! How ya doin’? Boy, what about them Sox, huh? Maybe today they avoid the sweep, you think? If we could just get Billee back in the groove, eh? When he’s going good, seems like the whole team goes good. And when he’s not …” He lowered his head, adding a twist.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s what Billee thinks, too. And I was just wondering, do you think anything about the field, the pitcher’s mound, for example, could’ve been changed recently that might be causing him any trouble?”

  Paolo thought a moment. “Nothing I can recall. We replace the sod every year and pack new clay around the mound, but it’s exactly the way it was last year when he pitched so good and the years before that, too.”

  Stats narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips a moment. “Yeah, okay. I was just trying to—”

  “I’ll tell you, son, Billee’s just having an off year, that’s all it is. Happens to these young pitchers. Happens a lot. Especially after a year of success. Sophomore jinx, they call it.”

  Stats let his head droop. “Jinx” was just another word for curse. “I thought maybe something about the ballpark might’ve changed between last year and this year that would explain his bad luck.”

  “Sorry, Freddy. Nothing I can think of. You might talk to Ol’ Red, though. He’s been around here longer than any of us, and he runs the show, eh? If anybody had some inside intel for you, it’d be Ol’ Red.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Stats. He did not exactly brighten at that idea. Ol’ Red would be Chas Herman “Red” Gruffin, park maintenance supervisor and well known to be a grumpy old frankenfurt who never had much more than a scattershot word to say to anybody.

  Stats decided he would see how today’s game turned out first. Then, if he absolutely needed to, he’d put on his Sherlock Holmes hat—that is, the hood on his Red Sox hoodie—and continue his investigation with grumpy Ol’ Red.

  CHAPTER 6

  For the first time in his life Stats felt uneasy sitting in Fenway Park. The game had just ended. Mercifully. And that was not just because of the lopsided score, 11–3 Yanks. It was a merciful ending because of the merciless way a number of rowdy fans had turned against the hometown team during the last three innings of the romp.

  They were so harsh and so enraged. And being so derogatory in front of their fiercest rivals, of all teams!

  “My granny could’ve made that play!” one guy shouted at Drew Evans in right field. “And she can’t even go to her left!”

  “Johnny Damon could’ve made that play!” spat another, referring to a former Sox hero with a questionable arm, who later joined the Yankees.

  When a sizzler skipped past second baseman Dusty Doretta, another fan, named Lucy, who sat near Stats, squawked, “Nice form, Dusty—if you were a matador!”

  After the number eight hitter, Burlin Fiske, struck out to end the eighth, Announcer Bouncer yelled, “Hey, Burly! At least you went down swinging—you looked just like Don Zimmer against Pedro!”

  That one was just plain cruel. Zimmer was seventy-two years old when he and former Sox ace Pedro Martinez had tangled on the field.

  After the game, Stats told Mark he needed to find Billee. “Tomorrow’s an off day, and they’re leaving town, so it’s my last chance.”

  “Yeah, okay, but don’t take too long. I’ll get me some fries at Jake’s and watch a little NESN.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  Before tracking down Billee, Stats decided to find Ol’ Red and ask some quick questions. After a few inquiries, he located Red Gruffin in the “irrigation pit” where all th
e sprinkler piping, terminals, and control valves were housed. He did not look happy.

  “Uh, hello? Mr. Gruffin? Sorry to bother you.”

  Ol’ Red glanced up, bit down on his unlit cigar stump, and spat out a gooey brown chunk into the muddy pit in front of him. He went back to work.

  Stats took that as an invitation to leave. He stepped back slowly and turned.

  “What the blazes do you want?” growled Red.

  The sudden surge to his heart was something Stats did not want, or need, at this moment. He stood frozen, except for the full body shake his heart had started.

  “Huh?” the old man hacked out. “You want something? If not, why the devil are you down here bothering me?”

  Barely managing to turn back toward the man, Stats wondered if it would be possible to speak with frozen lips and no breath. In any case, he knew he was going to have to find out.

  “Um, I’m here to see if, I mean Paolo—Mr. Williams—thought …”

  “What’s that good-for-nothing foul pole Paolo got to do with this?”

  Stats released a small amount of the air trapped in his lungs. “He, uh, he just told me … that you were the number one expert on … on Fenway Park in the whole city.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut at that desperate attempt to flatter a fire-breathing dragon.

  When he reopened them, Mr. Gruffin had turned and was daggering Stats with his own eyes.

  “Well, if I am, it’s only on account of nobody else around here does their own job worth a damp diddly-squat. Here I am, supervisor, on a Sunday, hunched over, pushing a monkey wrench down in the swamp.” He spat again.

  “Um, well. I can be real quick.”

  “Free country.”

  Stats took another step and hunkered down, not so much to be closer, but in order to let his breathless words approach an audible level.

  “Okay, thanks. Um, there’s been a lot of—I mean, Billee Orbitt said—”