Faithful

by Stephen King

  The Sox without Nomar. It seems like a defeat, whoever’s fault it is.

  During the pregame, Theo talks about how we needed to fix our defense, as if that’s what drove the deal. Then, because we have nowhere else to put him, we start Millar in right even though Kapler’s been hot. (Steph notes that the music behind his highlights from last night is Tenacious D’s “Wonderboy.”)

  The game is anticlimactic after the video of Nomar leaving the clubhouse for the airport. The announcers—all of them paid by the Sox—put the best face on the deal they can, picking at Nomar’s attitude and his heel. Where’s Eck when you need him? (Cooperstown, being inducted.)

  Lowe throws okay, so does Radke. The biggest moment is when Doug Mientkiewicz steps to the plate for the first time in a Red Sox uniform. Mientkiewicz is a lifelong Twin, and the Metrodome rises and gives him a noise-meter-worthy ovation. He has to step out to collect himself, and I realize we never had a chance to say good-bye to Nomar (we didn’t know it, but that Sunday-night game against the Yanks was his last home game).

  It’s a close game late, tied in the eighth when Embree comes in with one down and the bases empty to face lefty Jacque Jones. He gets behind him, then aims a fastball. Jones cranks it, flipping his bat away. The ball lands ten rows back.

  Joe Nathan, throwing 98, closes with the help of Francona. Mientkiewicz singles to open the inning; Kapler pinch-runs. Millar, who should be bunting, swings away. On an 0-1 count, Kapler goes and Henry Blanco guns him by ten feet. Millar flies out. It’s a terrible at-bat on all counts, an embarrassment. Bill Mueller then steps in and pulls a long shot down the line—foul. He singles (it would have easily scored Kapler), then takes second on a wild pitch before Youkilis strikes out.

  Overall, just a tough day to be a Red Sox fan. Seems like everywhere we turned we did something stupid and got our asses kicked.

  There are sixty games left, and we’re pretty much where we were last year. It’s time to put a stretch drive together. Or else.

  August

  THE HOTTEST AUGUST ON RECORD

  August 1st

  Let the juggling begin. Cabrera reports; to make room we send down Andy Dominique. Since we’ll see four lefties over the next five games, David Ortiz drops his appeal and begins serving his suspension for the bat-throwing incident in Anaheim. Millar’s at DH, McCarty at first and Kapler in right—or would be, except Johnny tells Francona during BP that he’s having trouble picking up the ball because of the afternoon sun further lightening the Metrodome’s translucent white roof. So Johnny is the least DH-like DH in Sox history, Kapler’s in center and Millar’s in right.

  Cabrera’s batting third, which I think is a mistake, but in the first, in his first at-bat as a Red Sock, he takes Johan Santana deep. Then in the bottom of the inning he can’t handle a chop over Pedro’s head.

  It’s a tight game, like last night’s. Kapler guns Corey Koskie at home, but Tek bobbles the throw and Koskie steamrolls him. Torii Hunter goes back to the wall and casually robs McCarty of a home run. The next inning, McCarty makes a diving stab of a Hunter shot down the line. Manny hits a solo blast to give us the lead again, but the Twins use smallball to scratch back even.

  To lead off the seventh, Santana hits Tek. To get more pop in their lineup, Matthew LeCroy is catching instead of Blanco, and Tek steals on him. LeCroy wings the ball into center—Tek to third. Millar then hits a high, medium fly to right. Center fielder Torii Hunter races over to take it from Jones, since he’s got the better arm. He’s in position behind him, but somehow they don’t communicate, because Jones never yields. He takes it flatfooted and his throw is up the first-base line, and Tek scores standing up.

  Pedro’s brilliant through seven, striking out 11. Santana goes eight, ringing up 12.

  Though Pedro’s thrown only 101 pitches, Francona goes by the book, bringing in Timlin to set up. Timlin gives up back-to-back singles and doesn’t record an out. On Embree’s first batter, the young slugger Justin Morneau, the Twins pull a double steal. Morneau then skies one to deep right-center. It’ll tie the game, no doubt. Kapler has to go a long way to make the catch, then fires a no-look throw back toward the infield. It sails over the cutoff man, Bellhorn, and Cabrera runs over from second to corral it. He must look up to check the runner, or maybe he nonchalants it, figuring the play’s over, because the ball knocks off his glove, and he kicks it—literally kicks it—toward first base. On a real field, the grass stops the ball, but since we’re in the Homerdome, it rolls away across the carpet, and by the time Cabrera chases it down and throws home, Lew Ford’s sliding in safely, and we’re down 4–3. Welcome to the Red Sox.

