Faithful

by Stephen King

  In the bottom of the inning, Guerrero hits a sac fly to score Bengie Molina, making it 7–5. Vladi has all five of their RBIs.

  It’s midnight, past the Sox’s bedtime, and their bats go the way of Cinderella’s coach. The rest of the game, they manage just one two-out single.

  Pedro’s done after David Eckstein’s fourth single of the night (the former Sox prospect will go 5 for 5, the Angels’ first three batters a preposterous 12 for 13) and a four-pitch walk to Chone (pronounced Shawn) Figgins. I’m glassy, a little pissed off but dull and punchy, fatalistic. Timlin comes on to face Guerrero and ends up facing the left-field fence, watching a three-run shot knock around the rocks out there. It’s 8–7 and Guerrero has all eight RBIs. He pops out of the dugout for a well-earned tip of the cap.

  The Angels add two more in the seventh, when Foulke, coming in early in hopes of keeping it close, lets two of Timlin’s runners score. Guerrero’s in the middle of the rally again, knocking in his ninth run of the night.

  Sitting there by myself in the dark house, facing the screen, I have nothing to distract myself from the terrible baseball I’m seeing. There’s no one to commiserate with or to help absorb the loss; it’s all mine. We’ve hit the ball well enough, and while our outfield isn’t close to their cannon-armed trio of Jose Guillen, Raul Mondesi and Vladi Guerrero, we’ve fielded decently, but our pitching has been horrendous. All three pitchers we ran out there tonight got their butts whipped. By the ninth inning, as Francisco “K-Rod” Rodriguez strikes out David Ortiz and then Manny, I’m in a sour mood, blaming the Sox for my own impatience and irritability. The final’s 10–7, the third time in a week we’ve given up double digits—and we came in with the league’s best ERA. It’s one o’clock, only a three-hour game, though with all the scoring it feels like four, four and a half. I feel crappy and blue. I feel like I’ve earned the day off tomorrow.

  June 3rd

  Boston’s on the West Coast, and I hate it. We always seem to do poorly out there during the regular season, and the pennant hopes of more than oneRed Sox team have been buried in places like Anaheim and Oakland. This year is looking like no exception. The Angels have now beaten us twice in a row, and in both cases we’ve come from behind only to blow the lead again. Youch.

  And when they go out there, I always feel as if the Olde Town Team (Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy’s term) has voyaged over the curve of the earth and clean out of sight. News travels faster than it used to, granted—I can get game highlights on NESN instead of just a bare-ass score on the morning radio—but details are still pretty thin unless you actually stay up and watch the game, as O’Nan was threatening to do last night (and gosh, he must have gone to bed grumpy in the wee hours, if he did). What I want most of all is a box score, dammit, and there won’t be one until tomorrow, by which time last night’s game will already be old and cold.

  Or maybe Boston’s West Coast swing and current three-game losing streak are only cover stories for a deeper malaise. Later, in August and September, I’ll dumbly drop my neck and accept the yoke of fan-citizenship in Red Sox Nation, but in June and July I resist a rather distasteful truth: as summer deepens, I find that instead of me gripping the baseball—apologies to Jim Bouton—the baseball is gripping me. This morning is a perfect case in point. The alarm is set for 7:30 A.M., because I don’t really have to get up until quarter of eight. But I find myself wide-awake at 6:15, staring at the ceiling and wondering if the Red Sox managed to come back from a 4–2 deficit, which was where I left them. I’m also wondering if the Yankees, who were playing Baltimore at home, managed to win yet again. I’m thinking that the Orioles, with good hitting and fair pitching, must have managed to beat the Yanks at least once. I’m also wondering what Nomar Garciaparra’s status is, and if there’s any update on Trot Nixon.

