by Stephen King
SO: Hey, imagine what Steinbrenner’s statue’ll be doing.
SK: Cast in bronze with his wallet out.
The Rivalry—April 18th
The Yankees have never beaten the Red Sox in the World Series; with both teams in the American League, that, of course, is impossible. Nevertheless, the Yankees (who are playing the Red Sox in the third game of their first four-game set of 2004 as I write this) have become the Sox’s principal rival over the last fifty or sixty years, and as someone who has written a great many scary stories during his career, I almost have to write about them. For Red Sox fans, the Yankees are the thing under the bed, the boogeyman in the closet. When they come to us, we expect bad luck on horseback; when we go to them, we expect, in our hearts, not to return alive. [3]
The rivalry has captured hearts in both Boston and New York, with fans cross-pollinating freely (and sometimes fistily) at the games. On April 16th, the New York Post’s front page showed a pin-striped Darth Vader with a Yankees logo on his helmet and a bat on his shoulder. It quoted Red Sox president Larry Lucchino, who in 2002 called the Yankees “the Evil Empire,” and trumpeted MAY THE CURSE BE WITH YOU. On the Fox Game of the Week that night (of course it was the Game of the Week, are you kidding), the announcers displayed a souvenir T-shirt proclaiming SHOWDOWN IN BEANTOWN. That one must have been officially sanctioned by Red Sox management. In the bleachers, the ones reading JETER SUCKS are much more popular. I understand there’s one featuring A-Rod with an even more obscene sentiment, but I haven’t seen that one yet (I’m sure I will). And how many fightin’ fans have been ejected by the security people over the years? I have no idea, but as Ole Casey used to say, “You could look it up.”
When there are fights, the first blows are usually thrown by Red Sox fans; the jeers and epithets chiefly come from Sox fans, too. Maybe Billy Herman, who managed the club from 1964 to 1966 (not stellar years), explained it best: “For Red Sox fans, there are only two seasons: August and winter.” Losing makes us sad… except when it doesn’t. Then itmakes us pissed. The attitude of your average pinstripe fan, on the other hand—unless and until directly attacked—tends to be one of indulgent, slightly patronizing good nature. Arguing with a Yankee fan is like arguing with a real estate agent who voted for Ronald Reagan.
I date the Sox/Yanks rivalry of the Modern Age from October 3rd, 1948, a day on which the Red Sox actually beat the Yankees, 10–5. What’s wrong with that, you say? Well, it got us into a one-game playoff game with the Cleveland Indians, one we lost, 8–3. That’s Heartbreak Number One.
Fast-forward past 1951 (Mickey Mantle makes his major league debut versus the Red Sox, Yanks win 4–0), and 1952–53 (the Red Sox lose thirteen in a row to the Yankees), and 1956 (Ted Williams fined for spitting at Boston fans after misplaying a Mickey Mantle fly ball, an incident Williams will never live down). Let us forget 1960, when the Yankees set the record for team home runs (192)…against Boston. And let us by all means wince past Roger Maris’s 61st home run, which came against Tracy Stallard…who pitched for Boston.
No, let’s move directly to 1978. “Nothing compares,” says Dan Shaughnessy in The Curse of the Bambino. “The mind calcifies. This was the apocalyptic, cataclysmic fold by which all others must be measured.” Yeah, and it was pretty bad, too. On July 20th of that year, the Red Sox led the Yankees by fourteen games. [4] Then came the infamous Boston Massacre, in which the Red Sox were swept—not at Yankee Stadium but at Fenway—by the Bombers in a four-game series. The Sox ended the season in a flat-footed tie with the Yankees, and lost the playoff game on Monsieur Dent’s Punch-and-Bucky home run, the pop fly heard ’round the world. That’s Heartbreak Number Two.
In 1999, the Red Sox went into postseason as the wild-card team and once again faced the Yankees. The Yanks won both of the first two games in the Stadium, both by one run; they qualify as Heartbreaks Number Three-A and Three-B. (Game 1 of this series, you may remember, wasthe one in which Chuck Knoblauch dropped a throw from Scott Brosius; the ump then ruled he’d dropped the ball while transferring it from his glove to his hand.) The third game, the first played at Fenway in the ’99 series, offered some small measure of revenge. In that game, Sox batters pummeled first Roger Clemens and then a parade of relievers, Pedro Martinez fanned twelve, and the Red Sox won, 13–1. It was the most lopsided loss in the Yankees’ postseason history, but in the end it made no difference; you can’t carry any of those runs over to later games, can you? In the following game, the Red Sox were victimized by another bad call, this time by Tim Tschida, [5] and the Red Sox ended up losing, 9–2. The Yankees won the final game, 6–1. That’s Heartbreak Number Three-C.
Whenever the eye of Red Sox management falls on a likely player, it seems that the Eye of Steinbrenner (like the Eye of Sauron in his tower) has also fallen there. It was very likely frustration as much as anything else that prompted Larry Lucchino’s “Evil Empire” comment following the signing of Jose Contreras [6] in 2002; there was even more frustration following the signing of Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod was willing to come to Boston; it was the Players’ Union that balked, citing a $15 million shortfall in Boston’s offer and claiming it would set a disastrous precedent (bullshit—ballplayers are even more egregiously overpaid than best-selling novelists). The fans understand the truth: George Steinbrenner’s your basic fat-cat owner. His pockets are deeper because his fan base is deeper. Current capacity at Fenway is about 35,000; at Yankee Stadium, it’s 58,000. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The differences carry over to all the ancillary goodies, from T-shirts to the big casino, TV telecast rights. Hummmm, baby…and while you’re at it, gimme that cable deal, sweetheart.
But enough dallying. We’ve reached Heartbreak Number Four, the one I’ve been putting off but can put off no longer. Worse than the Boston Massacre? Yes. Worse than the ground ball through Bill Buckner’s wickets? Yes. Worse, even, than the Bucky Dent cheap home run? Yes, because more recent. The wound is fresher; still bleeding, in fact. Part of me just wants to say, “If you don’t know what happened, look it up or go rent avideotape somewhere. It hurts to even think about it, let alone write about it.” Because, I think, we did more than come back; we were ahead. We were five outs away from beating the hated, feared Yankees (in their own house!) in the American League Championship Series and going back to the World Series for the first time since 1986. We had our fingers around that puppy, and it just… slipped… away.
The smart money had the Yankees winning that series, but the Red Sox took the first and fourth games behind Tim Wakefield, who simply bamboozled the Yankee hitters with his knuckleball… and who would issue the Final Heartbreak in the eleventh inning of Game 7. In between was the famous Game 3 rhubarb—more bad blood between two teams that have had it in for each other for what seems like a thousand years.
The trouble started when Pedro Martinez hit Karim Garcia in the back (narrowly missing his head). After Garcia was forced at second (taking Red Sox second baseman Todd Walker out with an ugly spikes-up slide), Yankee catcher Jorge Posada yelled at Martinez from the dugout. Martinez reputedly responded in charming fashion. “I’ll hit your head, too, smart-ass!” cried he.
In frame number four, Roger Clemens—never a gentleman—threw at Manny Ramirez, who responded by telling the Rocket he could go fuck himself. Roger responded by telling Manny that no, Manny could go fuck him self. A real meeting of the minds, you see. The benches erupted. Don Zimmer, the aging Yankee coach, [7] ended up rolling around on the ground, courtesy of Pedro Martinez. Later, Zim made a tearful apology… behavior which cost fellow New Englander Edmund Muskie his shot at the presidency, but maybe that’s neither here nor there.
In any case, the Yankees won the game. They also won Game 5 behind David (“Bostonians Are Psycho”) Wells. The 2003 ALCS returned to Yankee Stadium with the Bronx Bombers needing only one more win to go on to the World Series. But the Sox won ugly in Game 6, 9–6.
So, Game 7. The Red Sox got off to a 4–0 lead behind Pedro, the ace of the
staff. Jason Giambi then hit a pair of solo home runs for the Yanks; David Ortiz hit one for the Sox. It was 5–2 Red Sox in the eighth inning. Mayor Rudy Giuliani thought the Red Sox were finally going towin it. [8] Martinez got the first batter (Nick Johnson) he faced in that inning, and the Red Sox were five outs away from the World Series. For we Red Sox fans, that was the 2003 equivalent of Pickett’s Charge: as close as we ever got. Jeter (Jeter the Horrible, to Sox fans) doubled to right. Bernie Williams singled, driving in Jeter. Matsui hit a ground-rule double after Grady conferred with the tiring but game Martinez and decided to leave him in (hell, it had worked once or twice during the regular season). And still left him in to face Posada, who dumped one over second base to tie the game. The Red Sox manager finally came with the hook… but Red Sox Nation would pretty much agree it was too Little, too late. In the bottom of the eleventh inning, Mayor Giuliani told his wife and daughter, “You’re going to see your first walk-off home run”.[9] The batter was Aaron Boone, and he made the mayor a prophet. Tim Wakefield, the man who was arguably the most responsible for getting the Red Sox as far as they were able to go, served up the fatal pitch, but had nothing to hang his head about. The real damage was done with one out in the eighth.
And is there a reason to drag all this history into a book about the 2004 Red Sox? There sure is. More than one, actually. First, baseball is a game of history, and those who don’t learn from it are condemned to get drubbed by it. Second, even in a much improved American League East, the Yankees and Red Sox still seem, at this point in the young season, like the two dominant teams. [10] The tradition and history will hang over each of these matches like grandstand shadows over the infield at 5 P.M. The Red Sox half of the tradition, unfortunately, is one of losing the big games. The history half is one of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as on the night of October 17th, 2003.
Looking the other way, into the future (into the outfield, where the shadows have not yet reached, if you will), is the simple fact that the landscape of the American League East has changed since 2003; even two weeks into the season, that seems apparent. The lowly Tampa Bay Devil Rays (the previously lowly D-Rays) are at .500, and the previously lowly Baltimore Orioles are in first place. Those things will very likely change, but I think it’s likely that the Blue Jays, also improved, won’t finish thirty games below .500, as they would if they continued along at their current pace.
What all this means to the Sox/Yanks rivalry is that one team is apt to be called when the postseason bell rings, but probably not both. And that makes the knees of every Red Sox fan tremble, no matter what they may tell you, no matter what sentiments they wear on their T-shirts, no matter what vile canards they may call down upon Yankee outfielders from the Monster seats high above.
There is no calculus here; the math is simple. We all hate what we fear, and sensible Red Sox fans fear the Yankees. Now, on the eighteenth of April, the Red Sox lead the nineteen-game regular-season series two games to one. A great many other games will be played with a great many other clubs before the dust settles and the 2004 season is in the record books…but in my heart, I believe the American League East will come down to Them, or to Us. And because we fear what we hate, in my heart I always dread it when they come to us. The only thing I dread more is when we must go to them. I suppose it would be different if I could play, but of course I can’t; I’m helpless, doomed to only watch. To believe in the Curse of the Bambino even though I don’t believe in it. And to think of the late Stephen Jay Gould, who somehow rooted for both teams (maybe in the end that was what killed him, not the cancer), and who once said, “The deepest possible anguish…[is] running a long hard course again and again to the very end, and then self-destructing one inch from the finish line.”
Postscript—April 19th
This is Patriots’ Day, which is a holiday only in Maine, where it chiefly means no mail delivery, and Massachusetts, where it means the Boston Marathon and an 11 A.M. Red Sox game at Fenway. Today the Red Sox spotted the Yankees leads of 3–0 and 4–1, but “Bronson Arroyo settled down and pitched a good game,” in ESPN SportsCenter argot, and the Red Sox won it by a final score of 5–4. [11] I’m happy to report that A-Rod’s woes continue; he went 1 for 17 in the four-game series (hee-hee), the one hit was a meaningless single, and he made a throwing error in today’s tilt that basically cost the Yankees the game. So now we’re 3-1 with the Yanks, and can get back to the more normal business of playing baseball.
Whew.
April 20th
I read in the paper that in his first home game Dauber hit two homers, leading the PawSox to a 3–2 victory over Rochester. And to replace Frank Castillo, the Red Sox have activated lefty Lenny DiNardo, giving us four lefties in the pen for the first time I can remember. Must be setting up for this weekend’s series in the Bronx, that short porch in right. I hope these PawSox can get it done. I’d start resting Embree now.
The crowd in the Skydome tonight is around 6,000, despite the Pedro-Halladay rematch. The Maple Leafs are playing the Ottawa Senators in Game 7 of their playoff series, and at one point Eric Frede, NESN’s new man-in-the-stands, says there are more people in the concourse watching hockey than there are in the seats. Oh, Canada.
Pedro throws well and we win easily, but there’s a little bad blood in the ninth when reliever Terry Adams goes up and in on Manny. Manny ducks away, tossing his helmet aside, and stands squared with the mound, arms out, calling, “What do you want?” Earlier, reliever Valerio de los Santos knocked Ortiz on his ass with a pitch aimed at his face, so it’s not an over-reaction on Manny’s part, as Jerry claims. When their no-name pitchers throw at your big three and four guys, it’s on. The benches clear, and while there are no punches thrown, it’s a signal that we’re not going to take that shit. Expect newbie Lenny DiNardo to dust someone like Delgado tomorrow, or Timlin to plunk Wells or Phelps.
SK: Petey looked a lot better than Doc, didn’t he? Are the Yankees playing tonight? I tried to get ’em on the satellite, and they were playing some weepy old Thurman Munson short instead of the ChiSox. Red Sox win, Martinez goes 2-1. Time for Tom Caron and Bob Tewksbury, aka The Talking Board.
SO: Rain delay. The Yanks scored 7 in the first, so maybe that’ll get erased.
Tewks! You’ll notice he changed his hair from that ’50s style to something from the mid-to-late ’70s. And where the hell is Bob Rodgers? Do they have him in a cage under Car Talk Plaza?
SK: I think I’ll Google the sumbitch.
SO: Google away, dude, but I think Carmen Sandiego is working him over in a dank room with a DieHard and some piano wire. Long live TC and the new man-in-the-stands who looks like Ross Perot’s love child.
SK: According to the Globe (March 2nd, 2004), Rodgers left Fort Myers to coach a Whitman-Hanson boys’ basketball game in the MIAA Tournament. He left a recorded SportsDesk segment but did not get permission to do this. Both NESN and Red Sox management weren’t happy, and although the public word is that Bobby the Serial Killer “has left NESN to pursue other opportunities” (Sean McGrail), the fact is they canned his ass. According to Globe writer Bill Griffith, Red Sox management “has sent a message that there are new sheriffs in town.”
In a totally unrelated development, you should know that ex–Red Soxer Mo Vaughn is going to be the Grand Marshal of the fifteenth annual Hot Dog Safari on May 16th, at Suffolk Downs. It’s being billed “The Hit Dog and the Hot Dog.”
How the mighty have fallen.
By the way, Stew, Google also reports that a Bob Rodgers is reffing college soccer in the Boston area, but that may not be the same one.
SO: So he’s just out there somewhere, like Michael Myers.
SK: Dude! That’s it! Or Jason, only with a wimp-mask, sorta.
April 21st
A package arrives from the Souvenir Store (which is in fact Twins Enterprises now; the Sox have made it their official store) with the glossy 2004 yearbook, a blue windbreaker made in Korea and a T-shirt made in Uzbekistan. Now I�
�m outfitted for the summer. The yearbook must have been put to bed in late March, because there, sharing the same page, are Shump and Tony Wo.
UPS brings another present, a rough cut of a future episode of Kingdom Hospital called “Butterfingers.” The story line is familiar to Sox fans: Earl Candleton, the first baseman for the long-suffering New England Robins, drops a pop-up that would have won them the ’87 World Series. From then on he’s hounded by fans who call him Butterfingers and pelt him with balls. He descends into alcoholism, living in a fleabag of a mission in Lewiston. When the Robins go to Game 7 of the Series, with the game on the line in the bottom of the ninth, Earl holds a revolver to his temple. If the Robins win, he lives; if they fold, he dies.
Of course, they fold and he pulls the trigger and drops into a cobwebby purgatory as the doctors and kinder spirits of Kingdom Hospital try to save him. (The F/X haven’t been matted in yet, so there are scenes where a grip follows the waif ghost Mary around with the head of the benevolent beast Antubis on a stick.) In the end, the spirits, with the help of Peter, the artist in a car-crash-induced coma, allow Earl to go back to that moment in ’87 and make the catch, changing himself and the world. The two Down syndrome dishwashers who serve as oracles have the last word: “Baseball’s not always a sad game. Sometimes the good guys win.”
Tonight the matchup is Wake versus Ted Lilly, who beat us on Opening Day. Wake’s sharp and Doug Mirabelli, happy to be starting, wallops two homers to give us a 3–0 lead, but the Jays chip away.
SK: 3–2 in the sixth. This is turning into a nail-biter. Damn, I hate seeing all those .250 hitters in the lineup. Thank God for Douglas “Miracle” Mirabelli. Speaking of hockey, did you see his shot off the glass?