  Joe Nathan gives us an opening in the ninth, hitting Bellhorn, but we don’t bother to bunt him over (hey, why change now). Cabrera strikes out, lunging. Manny hits into an easy 6-4-3 turf job, and we lose a carbon copy of last night’s game, wasting another quality start.

  On The Simpsons, Comic Book Guy—a true loser—has a Red Sox pennant hanging in his shop. I channel him now: worst weekend ever.

  August 2nd

  When I entered in this diary on July 2nd, we’d just been swept out of the Bronx and had fallen eight and a half games back in the AL East. Now, a month later, we’re nine and a half behind the Yankees, who continue on cruise control. The Yanks don’t have much in the way of pitching, but it doesn’t seem to matter; they simply whale the tar out of almost every team they go against. The Red Sox are one of the rare exceptions, but they can afford to ignore us, at least for the time being. Who knows, they may not have to worry about us even in October. For the first time this season one team—it’s the Oakland Athletics—seems to have a solid hold on the wild card. [31]

  We’ve lost both of the games we’ve played since the big Garciaparra trade, but I actually don’t feel too badly about that, even though both were of the tooth-rattling one-run variety. For one thing, both of our new players contributed to the offensive effort (okay, okay, so Cabrera—who hit a home run in his first Red Sox at-bat—also cost us yesterday’s game with an error in the bottom of the eighth). For another, the Twins are very good this year, and I’d expect them to take two out of three in their house, just as I’d expect us to take two out of three from them in ours.

  But now we finish the year’s longest road-trip playing teams that are either sub-.500 or close to .500, and here I agree with the conventional wisdom: this is probably the season’s last decisive turning-point, and I’ll be watching these games very, very closely. For the next two weeks it’s not going to do to just play .500 baseball on the road. I’m hoping we can win eight of the next dozen, and from now until the middle of the month, I suspect this diary will be hearing from me often.

  August 3rd

  Mark Bellhorn goes on the DL with a thumb fracture after taking that pitch on the hand, joining Pokey, meaning Francona has more platooning to do. The press is on him about the logjam at first. How is he going to keep all of his players happy? I may not have much confidence in Francona, but at least he has the right answer: “That’s not what we’re here to do.”

  Last night Wake won on his birthday, a quiet indoor affair with less than 10,000 guests. For tonight’s game with the D-Rays Francona pencils in the most alien infield yet: Youk at third, Cabrera at short, Bill Mueller at second and Mientkiewicz at first. Dave Roberts starts in right for only the fourth time in his life, and leads off, followed by Cabrera and Johnny. The new speed lineup does nothing, but Tek hits a two-run shot and Bill Mueller knocks in three more from the six-spot. Schilling (a new guy himself, not so long ago) goes the distance, but the post-trade face of the Sox is just weird.

  August 4th

  I didn’t know how brave I was, asking the Red Sox to win eight of their next twelve, until Jayme Parker (looking cool and beautiful this morning in off-the-shoulder black) tells me that the Sox haven’t won back-to-back road games since June. But they managed the trick last night, and now, instead of needing to win eight out of twelve, they only (only!) need to win si
x out of their next ten. That means playing .600 ball instead of .666, if you’re of a statistical bent.

  Although I haven’t kept an exact count (“You could look it up,” I hear Ole Case whispering), I’d guess we’ve got in the neighborhood of fifty-five games left to play. Eleven of them are with the formerly hapless Devil Rays, and this makes me happy, because the D-Rays, after running off a gaudy string of wins (almost entirely against National League teams) before the All-Star break, seem to be subsiding into their former state of haplessness, and fast. Manager Lou Piniella rode his horses hard during the streak (“ran their dung to water,” my wife would say), and now they seem punchless and reeling. Tampa Bay management has done its part to destroy team morale by trading D-Rays’ ace and chief workhorse Victor Zambrano to the contending Mets. All of which makes me sorry for them, but not too sorry to take pleasure in Tim Wakefield’s win two nights ago and Curt Schilling’s complete-game victory last night. Not too sorry to hope that Bronson Arroyo can complete the sweep tonight, either, although I doubt the Rays will let that happen. They ain’t quite that hapless.

