Faithful

by Stephen King

  It’s a beautiful day, we’re in the front row, and Schilling’s on the mound. He’s throwing 92–93, with great location. KC’s throwing another kid, Jimmy Gobble, and I’m proud of the Faithful for not making turkey noises at him. He’s throwing well too, mostly soft breaking stuff. We get a run off him in the third, Bellhorn doubling in Johnny. The Royals get it back in the fifth when Santiago homers to the exact spot in M5 where I was fishing. It’s 1–1 in the fifth and the game’s not even an hour old.

  In the bottom of the fifth Pokey stings one down the right-field line. Gonzalez gets over to the wall by the Pesky Pole in time to cut the ball off—trying to hold Pokey to a single—but the ball slips through, bouncing past him along the wall and curling into the corner. Pokey’s rounding third as the ball comes in to cutoff man Desi Relaford. The crowd’s up—Sveum’s sending him. Pokey’s chugging now, and the throw’s on the mark. Santiago lunges with the tag as Pokey dives flat-out and slides a hand across the plate—safe! The place goes insane, a good three-minute celebration that lasts halfway through Johnny’s at-bat, and while we don’t score again that inning, we’re on our feet to salute Pokey when he trots out to short.

  “I’ve never seen an inside-the-park home run live,” Steph says. Neither have I.

  Schill is cruising, really stretching his arm out, throwing 94 and 95 now. He’s only given up three hits.

  In our sixth, Gobble’s breaking stuff stays up. Millar doubles, Manny doubles, Tek singles, Bill Mueller singles. It’s 5–1, and Mr. Gobble is cooked. For the second straight game former Yankee Jason Grimsley provides little relief. With two down and Kapler on, he leaves one in Pokey’s wheelhouse (it’s a very small wheelhouse, but it still works), and Pokey turns on it and sticks it in M3. “PO-Key, PO-Key!” He comes back out of the dugout and tips his cap. Two homers in two innings—it looks awesome on the scorecard.

  In the eighth, McCarty hits a two-run shot that keeps the party going, but the real ovation is reserved for Pokey. When he comes to bat the last time, the entire park rises. He’s never had a two-homer game in his career, but he’s been such a great defensive player, filling in for Nomar. Pokey pauses outside the batter’s box, soaking in the moment, and I think it’s a day he’ll always keep—the way we will.

  May 9th

  Another matchup to love: D-Lowe against weak lefty Darrell May. After a brief rain delay, Bill Mueller gets us on the board in the second, driving a high change-up into M3 with Tek on base. 2–0 and all the mothers in the stands are happy.

  The next inning, after Desi Relaford walks, David DeJesus hits a chopper to McCarty, who spins and fires to Pokey. DeJesus runs well, so the chances for two are slim, but it’s a good play, cutting down the lead runner. The throw’s perfect. Pokey comes off the bag for a look at first (there’s no one there), and though the ball beat Relaford by a good five feet and the neighborhood play’s in order, umpire Joe West calls him safe. Pokey can’t believe it. Francona comes out to argue, but it’s pointless. The replay shows that Pokey did indeed slide-step off the bag an instant before receiving the ball, so technically the runner would be safe, but in practice it’s an out 99% of the time. Lowe battles and gets two outs, but then Sweeney pulls a grounder down the line past Bill Mueller for a game-tying double. On the replay, broken down, it makes no sense: Sweeney’s a dead pull hitter and Lowe’s been working him down and in, yet Bill Mill’s playing him well off the line. Why isn’t someone in the dugout waving him over?

  The next inning, Pokey makes a leaping snag of a Joe Randa laser they have to show two or three times. In slow-mo it’s even more impressive; Pokey heads back on contact and does a little stutter-step before going up for it like he’s timing an alley-oop, leaps and snares it backhanded. The momentum of the ball sends him twisting around so he lands facing the Monster. “It’s like watching The Matrix,” Steph says.

  It’s a sedate game otherwise. May is spacing out the hits and Lowe’s struggling with his control but seems to get a ground ball whenever he needs one.

  That changes in the sixth. Joe Randa singles, and with two down, Lowe walks their eight and nine guys to load the bases. After Dave Wallace pays Lowe a visit, Angel Berroa, their leadoff man, hits a smash that Bill Mueller has to dive to stop. With Berroa’s wheels, there’s no chance at first, so he goes to Bellhorn for the force, but DeJesus is hustling and ties the throw. 3–2 Royals. Lowe’s gone and Mystery Malaska’s on to face the dangerous Carlos Beltran, now batting righty. He gets behind 3-0 and on 3-2 throws a fat pitch that Beltran pulls past Bill Mueller into the corner, clearing the bases. 6–2 Royals.