  By 6:30 I can stand it no longer. I get out of bed (still cursing my own obsessive nature) and switch off the alarm. It will not be needed today. I go to the TV and have only to punch the ON button; it’s already on NESN, NESN is right where I left off seven hours ago, NESN is where the electronic Cyclops in my study is gonna be for most of the summer. Just like last summer. (And the summer before.) A moment later I’m sitting there on the rug in my ratty Red Sox workout shorts, hair standing up all over my head (“Your hair is excited,” my wife says when it’s this way in the morning), looking at Jayme Parker, who is for some incomprehensible reason doing the sports today on location from Foxwoods Casino, and although she’s as good-looking as ever (in her pink suit Jayme looks as cool as peppermint ice cream), all the news is butt-ugly: the Sox blew their lead and lost, the Yankees came from behind and won. The Evil Empire now leads the AL East by two games. Even Roger Clemens, the pitcher then-Sox general manager Dan Duquette proclaimed all but washed-up and then traded away, won last night; he’s 8-0 for the Astros.

  The Red Sox continue their West Coast swing tomorrow night. It’s way too early to liken this particular tour of duty to the Bataan Death March (although that simile has done more than cross my mind in other years, on other nightmare visits to Anaheim, Oakland, Seattle, and yes, even Kansas City, where we go next), but not too early to restate my original scripture: on the whole, I’d rather be at Foxwoods.

  Francona’s talking like Nomar will be back on Tuesday and that he’ll be used as a DH for a while, letting Pokey, Marky Mark and Youk stay on the field and in the lineup. Ultimately though, he’ll have to sit someone. Pokey’s the glove and the glue, Bellhorn’s the table-setter, but it’s hard to pull Youk after how well he’s played. For his .318 average and .446 OBP, he’s been named May’s AL Rookie of the Month.

  A stray stat in the paper: since 2001, the Yankees are 44-17 against the O’s.

  Make that 45-17, as the O’s succumb once again. They’re under .500 now. The problem, I think, is that the O’s are basically a cheaper version of the Yanks—so-so pitching backed by lots of free-agent bats. Like the Yanks, they’re designed to overwhelm mediocre clubs, a wise enough strategy in this post-expansion era (the same strategy the Yanks used in the ’50s, when their ace was the lackluster Whitey Ford and they feasted on the second division), but no guarantee of success in the playoffs. As the D-Backs, Angels and Marlins (and 1960 Pirates) have proven, to beat a club that grossly outspends you, you have to bring a whole different style of ball. There’s no way the O’s can match George’s payroll, so they’ll always be a few bats short.

  We’re two and a half back for the first time all year. It’s not a hole, but it will take a streak to get us back even.

  At the high school senior awards assembly, Caitlin’s friend Ryan, who we’ve been giving grief about his Yankees since April, says, “Have you seen the standings?”

  “Hey,” I say, “you guys’ll do fine if you only have to play the O’s.”

  June 5th

  It’s time to admit it: this is the dreaded Red Sox losing streak.

  Worse, it’s the dreaded Red Sox losing streak combined with the even more dreaded (and apparently endless) Yankee winning streak.

  No Jayme Parker on NESN’s SportsDesk this morning to ease the pain; it’s Saturday and Mike Perlow is subbing. And although I tune in at 7:12 A.M., near the end of the show’s fifteen-minute loop and during a story about the Olympic Torch reaching Australia (huh?), I already know the worst. Perlow is one of those late-twenty- or early-thirty-somethings who look about fourteen, and this morning there is no sparkle in the Perlow eye, no lift in the Perlow shoulders. We lost. I’m sure we lost. But of course I hang in there to be sure and of course we did. The unsparkling eye does not lie.

  Our pitching staff is having the week from hell. Derek Lowe lost to Baltimore in the Memorial Day makeup game; Bronson Arroyo and Pedro Martinez lost to the Angels; last night Tim Wakefield lost to the Kansas City Royals and Jimmy Gobble (a name at least as unfortunate as that of J. J. Putz). The Yankees again won by a single run—I don’t know how many one-run victories they’ve rung up so far this year, but it seems like a lot—and we
once more got half-bucked to death as KC put up a run here and a run there until the game was out of reach. It’s the kind of slow bleed that drives managers crazy. Mark Bellhorn did not help the cause any by running into an out between third and home, killing a potential rally.

  I think that for serious Sox fans, this sort of losing streak is exacerbated by the fact that the Yankees aren’t losing RIGHT NOW combined with the sinking feeling that they will NEVER LOSE AGAIN. For serious control-freak fans (sigh—that would be me), it’s exacerbated even more by the fact that I CAN’T DO A FUCKING THING ABOUT IT; all I can do is stand by and watch. Oh, and two other things. One is to remind myself that we owned first place less than a week ago, and are now three games out of it. The other is to try and find that Stephen Crane poem where theguy says he likes what he’s eating because it’s bitter, and because it is his heart.