  SK: Two in a row! For the first time since June! Schill gets the complete-game win! Manny crashes into the left-field wall! Plays dead! Arises and hugs the reincarnation of the Lizard King! Film at 11!

  Go, you old Red Sox! Lou Piniella blew his hosses out in June and July, and we get to ride them spavined old nags eleven more times before the end of the season! I’m hoping (praying, actually) that we can take six of the next ten, to make it eight out of twelve after putting the Twins in our rearview mirror. GO, YOU OLD RED SOX!

  SO: After the June Swoon and the July Drive-By, I’m a little leery. Who are these guys anyway? I was just getting used to Ricky Gutierrez at short and here comes Cabrera. I almost feel bad for Francona, having to glue together a lineup from these bits and pieces. Thank God for the Devil Rays. But eventually we’re going to have to beat the Twins. And the Angels. And the White Sox.

  SK: Francona’s a dork. And that’s true, but first we’re gonna see the Tigers, who are currently 50-56. I’d like to finish these six games at 4-2 and would LOVE to be 5-1. Wouldn’t it be great to get like fourteen or fifteen games over .500?

  SO: The Tigers have been revitalized of late. Dmitri Young’s back from that broken leg, and their young pitchers have turned in some hellacious games, so we better be ready for a scrap. Let’s not look past tonight, though. Francona may not know it, but they all count the same.

  SK: I just went to check the game. When I sat down to write this e-mail, everything was okay; we had a three-run lead and Arroyo was cruising. Now we’re down 5–4, thanks to a Youkilis error (more damn errors) and a Toby Hall granny.

  “Stewart and Stephen,” said the old psychic dwarf-lady, “your nightmare continues.”

  SO: And now Dave Roberts just got pegged at home in the ninth with NOBODY OUT, and we lose by a run. Congratulations, Dave, you made the Hall of Sveum on your first try.

  August 5th

  Still, we almost got the sweep. Leading 4–1 in the seventh—and cruising—Bronson Arroyo gave up a single and a walk. A Kevin Youkilis error loaded the bases for Tampa Bay with no outs. Then catcher Toby Hall, 0 for his last 18, parked one. Make that score 5–4 Rays, and it stood up. In the Boston half of the ninth, newly acquired Sox speed merchant Dave Roberts, running for Kevin Millar and egged on by third-base coach Dale Sveum, tried to tie the score from second on a Doug Mientkiewicz single. [32] The all-or-nothing dash for home is always a thrilling play, but this time it went Tampa Bay’s way. Center fielder Rocco Baldelli threw a bullet to catcher (and home-run hitter) Toby Hall, who made it easy for the umpire, not letting the willowy Roberts anywhere near the dish. Mientkiewicz got as far as third, then died there when Johnny Damon poppedup to end the game. It was another tooth-rattling loss (especially since both the Yankees and the Rangers, our current wild-card competition, won their games), but Tampa Bay hasn’t been swept at home all year, so all you can do is tip your cap to them and move on. In this case to Motown, where the Tigers wait.

  We’re 2-1 in the current twelve-game stretch, and I’m still hoping to take six of the next nine. I know that sounds steep, but at some point this team just has to start setting some steep goals. And meeting them.

  SK: I couldn’t tell from the paper (or the game) if Sveum sent him. I guess he did. (My son Owen sez the same.)

  SO: Sveum sent him, then said afterward that Rocco Baldelli hasn’t made a lot of good throws. Only enough to lead the league in outfield assists last year, Dale.

  SK: It was a move reminiscent of Wendell “Send ’Em In” Kim. A moment of desperation? A brain cramp? I mean, we could have had guys on first and third with none out! By the way, how many games has this team lost by one run this year? What we have here is a team that’s so agonizingly close to being good enough…but not quite. You heard it here first: I don’t think we’re going anywhere but home come October. How I hope they prove me wrong.

  SO: I think he blanked—entirely spaced on the situation. And it wasn’t like he was sending Ortiz or the Dauber. Even Roberts’s wheels couldn’t make up for it.