  It’s 8–3 in the bottom of the ninth and Steph and I are playing catch in the backyard, listening to the dregs of the game on the radio when Johnny knocks in Pokey. With two outs and Johnny on, Tony Pena—in a move I can only call paranoid, since he’s up four runs—changes pitchers. It works—der—and the winning streak is over. We turn it off and keep tossing, dropping balls and making plays, banging throws off the downspout, off the porch railing, off the shed.

  What’s worse than the Red Sox losing? The Red Sox losing and the Yankees winning, which they do, coming back from a 6–0 deficit to nip the Mariners 7–6. Back to a one-game lead. Baltimore won as well. If this three-team race keeps up, we’re in for a wild summer. It’s kind of strange, knowing we won’t see the Yanks again till the end of June, or the O’s till late July. I’m ready now.

  May 10th

  Brigham’s ice cream is coming out with a new flavor, Reverse the Curse. Vanilla with fudge sauce, caramel, chocolate and peanuts, the product looks suspiciously like their Big Dig, but I appreciate the sentiment. They say that after the Sox win this October, they’ll have a contest to rename it.

  The paper says Nomar took batting practice in the cage yesterday, another hopeful sign, but there’s still no schedule for his return. Trot’s headed back to Florida for more rehab on the quad. Also headed to Florida is Manny, to Miami, to become an American citizen. He’ll miss tonight’s game against Cleveland.

  He’s lucky. This one’s a mess from the very beginning. Besides Lou Merloni’s return to Fenway, there’s not much to cheer about. Kim’s ineffective, and the Indians can hit. They bang on the Monster three times in the first, giving Dauber a crash course in left field. He looks terrible on the first one—getting caught too close to the wall so Johnny has to come over and back him up—but on the last one he throws Ben Broussard out at second to end the inning.

  Dauber provides some offensive highlights as well, lining a two-run double off the wall and later homering into the Indians’ bullpen; he even backs up Johnny nicely on a double off the Bob’s sign, but the story of the game is Kim. He’s topping out at 86 and can’t find the plate. He and Tek get their signs mixed up, and an elusive passed ball scores two more. When Kim leaves with one out in the top of the fourth, he’s thrown 80 pitches, 46 for strikes, and it’s 4–4 with the bases loaded. The sellout crowd boos. Lefty Lenny DiNardo comes in and gives up a single to outfielder Coco Crisp.

  Cleveland leads the rest of the way, and the rest of the way is mighty ugly, a parade of relievers for both teams. DiNardo gives up a run of his own, Embree gives up a pair (thanks to Timlin, who walks the first guy he sees and can’t wriggle out of the jam), Malaska lets one in. Foulke, at least, throws a clean inning. It’s a long game, lots of base runners. Cleveland’s line score says it all: 2 2 0 2 0 1 2 0 1.

  The final’s 10–6. No alibis, no one play to point to, we just plain stunk. The whole Kim-Arroyo debate’s sure to heat up. I try not to overreact. It’s just one game, and tomorrow we’ve got Pedro going.

  May 11th

  Theo and Francona don’t waste any time: Kim’s out of the rotation, Arroyo’s in. They must have made the decision after the game, since it’s in the morning paper.

  SO: I really thought Mr. Kim would be an upgrade from John Burkett, but it sure doesn’t look that way. As a manager, how do you rebuild his confidence? As a general manager, how do you showcase him so oth
er teams don’t quit on him?

  SK: I’m really, really glad Kim is out of the starting ro.

  SO: Me too, but I had such high hopes for him. 190 innings, 15 wins. All shot to hell.

  Tonight it’s Cleveland at the Fens, and a rematch of Pedro versus C. C. Sabathia, who has to be the pimpest pitcher in the American League (maybe in all of baseball): big, baggy uni, hat worn cocked arrogantly to one side. We’re not off to a good start. After striking out the first batter, Pedro has allowed three straight hits (the second one tainted, a bouncer from Omar Vizquel off first baseman David Ortiz’s glove) and Cleveland leads, 2–0.