  Stop that and stay upbeat, I tell myself. This is not impossible or even that hard to do on a beautiful June morning with the grandchildren on the way. It’s a long season, after all, and September is the only month where a losing streak can absolutely kill you, and only then if it’s combined with the wrong team’s winning streak.

  Besides, I have to think of Stewart, who stayed up until maybe two in the morning to watch one of those awful games with the Angels where we blew the lead in the late innings. Man, I haven’t even dared e-mail him about that. As for tonight, I have my choice: the new Harry Potter movie, or the Red Sox. If my older son actually does make the scene with the grandkids, I think I’ll let him decide.

  Who says I’m a control freak?

  Later: The headline of this morning’s Sox story in the Lewiston Daily Sun reads: GOBBLE FEASTS ON SOX. Hours later, while Peggy Noonan is getting all misty about the passing of Ronald Reagan on CNBC, I think, GOBBLE FEASTS ON SOX, and I crack up all over again.

  When you’re losing, you take your chuckles wherever you can get them.

  As I’m cutting the grass, my next-door neighbor Dave waves me over to the fence. Dave’s a big Bruins and Sox fan, and we have the occasional bitchfest about the sorry state of the two teams. Dave says the thinness of the roster is starting to show—that we’ve gone too long playing second-stringers. I say we’ve got to find a way to protect Manny; Tek and Dauber have struggled, and Millar’s been nonexistent. “And where’s our friend Mr. Kim?” Dave asks. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him.” I wonder where Mystery Malaska is, whether he’s in Pawtucket or on the DL. In the end, I tell Dave that it’s early and that we’ll turn it around.

  But really, do we need to turn it around? Are we really stumbling that badly? Even with this second streak, we’re still up there with the league’s elite. It’s a luxury, worrying about being three and a half back. A lot of clubs are already well out of it.

  June 6th

  7:30 A.M.: The Red Sox won last night. Schilling (now 7-3, God bless him) stopped the bleeding at four games and the Yankees lost, so for the time being, all’s well as it can be. [19] It’s funny, though, how being a fan takes over your life. Ronald Reagan died at 1 P.M. yesterday. At the time he left for that great Oval Office in the sky, he was ninety-three—the oldest living ex-president. And, I realize, he would have been seven the last time the Red Sox won the World Series. Hmmm, I think. That’s old enough to have a rooting interest. Wonder if The Gipper was a fan?

  You know what Ole Case would have said, don’tcha? Right. You could look it up.

  The latest Pedro worry is that he showed up at the clubhouse yesterday wearing a wrist brace on his pitching arm. When asked why he had it on, he told reporters, “Because it looks good.” Lately he hasn’t been able to throw his curveball, so this just sets off a wave of speculation that something’s physically wrong. We’ll find out Tuesday, when he’s scheduled to take on David Wells and the Padres.

  Nomar should be back for that game. Last night in Toledo he went 2 for 4 with a homer and a two-run double. I expect to be on Lansdowne Street Tuesday afternoon, trying to catch one of his batting practice home runs.

  5:30 P.M.: This was a good afternoon for we the faithful. First, the team Nomar Garciaparra is likely to rejoin on June 8th will be ten games over .500, thanks to today’s win. Second, Lowe went five respectable innings and then lucked into the win when his teammates scored five runs in the top of the sixth (the only inning in which they managed to score any runs). Third, and maybe most important, I finally saw signs that, yes, Derek Lowe cares. After giving up a two-run gopher ball to KC Royals batter Mike Sweeney in the first (“A ball that just screamed ‘hit me,’” commentator Sam Horn said in the postgame show), the camera caught a look of weary disgust on Lowe’s face that summed up all of his feelings about what must seem a nightmare season to a big-money player in his walk year. What have I got to do to get out of this? that look said. Or maybe What have I got to do to make it stop?

  Work is the answer to both questions, of course, and following the Sweeney home run, Derek Lowe worked quite hard. He’s clearly got along way to go—and at 5-5, he’s not looking like the answer to any team’s 2005 prayers—but at least he now looks like he’s awake, and that’s an improvement.