  We’re pretty much where we were last year. Just hope the bats come alive, the teams out West knock each other off, and the ChiSox pull their usual swoon.

  August 6th

  SO: What the hell happened with John Olerud? Seattle was in the cellar and figured they’d dump him and go with a youth movement, I understand that, but I thought they dropped him so they could dangle him in front of teams like the Yanks, hoping George or some other nut would pick up his big salary. Then I read in the paper that the Yanks grabbed him and are paying him the minimum 300K while the M’s are eating 7 mil. Wha’? Huh?

  And Theo—in his Defense Is Good mode—has been crowing over Mientkiewicz’s old Gold Gloves. Olerud’s got a closetful of ’em, plus he’s one of the purest hitters to ever play the game. So, if we had to have a fourth first baseman (Dauber being condemned to the fifth circle, called Pawtucket), instead of the crummy Nomar deal we swung, we could have had Olerud for 300K and the time it took to sign him, and then could have maybe gotten a middle reliever/setup guy to spell Embree and Timlin, who look tired and beaten out there.

  SK: Ah, but Olerud wouldn’t have looked as good to the cannibal Boston press, which will never speak to me again after they read the August portion of my diary. AND I DON’T CARE. I mean, do you doubt a bit that Mientkiewicz and Cabrera were, to some extent, PR gestures?

  SO: But—and this is where my forehead starts to pulse like Scanners—didn’t we already have a great defensive first baseman in McCarty? And doesn’t getting Mientkiewicz now make him totally expendable? I just don’t get it. Unless we’re putting together some weird MGM production number where every utility shortstop on the team fields a grounder and throws to a matching first baseman for a grand, ceremonial 6-3.

  SK: Amen, brother. I’ve been thinking this for two weeks. When we get Varitek playing first, it’ll be the fooking hat-trick. Orlando Cabrera is actually Cesar Crespo by way of Stepford. Yours ever, Ira Levin.

  Ted Williams disliked and distrusted the Boston sportswriters. His appellation for them—“The Knights of the Keyboard”—was sarcastic and contemptuous. This doesn’t make the Splendid Splinter an aberration but rather the first in a tradition. In the current era, Carl Everett was sent hence from Boston with his ass on fire and the tag Jurassic Carl hanging from his neck. Manager Butch Hobson (never one of my faves, believe me) became known—sarcastically—as Daddy Butch. Pedro Martinez, a proud and emotional man as well as a wildly talented pitcher, has felt so disrespected by Boston’s Knights of the Keyboard that he has on at least two occasions vowed never to speak to the media again (luckily for fans, his natural gregariousness has overcome these resolutions). Dozens of Red Sox players, past and present, could tell horror stories about how they’ve been treated by Boston’s sportswriters, who now serve just two papers (if you exclude such peripheral rags as the Phoenix and Diehard, that is
): the Globe and the Herald. The Globe is the more influential, and by far the more vitriolic. Its most recent acid-bath victim has been Nomar Garciaparra.

  The story being disseminated by the writers—Dan Shaughnessy leading the pack—goes something like this: Nomar was never a team player; Nomar was a downer even at the best of times; Nomar had a line in front of his locker to keep the media from getting too close; Nomar told multiple stories about his conversations with Red Sox management before the trade that sent him to the Cubs; Nomar expressed doubts about how much of the regular season he’d be able to play because of the injury to his Achilles tendon. (This last is supposed to help we poor benighted fans understand how Theo Epstein could have traded one of baseball’s five premier infielders for what boils down to a pair of journeymen with good defensive skills.)

  And yesterday, more dirt: According to the Globe, Nomar may have lied about how he came by that sore foot in the first place. In spring training we were told—by Nomar—that the injury was the result of a batted ball. Now, according to the Globe, Nomar is supposed to have told somebody or other that the injury cropped up on its own. If so, yesterday’s story went on to speculate, he may have confabulated the whole batted-ball story in order to keep his market value from going down in his walk year. Because you can heal from an injury, right? But if your body starts to give out on you…that’s a different deal altogether. And the source or sources of this story? Do you even have to ask? Not named. Little more than back-fence gossip, in other words, just one more yap of the fox who wants to believe that, oh yeah, those grapes were sour anyway…and by the way, that big-deal shortstop all the kids love? What a hoser! What a busher!