  At least it’s a decent night for baseball. I may have said this before, but it bears repeating: spring baseball in New England is usually rotten for the fans and sometimes dangerous for the players (especially the pitchers). I mean, night baseball in April? In Boston? Where the temperature’s forty-six degrees and the wind blowing in off the Back Bay makes it feel like twenty-seven? I’d say you’ve got to be kidding me, but we all know I’m not, just as we know it’s all about the money. Baseball is a lazy game, meant to be played on long, lazy summer afternoons and into the purple twilight—when fans so inclined can exchange their iced tea or Cokes for cold beer—but money has changed all that. Tonight at least we have a foretaste of summer: eighty degrees at game time, according to Joe Castiglione inthe radio booth, and coincidentally or not, it’s also Boston’s eightieth straight home sellout. Stewart O’Nan’s there tonight, I think. Lucky dog. This older dog will be there a little later on this month, when the warmth may be a little more reliable.

  Meantime, I have to look back on my own preseason musings about how much the AL East has improved—Orioles, Jays, D-Rays, blahblah-blah—and smile a little bit. Because now, as the Red Sox play into the second inning of their thirty-second contest of the season, it’s starting to look like a case of same as it ever was: Red Sox and Yankees, duking it out for first, with the long, hot summer stretching ahead. The Sox had a five-game bulge over the Yanks not long ago, but it’s been years since Boston seemed comfortable with anything like a real lead; they went into tonight’s game with just a half-game pad over the second-place Yankees and first place on the line. Baltimore is still in it, too, a game and a half back.

  My mother-in-law, meanwhile, with whom I watched a good many games in Florida, is now in the hospital with respiratory problems, but I know she’ll be watching on NESN. They’re watching all over New England, tonight and every other night, in the hospitals, nursing homes, rehabs, and hospices. It’s what we do, what we’ve done for going on a century now. They’re hitting Pedro pretty well tonight, and we’re down 2–0 in the second, Cleveland with two more in scoring position, but Pedro has also struck out the side in the first inning, and two more in the second. I pause in front of this keyboard every time he throws. I want him to get those six Ks. So does my mother-in-law, Sarah Jane, over in St. Joe’s, not to mention Leo the short-order cook at Nicky’s Diner down on Union Street, and Keith Jacubois at the Texaco station over in Montpelier. This is what we do, and we’ve finally got a decent night to do it on, and we may be behind, but there are no damn blackflies yet, and for the time being, we’re still in first place.

  Pedro walked Jody Miller, but now he’s 0-2 on Red Sox killer Victor Martinez. He comes to the belt…and strikes Victor out swinging. And all over New England they’re cheering in the hospitals, hospices, and roadside restaurants. When the Sox finally win this one two hours later, Pedro Martinez doesn’t get the W; that goes to Alan Embree, who gives up a go-ahead gopher ball and then vultures the victory when the Sox come back in the bottom of the eighth.

  The win allows the Sox to stay in first, because the Yankees beat the Angels—finally, after two rain delays, in front of approximately sixteen remaining fans—in the Bronx, in ten. The final score is high and Kevin Brown doesn’t get the win. The Yankees have finally started to roll, but their pitching remains suspect as ever—a good sign.

  And a rather endearing postscript having to do with our other Ramirez: to wit, one Manny. In Cleveland, he was usually silent and often viewed as sullen even when he was clearly enjoying the game. In Boston—a town where the sports reporters are often compared to the shark in Jaws—he has become more expansive with each passing year; not even management’s efforts in the off-season to trade him for A-Rod seem to have fazed him in the slightest, and by the kickoff of the 2004 festivities, Manny was downright chatty. Not stupid, though. Asked for a comment following the Sox five-game massacre of the Yankees, Manny’s deference was both charming and diplomatic: “They got all the World Series rings, man,” he said. “We got nothing.”

  He has been the one completely dependable hitter in the Red Sox lineup this year, at this date in May batting roughly eighty points higher than Alex Rodriguez, the man for whom Theo Epstein hoped to trade him. He has played in every game of the season except for this Monday’s (May 10th) trouncing by Cleveland, his old team. Manny was unavailable to play on that day because he was taking the U.S. citizenship test…which he passed. At the start of tonight’s game he ran out to his position in left field with a big grin on his face and a small American flag in his right hand. Manny’s People in left gave him a standing O.

  Way to go, Manny Ramirez—welcome to the real big leagues.