  Then there’s Mike Timlin, who’s old-time tough and has the looks to match, with his red socks pulled up almost to his knees and his no-nonsense low leg-kick and stride delivery. Timlin is, in my humble opinion, worth a Lowe and a half. He came on in relief of Derek, pitching a perfect three innings before turning the ball over to Keith Foulke. And if Mr. Mike wants to give all the credit to the Lord, more power to him.

  Oh, and by the way—did I happen to mention that Kevin Youkilis was last week’s Pepsi Rookie of the Week? Yep. Yesterday he hit his second home run. Today the Greek God of Walks just…walked.

  Hey, it’s good enough for me.

  June 9th

  I had a big day yesterday. The sixth of my Dark Tower novels, Song of Susannah, was officially published, and I was in New York to do promotion (mostly those morning-radio drive-time shows—not glamorous, and grueling as hell when you pile them up, but they seem to work). The original idea was to fly in from Maine on the evening of the 7th, get a night’s sleep, get up early, do my thing, and fly back late the next afternoon. Instead, I rearranged things on the spur of the moment so I could go to Boston instead. The attraction wasn’t so much the opening night of interleague play—this year the San Diego Padres are in Fenway for the first time—or Pedro Martinez, who has been less than stellar this year, as it was the bruited return of Nomar Garciaparra.

  Funny thing about that bruiting. Not only was Nomar not in the Red Sox lineup, he wasn’t even in Boston. He was in Rhode Island, where he played six innings for the PawSox and went 0 for 3. And no one seemed sure just how everyone got so sure he was going to make his major league debut last night in the first place. As I settled into my seat on the third-base line—call last night’s locale halfway between Kevin Youkilis and Manny Ramirez—I couldn’t even remember where I had gotten the idea. I even played with the notion of skipping the game altogether. I’m really, really glad I didn’t. Last night’s tilt would certainly have to go on my list of Steve’s Top Ten Games at Fenway Ever.

  The thing is, you never know when you’re going to be reminded whyyou love this game, why it turns all your dials so vigorously to the right. I’ve been at Fenway for three 1–0 shutouts, and the Red Sox have won all three. Wes Gardner, an otherwise forgettable Sox righty, pitched the first under a gorgeous full summer moon one night in the eighties; Roger Clemens pitched the second on a sweltering weekend afternoon in the early nineties; Pedro Martinez and Keith Foulke (who worked a one-two-three ninth) combined on the third last night.

  “The Pods,” as they are called (as in Pod-people, from The Invasion of the Body Snatchers? one wonders), may be strangers to Fenway, but their starter, David Wells, knows it well…and we, the Fenway Faithful, know him. Never inarticulate, Boomer has often expressed his distaste for pitching in the Beantown venue. And with good reason. Until last night, fresh off the DL,
I’d never seen him pitch well there. [20]

  He made up for that in his first start as a “Pod Person,” giving up just four hits, all singles, and working ahead of virtually every batter. This year’s Red Sox hitters are a patient bunch, and they usually wear pitchers out. Not Wells, last night; most of our guys just ended up getting in the hole 0-2 or 1-2, and slapping harmless grounders in consequence. If Wells hadn’t been lifted so as not to overuse him in his return, the game might still be going on.

  I think he was better than Pedro over the first five, and given Pedro’s postgame comments (“I want to build on this”), Pedro may have thought so too. [21] Martinez certainly got great defensive backing from his teammates, who have at times this season been decidedly…shall we say iffy?…in the field. Johnny Damon made a leaping catch in center, and Mark Bellhorn made a diving, dirt-eating stop between first and second. The stop was good, but what reminded me again—forcibly—of what makes these guys pros was how quickly he was back on his feet again. “Quick as a cat” ain’t in it, dear; “if you blinked you missed it” is more like it. But the defensive play of the night once again belonged to Pokey Reese,who has flashed divine leather all season long. I won’t bother describing it, other than saying he went to his left at a perfectly absurd speed, and maybe—maybe—got a helpful last-second bounce. I will tell you that I believe no other infielder except Ozzie Smith could have made the play, and relate two overheard comments from behind me, Charlestown accents and all: