Fenway Fever

by John Ritter

  “Orbitt? That loony goon hasn’t got two brain cells to rub together. What’s he babbling on about now?”

  Stats covered his face with his hands in frustration.

  “Okay, okay! Sorry,” he blurted out. “I was just wondering if there’s been, like, any changes to the park or something that might make things out of balance. That’s all!” And that was the best he could do.

  Ol’ Red appeared somewhat shocked at the outburst. He steadied himself on one knee and took a moment to respond.

  “Changes? Cripes, kid, look around. Seats on top of the Green Monster, two new rows of box seats up and down the baselines, cramping the ballfield, making extra work for me and my guys.”

  Stats had never considered the recent years of remodeling through a groundskeeper’s eyes. He only knew that if it weren’t for the nearby media pit next to the visitors’ dugout, his own seats would now be in row three instead of up front.

  “Hold right there.” Mr. Gruffin gripped his massive pipe wrench and pulled the handle toward his chest with a grunt. Then he left it hanging in midair while he yanked a rag out of his back pocket to rub the sweat from his neck.

  Still squatting, he turned to face Stats. “Outta balance, huh?” He pointed with his cigar to a pile of debris. “Sit down, kid. I’ll give you something to chew on, if that’s what you want.”

  Stats made his way to the clump of construction rubble and sat, careful not to step on a soggy cigar stub, in case that was the thing he was going to have to chew on.

  “Lessee, now,” Ol’ Red started. “Place was a pigsty when I hired on, back in the summer of ’86. I got in and had everything scoured up spic-and-span-like. Couldn’t believe what I saw. Here this outfit was sitting in the catbird seat, heading for the World Series, and the park looked a track-shack mess. But we cleaned her up, top to bottom, good as we could get her.”

  1986, thought Stats. The year of Game Six. A devastating year, when the Sox came within one out—one strike!—of winning the World Series, and breaking the curse, only to see it dribble away.

  Some say that was the year “The Curse” officially entered the vocabulary of Red Sox Nation, though others claim they’d felt it in their bones long before then.

  Stats leaned forward. “Anything special stand out to you about that year?”

  “Special? Well, other than pumping the tunnels free of muddy groundwater, bleaching out the mold growing everywhere, and flooding out the rats and mice, no, nothing all that special.”

  Stats entered the info into his eXfyle smartphone, instantly forming a picture in his mind of what that must have looked like. Waterfalls crashing from the upper decks. Rivers rushing down the narrow cement aisles between the rows of wood-slat seats, spilling onto a puddling field.

  “That was the one per-dicament, though,” Red continued, “I couldn’t get a handle on that per-ticular year. Rodents. Still deal with ’em every year. But it got better after the ’86 World Series, let’s put it that way. I mean, just like any other ballpark in the country, there’s gonna be rats. But, looking back, ever since ’02 when the new owners started all this remodeling, it’s been up one year, down the next. For example, 2003, they added the Green Monster seats. That crazy project ran on longer than they figured, so we never got out ahead of ’em. Same with ’06—the .406 Club and that whole mess. All through the season we kept fighting rats. Have to say, 2003 and 2006 were the worst years as far as pests go. All that remodeling.”

  This was a lot to chew on, thought Stats. The worst years, as far as critter control, were both heartbreak years.

  “Which years seemed like the easiest?”

  “Easy? Cripes, kid, never easy.” He puzzled on it a moment. “I’d guess ’04 was probably better than most. Maybe ’07.”

  Whoa. The world championship years. Could there really be a connection? No, he thought, no way. He felt pretty silly even considering the idea. He could buy Billee’s mystic theory of the park being out of whack, even bad karma. But how could the rodent population have anything to do with a ball team’s balance? Even so, he wrote it all down.

  “Hey, look, kid. I gotta get back to earning a buck.”

  “Sure, sorry.” Stats rose. “Thanks for your help.”

  Mr. Gruffin lifted his chin and grunted again, then re-wedged the cigar stub between his teeth.

  But before Stats could leave, the crusty old man plucked the stub from his mouth with a pop. “Hey, kid. What’d you say your name was?”

  “I, uh, I’m Freddy, but people call me Stats.”

  “Yeah, okay, Stamps. If I think of anything else, I’ll tell that nincompoop Paolo.”

  “Wow, that’d be great. Thanks!”

  For a grumpy old curmudgeon, Ol’ Red Gruffin didn’t seem all that bad. In fact, he might have just given Stats a big ol’ clue.

  CHAPTER 7

  Anxious to tell Billee what he’d just learned, Stats journeyed out to the pitcher’s favorite postgame retreat, a wooden chair in the shade of the Red Sox bull pen way out in right field.

  Stepping through the gate on the first-base side—one priceless perk that came with having grown up in this park—he began his trek across the sacred turf. And to Stats, it always felt like the first time, an instantaneous feeling of having stepped upon a magical green carpet, ready to transport him anywhere in the ballpark’s past.

  He crossed the infield between first and second and momentarily stood back as Carlton Fisk bounded past the first-base bag in the 1975 World Series after performing an arm-slashing body-English dance to keep a game-winning twelfth-inning foul-line-hugging home run fair. With each step Stats journeyed deeper into the lush meadow of infinite ballgames—the ones that would last forever. Looking up, he saw Big Papi’s twelfth-inning walk-off homer sail over the Green Monster in Game 4 of the 2004 play-offs against the Yankees. That one never came down—and it turned The Curse around.

  Beneath him, the well-seasoned Kentucky bluegrass, thick with memories, caught each footfall, softly, gently. The earth below seemed to possess its own heartbeat, strong and healthy. And the more he walked, the more the ballpark’s heart meshed with his own.

  This place was his sanctuary, his safe spot, his home, where it was always summertime and the breathing was easy.

  “Hey, Billee,” he called toward the lonesome figure shrouded in white. “Tough game, huh?”

  “They hate to see us lose, don’t they?” the pitcher said through his cotton towel wrap.

  “I guess so.”

  “Any news?”

  “Well, maybe.” Stats allowed Billee time to unravel the long white cloth covering his face and head before he began. “Red Gruffin told me that pretty much the only years he could remember, going back to when he got here in 1986, that he didn’t have to battle a bunch of rats and mice were 2004 and 2007.”

  Billee let the towel drape down around his neck, then gripped each side. He stood up and took a few paces. A pained look clouded his face as he studied the sky. “What the heck would rats and mice have to do with anything?”

  “Well, I don’t know, but it—”

  Billee cut him off with a raised hand. His steel-gray eyes panned the ballpark, from the first-base seats to the center-field nook, as if he were letting this newly proffered rodential concept and all of its ramifications sink in.

  “During ’04 and ’07, huh?” he said. “And the Sox haven’t been near a World Series since.”

  “Right. And check this out. The worst years for rodents were ’03 and ’06.” After a moment, he added, “Do you think there’s a connection?”

  Billee spun toward him. “There’s always a connection. But what it is, I don’t know.” Pacing one way, then back the other, Billee launched into a rundown on the current team.

  “Today, Sammy Jethroe said his timing at the plate has never been better, but nothing falls in. Wadell Fens has lined into three double plays with runners in scoring position. Not to mention the rotten luck Teddy Lynn and Dusty are having. Who’s
next?”

  Billee walked to the bull pen fence and leaned on it. “I know it’s only the middle of May, but Rico says he already sent off to his tía Blanca back home for some sort of pepper, rum, sheep’s fat, and cactus-apple concoction to marinate his bats in to bring back the power. Cedro Marichal sleeps with sliced green Dominican papayas wrapped around his pitching arm to help coax back his holy ghost pitch—the one no batter can see. Each day, another guy goes down. And no one knows how to break us out of it. I just wish I could do something. But what?”

  Billee scanned the ballpark once again. “It’s not the first time, though, is it? These curses go way back. Oh, if these walls could talk.”

  Hearing Billee’s befuddlement caused Stats to gaze off in equal discomfort. He was about to suggest a retreat into logic, a sort of “cooling off” period, wherein curse talk was put on hold for a while—at least until they found out if the cactus-apple-rum marinade showed any promise. But before he could, Billee brought a finger to his lips and tilted his head, as if listening for a talking wall.

  Stats froze too. It was obviously a weird notion, though not any zanier than connecting rats to curses or bats to cactus, but if these walls were going to speak, he didn’t want to miss a word.

  The silence went on for a minute or so, a long enough time for Stats to feel fully self-conscious, if not a bit silly. He was about to say something when, from high in the sky, there came an eerie screech.

  “Chee! Chee!”

  A lone hawk circled above the infield, orbiting counterclockwise, as if running the bases backward.

  Continuing its graceful glide, the bird screamed again, this time, it seemed to Stats, with more purpose.

  “K’chee! K’chee!” Then it flapped its wings and broke out of its wheeling sail, rising up above home plate, over the top of the announcers’ booth facade, and out of sight.

  “Whoa,” said Billee, speaking in a hushed tone. “That was weird.”

  Stats was actually feeling a bit strange about it, too, but upon hearing that pronouncement come from Billee, the event now took on an even grander sense of woo-hooery.

  Shivers rippled his spare and bony frame.

  Billee held his skyward glare. “Well, we got our wish, bud. The walls just talked.”

  “They did?”

  “Yep,” said Billee. “No doubt. Got just what we asked for. Alls I wish now is that I knew what they said.”

  Stats had no clue, either. Statistics he could handle. Astronomy he could handle. Even global geometry. But his personal contact with the great outdoors stopped at the edges of his roof where his telescope sat. And from there he could not ever recall seeing a hawk. Or hearing one talk.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  “Early this morning,” said Billee, still facing the ballfield, “I was so shook up, I drove out to Walden Pond, just to hike around the place, watch the sun rise, meditate. That lake and the woods out there, it always calms me down after a tough game. Anyhow, at the break of day, I remembered what Dr. John Mack, a Harvard professor, once said. ‘You have to consider everything.’ He said that’s the error our scientists make. They set limits on what they’ll explore. Because when you set limits, Dr. Mack said, you miss exploring the things that really matter.”

  He looked at Stats. “So, kid, rats and mice? Might just be exactly what we need to look at. Talking hawks? Why not? I’ll tell you one thing. There is so much we don’t know. And there’s only so much we can ever know. We might as well find out everything we can.”

  Billee turned and began to walk back to the bull pen. He waved his hand. “Go. Do your thing, Stat Man. I gotta crawl back inside the pen, pull a towel around my head, and meditate.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Stats and Mark arrived at home that Sunday evening around dinnertime. As soon as he entered, Stats felt a sense of something being amiss. The curtains were pulled. The house lights dimmed. And nothing was cooking. Walking inside, they spied Pops sitting in a chair by the bay window, gazing out.

  “Markangelo,” he said without bothering to look. “You and Alfredo, come to me over here.”

  The very tone of his words worried Stats and started his heart thumping. He and Mark gathered together in the alcove behind their father as he continued to stare through the lace curtains facing the street.

  “You know, boys, I always try to do what’s right. But sometimes …” He lowered his elbows to the table and prayerfully clutched both hands together.

  “Sometimes what, Pops?” said Mark.

  Pops had trouble speaking, which only increased the sense of panic washing over Stats.

  Finally he said, “I sometimes—I let little details slip away from me. I knew this day was bound to come. I hate thinking how I put it off for so long. Now I got myself in a tight spot.”

  Pops reached out across the table and picked up an envelope. Stats recognized it immediately as being the one he’d seen downstairs the night before. He had followed Mark’s advice not to tell Pops about it, even though he’d told his mother he would. Somehow, though, Pops had received the message. He withdrew the letter from inside.

  “This,” he said, “is from a bill collector. It has to do with your mother’s store. They say we still owe them money.”

  Okay, thought Stats, feeling somewhat relieved. It’s a money problem. It’s not life or death, it’s not a brain tumor. He’s not running off and joining a kung fu academy in China—something Stats had always imagined he might do if he were ever in big enough trouble.

  “How much is it for?” asked Mark.

  Good question. The sooner Stats got a number, the sooner he could start working on a solution.

  “We can help,” Stats added. “We’ve got money saved up.” The tip jar at the stand was always split between them, and it garnered as much as sixty dollars a day.

  “No, no, you boys—”

  “Pops, let us help,” said Mark. “We’re all in this together. We’re part of the family business, too.”

  Pops drew in a slow breath, scanning their faces, although the depth of his focus seemed far away.

  “Alfredo, Markangelo. Back when your mother was sick …” He finger-painted a tiny cross over his heart. “I had so many things on my mind.” He held his hands out as if they were paddles, and as he spoke, he knocked each phrase between them. “The baseball season was starting up, you boys were in two different schools, we had medical bills and all of that. I could barely pay my own vendors, let alone what had piled up on the store.” He stopped to take a weary sigh. “And after she passed …”

  He stopped again, dropping his chin to his chest, wrapping his thick arms around himself, and he shook.

  It was a lot for Stats to take in. Pops had rarely spoken about Mama in the four years since her death. But Stats did know his mother had been the money-minder.

  He watched his father, a bear of a man, now bent forward, his fingertips pressed against the gray of his temples.

  “I knew we had some debts to clear up. I just never dreamed …”

  “It’s okay, Pops,” said Mark, taking his father’s shoulder into his palm. “We’ll get through this. Don’t worry about anything. But, just—how much is it?”

  Pops puffed out a burst of wind and shook his jowls. “Too much. More than I have.” He looked off across the street again. “I always hoped I could, someday, save up a little seed money to help produce my inventions, but now …”

  The inventions Pops spoke of were culinary. He was always experimenting with new recipes for hot dogs and buns, especially during the off-season. Most importantly, he had tried for years to perfect the skin of his veggie dogs so they would blister up and pop when he grilled them—the way the skins on regular hot dogs did. However, the idea that Pops dreamed about saving up seed money to put the recipes into production was a new concept to Stats.

  “And these people,” Pops went on, “they can cause real trouble. They can hound you day and night. They can come knock on your door at any
time, bring in a U.S. marshal, and take everything.” He sent another look out across Shamut Ave. “It’s just that, you boys should know.”

  “Pops,” said Mark, “please tell me how much it is. How much do we owe?”

  Pops handed him the letter.

  Stats leaned over Mark’s shoulder to read along. The page was stamped in red: THIRD AND FINAL NOTICE! It showed account after account from four years ago and a grand total. It showed another amount for interest and lawyers’ fees. The final number was easy to find, typed out boldface, in both numerals and words. The agency claimed that, in total, Pops owed them One Hundred Thirty-one Thousand Nine Hundred Fifty-five Dollars.

  Stats mouthed a soft “Ho-oh.” He looked at Mark.

  Mark clamped his jaw tight and stood rigid.

  Someone banged on the door.

  CHAPTER 9

  Everyone turned and stared at the dark blue door.

  Mark took a step. “I’ll get it.”

  “Wait,” said Stats, casting uncertain eyes at Pops.

  “No, no, it’s okay.” Pops raised his hand. “Answer the door.” He stood, seeming ready to face whatever was waiting for him on the top landing outside.

  Mark walked over and grasped the handle, then cracked the door open.

  “Hit me with your best shot, Marko!”

  On the porch stood the one and only Billee Orbitt.

  “Hey, Billee.” Mark reached out and slapped the pitcher’s flattened palm. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just heading home, so I thought I’d stop by.” He peeked in. “Hey, Stat Man. Hiya, Pops.”

  Now standing at the head of the dining room table, Pops sent a big smile, as if his mood had been instantly transformed. “Good to see you, Billee. Come on in. Can I get you something to drink? Something to eat?”

  “Thanks. Iced tea, maybe? You make the best there is.”

  “Coming right up.” Pops shook a finger as he answered and retreated to the kitchen.