  May 12th

  Mr. Kim’s headed for Pawtucket, where they say he’ll throw only two innings at a time. Supposedly this will help him get back his velocity faster. Theo says BK’s shown he can dominate major league hitters, and that that quality doesn’t just go away, but it’s hard to tell if he truly believes this.

  A note in the Courant’s Sox column says that Trot took BP yesterday and hit some out, and that Nomar knocked a couple over the Monster. It’s possible, since the Sox were batting a little before the gates opened. I didn’t see Trot until after the game, congratulating the line of guys coming off, but I saw Nomar take around thirty swings, and nothing was close to going out.

  The website says right-handed reliever Jamie Brown will be taking Mr. Kim’s spot on the roster, making him something like our twentieth pitcher this season. Whatever happened to Bobby Jones? Instead of all these kid relievers, I’d rather see them bring up a big righty stick like perennial triple-A prospect Andy Dominique for late-inning situations. Twelve pitchers seems like a luxury, and I’m not sure we’re getting anything out of it. There’s such a traffic jam in the pen that Williamson hasn’t thrown in six days.

  Tonight it’s Wake versus Cliff Lee, a young lefthander who’s 3-0 with a nifty ERA. It seems every time the Indians have someone on, they take advantage of Wake’s slow delivery and steal. Twice Bellhorn lets throws from Mirabelli skip by him into center. The Indians get a run in the second, and the third, and the fifth, and two in the sixth on a Monster shot by Tim Laker. Wake’s just not sharp, and Lee is. In the ninth, down four, the crowd rallies. It’s louder than it’s been all night when Dauber’s pinch double scores Bill Mueller. Johnny hits a hopper up the middle; Vizquel and Belliard look at each other, and it rolls into center, scoring Dauber. It’s 6–4, and up to the plate steps the tying run in the form of Mark Bellhorn. The count goes 2-0, David Ortiz is on deck and Betancourt is sweating like Calvin Schiraldi. Just last week, Bellhorn hit that two-run shot in the ninth to tie the game against KC—at the same score too, 6–6. He must be thinking the same thing, because he goes fishing for a couple balls well off the plate and Ks to end the game.

  So Cleveland takes two out of three from us, and we go 3-3 on the home stand. Now it’s off to Toronto for four games—all against righties, mercifully.

  Please, please, let the Yankees lose.

  May 13th

  In the mail, a phantom piece: a pennant with the Sox logo and printed signatures of all the players surrounding WORLD CHAMPIONS 1986. Earlier this week I received a phantom soda cup that would have been sold at Wrigley during the much anticipated Sox-Cubs World Series last year. They’re not fakes, just survivors of large runs, the majorit
y of which were destroyed by reality. On eBay I’ve seen phantom tickets for playoffs and World Series dating back to the sixties, including some years in which we never even came close (say, 1970, 1987). There’s a twinge of pain attached to these no-longer-possible futures, but also, by the pieces’ existence, a validation of what should have happened.

  Unless something weird happens, we’re done for the season with Cleveland, and considering that we finished 3-4, that’s probably a good thing. “Looks like Wakefield’s carriage turned back into a pumpkin, Dad,” my son Owen said during last night’s postgame call. (Not so fast, kid—Wake’s been down before, but he’s never been out.) Now we’re on to Toronto, and what my other son likes to call the CreepyDome, because it’s been so empty over the last three or four years…and especially now, while playoff hockey is still wending its slow way through the lower intestine of bigga-time sport. [12] Schilling is starting for us tonight, and since Toronto beat him last time when Schill insisted on holding on to the ball in the late innings, this should be a game worth watching. But first I have to watch Jeopardy. This is Political Gasbag Week, and I have to root for Keith Olbermann, himself a recent émigré from the Land of Bigga-Time Sport.

  Later: “This one’s no masterpiece,” Jerry Remy of the TV crew opines in the seventh inning of tonight’s tilt, and that’s an understatement. Every pitcher seems to have one team he just can’t seem to beat, and for Curt Schilling, it’s the Jays. He went into this game with only one victory against them in something like half a dozen tries (that one win came in his Diamondback days), and he’s not going to improve on that record tonight. The final score is 12–6. Schill struggled, and he’ll probably get tagged with the loss, but that’s not the real story of this game; he only gave up three runs, and the Sox have already scored twice that many as we play into the eighth.