by Stephen King
September 4th
Sarah McKenna, a Red Sox media rep, calls me while I’m still doing my morning workout and flummoxes me by asking if I’ll throw out the first pitch before this afternoon’s game. The Farrelly brothers, she says, creators of such amusing (if not quite family-friendly) movies as Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary, are making a romantic comedy called Fever Pitch with a Red Sox background, and they want to re-create Opening Day, complete with sellout crowd and giant flag unfurling across the Green Monster. [49] I guess neither Ben Affleck nor Matt Damon is in town, and of course native son John Kerry is otherwise occupied this Labor Day weekend.
I want to do it—hell yes—but I’m still slow about agreeing. Some of my reasons are purely superstitious. Some, although pragmatic, are about superstition. The purely superstitious reasons stem from having thrown out the first pitch at Fenway once before, around the time I published a book called The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. That was a work of fiction, but in 1998, the year before it was published, Gordon was brilliant—that was a fact.
We lost the game at which I threw out that ceremonial first pitch, and not long after (my memory wants me to believe it was at that very game, but surely that can’t be right), we lost Gordon to an arm injury for the rest of the season. When the 2004 version of Tom Gordon shows up in these pages, he is, of course, wearing the uniform of the hated New York Yankees. And, only a month later, I was struck by a van while walking at the side of the road and badly hurt. Certainly if I had been a baseball player instead of a writer, my career would have been over.
So the last time I threw out a first pitch, bad things happened—for the team, for my favorite player on the team, and for me. Those are the superstitious reasons I’m slow about agreeing to Sarah McKenna’s proposal. The pragmatic reasons about superstition? Well, look. I know how superstitious the ballplayers themselves are, and the fans put them to shame. I mean, some guy actually risked his life to change that Storrow Drive overpass sign from REVERSE CURVE to REVERSE THE CURSE. And the press only eggs them on. Lately there’s been a story on several TV stations about a local Massachusetts teenager who got two of his front teeth knocked out by a foul line drive off the bat of Manny Ramirez. Because this kid just happens to live in the house where Babe Ruth once lived, the curse is now supposed to be broken. Broken teeth, broken curse. Geddit? This is the sort of numbnuts story you kind of expect from the local “If it bleeds it leads” TV in the doldrums of summer…but then, holy shit, the local papers pick it up too. So of course some people actually believe it. Why not? There are still people out there who think Fidel Castro had JFK shot and that cell phones cause brain cancer.
So one thing I know: if I throw out the first pitch and the Red Sox lose, if their ten-game streak ends this afternoon, I will get some of the blame. Because I’m not only a Red Sox fan, I’m (creepy music here) NEW ENGLAND’S HORRORMEISTER!!! And worse—what if someone gets hurt (someone else to go along with Trot, Pokey, and Johnny Damon), or the game ends with a bum call, or—God forbid—there’s some sort of accident in the stands? Or what if the Red Sox go on to lose ten straight, end up nine back of the Yankees again, and four behind Anaheim in the wild card? Nor is this an entirely unbelievable scenario, with three coming up against Oakland (on their turf) and then three more in Seattle, who has suddenly gotten hot. I’LL GET BLAMED FOR THAT TOO! THEY’LL SAY IT ALL STARTED WHEN THAT BASTARD KING THREW OUT THE FIRST PITCH ON SEPTEMBER 4TH!
So of course I say yes.
1 P.M.: It’s stifling hot behind the gigantic American flag, and I’m scared out of my mind. I can’t believe I’ve agreed to do this. On my previous pitching adventure, I only had to walk from the Red Sox dugout to the mound, a matter of twenty-five or thirty steps. Now I’ll be walking in from the deepest part of the park. I am, in fact, positioned just beneath CLE in the out-of-town section of the left-field scoreboard.
My introduction finishes. Marty, my Red Sox minder, lifts the flag forme. I step out into brilliant sunshine and off the warning track, onto green grass. The crowd roars, and I have to remind myself that the PA announcer has cued them to go batshit, has told them that the cameras are rolling, and that they should make as much noise as possible. Still, that forty-second walk is a remarkable period of time for me, every second crystal clear, and as I approach the rusty red dirt of the infield, the exact color of old bricks in a factory wall (I cross at shortstop, where Orlando Cabrera will soon be standing and where Nomar Garciaparra stood for so many years before him), I remember that I promised my daughter-in-law that I’d give the crowd the Manny Salute. I do so without delay, cocking my free hand and glove hand like guns, and the crowd roars louder, laughing and delighted, giving me a verbal high five. It’s probably the best moment, even better than toeing the blinding white strip of the pitcher’s rubber and looking in at Jason Varitek, squatting behind home plate.
Except maybe the moment before I throw is the best moment, because I can see him so clearly (there’s no batter, of course, and he’s not wearing the mask). His face is grave, as if he actually expects me to throw a sixty-foot strike in front of thirty-five thousand people—me, who does his best work in an empty room with a cup of lukewarm tea for company.
And I almost do. My pitch dips at the last second and hits that red-brick dirt just in front of home plate. Varitek catches the ball easily and trots out to give it to me (it’s beside me as I write this, a little red scuff on one curve) as the crowd roars its approval. Varitek is kind, calling it first a sinker, then a “Hideo Nomo strike three.” Too cool.
I try to shake his hand with my glove. That’s how dazed I am.
3:45 P.M.: The good times have rolled and now my darker fears are coming true. Tim Wakefield—my current favorite Red Sox player—is on the mound, and he’s getting lit up. When Terry Francona finally comes out and takes the ball, the score is 8–1, Texas.
4:25 P.M.: The Sox make a game of it, at least—Mark Bellhorn hits a grand slam, and David Ortiz follows with a bases-empty round-tripper—but in the end Boston falls two runs short. There is even that bum call I obsessed about, a phantom tag on Dave Roberts the second-base ump sees as one-half of the game-ending double play. Manny Ramirez is left in the on-deck circle, and the Sox streak ends at ten. I am 0-2 in games where I throw out the first pitch, and tomorrow the newspapers will blame me. I just know it.
SK: I got a LARGE charge out of throwing the first pitch today. Broke off a slider that hit the dirt in front of home plate. Varitek, laughing, called it a “Nomo strike three.” And then we lost. Shit. But still a great game.
SO: Saw you on the tube joking with Tek—v.v. cool. Taped it if you want it. Wake looked awful. What’s his record in day games? Because I’ve seen him at least twice get shelled on beautiful Saturday afternoons. I called the Bellhorn granny, and had a feeling Big Papi would solo right after that. If Bill Mill’s shot up the middle gets through in the eighth, Tek pinch-hits with one out, but that galoot made a skate save. Least the Yanks lost. One more and The Stand’s over. Be sweet to bury the Rangers right here right now. Mr. Schill on the hill.
September 5th
Bob Hohler’s Boston Globe piece on yesterday’s game leads like this: “Searching for scapegoats? Try horrormeister Stephen King, who tossed out a ceremonial first pitch.”
Blame the horrormeister. What did I tell you?
Please, baseball gods, let Curt Schilling win today.
A weird, glancing Sox experience today. We drive the two hours from Avon to Boston, and around game time we deliver Caitlin and all her stuff to her dorm at B.U., then go over to Beacon Street for a farewell lunch. Fenway’s less than a block from us, and fans headed for the rubber game against Texas stream past, decked out in their Red Sox best. So not only do we feel lost, losing Caitlin, it feels like we’re going the wrong way, or doing the wrong thing, as in some unsettling, ominous dream.
On the way home, three now instead of four, we listen to the game unfolding farther and farther behind us. Sc
hilling throws well, and we hold a 4–1 lead until the seventh, when Gabe Kapler adds two more with a bases-loaded single. It turns out that we need them, as Francona unwisely gives Schilling a chance at a complete game. Michael Young—again!—hits a Monster shot, and it’s 6–3 with one down when Foulke comes in. He gets an out with his first pitch, then gives up a single, a double, a single that makes it 6–5, until, finally, as we’re just pulling into the driveway, Bellhorn snares a knee-high bullet to save the game. Yi yi yi.
9:45 P.M.: It was closer than it should have been—the Rangers turned a 6–1 laugher into a 6–5 nail-biter in the top of the ninth—but in the end, Father Curt and the Red Sox prevailed. The Yankees also won (on a bases-loaded walk), and the Angels are winning, but for tonight, at least, I don’t care about the other guys. My personal curse has been lifted. Of course all that superstition stuff is the bunk, anyway, and we all know it. And with that said, I can take off my lucky shirt, turn my pillow lucky side up, and go to bed.
SK: D’ja see today’s Globe? I took the hit for the loss—I knew I would. Superstitious ijits. That’s twice I’ve tossed out the first pitch and twice they lost. Think I’ll get the call in Game 7 of the World Series? Steve “Just Call Me Hideo” King
SO: Hey, Hideo, YOU didn’t give up the three-run dinger to Michael Young. And Bellhorn’s comeback granny was some kind of magic. For a game we were basically out of, it was damn close. The way today’s was for Texas. Yeesh! Foulke had absolutely nothing. We’ll take the W and plant it on their grave. On to Chokeland!
September 6th
While some of the Faithful grouse that we’ve become more and more like the Yankees—signing free agents rather than developing our prospects—the team we most consciously resemble is Oakland. Theo and Bill James tend to follow the tenets of Moneyball, valuing on-base percentage above other indicators, and in our two seasons under their reign, we’ve approached the playoff chase like the A’s, staying close until the All-Star break, making a few deals and then charging. Beyond absorbing Billy Beane’s philosophy, we also appear to be importing players he’s already poached from other teams. Mark Bellhorn, Johnny Damon, David McCarty and Keith Foulke are all recent A’s, as is manager Terry Francona, Oakland’s bench coach in 2003.
So it’s no surprise that the A’s are our constant competition, and that the games we play with them are tight—a situation that ironically does not benefit a Moneyball club (since defense, speed and a closer are less highly prized in Billy Beane’s universe), but a smallball team like the Angels or a more traditional slugging club like the Yankees.
Tonight out by the East Bay, Mark Kotsay (who lost the last Sox-A’s game with his bobble of a Bill Mueller double on the track) solos twice off Arroyo early, but Bronson settles down, retiring eleven in a row. In the fourth Manny and David go back-to-back against Barry Zito to tie it. The game stays that way till the seventh, when Bill Mueller and Dave Roberts hit RBI doubles. The A’s rally to make it 4–3 after a terrible call in the eighth—Manny clearly traps a line drive by Kotsay, yet the ump calls him out—but in the ninth their lack of a pen shows, as Chad Bradford and the ever-unreliable Arthur Rhodes combine to give up four runs, three of them on a David Ortiz bases-clearing double, and we win 8–3. Thank you, Moneyball!
The Yankees, meanwhile, were scheduled to play a doubleheader against Tampa Bay in the Bronx, but due to Hurricane Frances the D-Rays were late getting to the Stadium and missed the first game. Yanks general manager Brian Cashman immediately lobbied the league office for a forfeit (the league turned him down, I’d hope with a look of disbelief). So while in Florida the storm has torn people’s homes and lives apart, the Yankees’ only thought was to use it to pick up an unearned win. Now that’s class.
September 7th
It wasn’t that long ago—at the end of this season’s fantasy August, in fact—that Red Sox writers and commentators (not to mention your run-of-the-mill bleacher creatures) were saying that Boston’s postseason chances might hinge on how well they could do in the upcoming nine-game stretch against the big fish of the AL West, before leaving those sharks to swim—and hopefully to bite one another as seriously as possible—in their own tank. Most hoped for six wins at most, two against the Angels, two against the Rangers, and maybe two against the Oakland Athletics. Many partisans would have been satisfied with five. Few, I think, would have guessed at our current position: six wins and one loss with two of the nine-game set left to play.
When the Red Sox last visited Oakland, during the playoff seriesagainst the Athletics in the fall of 2003, they left a bunch of pissed-off A’s and A’s fans behind. The same was true following last night’s rematch, the only difference being that we have to play them again tonight instead of next year, and tonight the chief object of the A’s ire will be on the mound. That would be the tragickal Mr. Lowe, who supposedly made an obscene gesture toward the Oakland bench after striking out the final player of the game.
The animus of last night’s Oakland Coliseum attendees was directed not at any Red Sox player so much as it was at the ump who ruled Mark Kotsay out after Manny Ramirez appeared—from the ump’s perspective—to have made a rolling, tumbling catch of Kotsay’s dying-quail line drive. Manny actually caught it on what’s known as “the trap-hop,” a fact his diving body obscured from the umpire, who fearlessly made the call, anyway. Manny himself acknowledged this in the locker room, after the game. “I knew I din’ catch the ball,” he said, “but the umpire say I catch the ball, so the guy’s out.” He then shrugged, as if to add, Tough luck, Mark…but we gotta jus’ keep goin’.
To add insult to injury, Kotsay made almost exactly the same play on a Red Sox dying quail of a liner later on in the game, only this time the ump saw the ball hit the ground and ruled the batter safe. Kotsay raised his arms in frustrated body English even a baby could read: Aw, come on! Gimme a makeup call here, Blue!
No makeup calls for Oakland (not last night, anyway), and it probably wouldn’t have helped; in the end, the game just wasn’t that close. That didn’t stop the angry Oakland fans from hurling their trash into the outfield, however. It was a sight that filled me—I admit it—with childish glee. I had zero sympathy for their outrage, given the ump’s honest effort to make an honest call; not so soon after the blown call on Dave Roberts that ended our game against Texas three days ago, and probably, if I’m to be honest, in no case. [50] Blown calls are, after all, a part of the game, and the fans’ rage somehow made this one even tastier. That’s right, ya babies! I thought, watching the hot-dog cartons and empty beer cups rain down. The umps are relaxing in the Officials’ Room, probably soakingtheir tired feet, so take it out on your grounds crew! Go on and chuck that shit, why not?
Are Oakland fans coming to hate us the way we hate the Yankees? There’s an interesting thought.
Trot comes off the DL today, and Pokey, and Johnny, who’s been out with a strained pinkie (when in doubt, pinkie out), is back in the lineup. Scott Williamson, who’s been gone a long time, throws batting practice to Trot and may be ready soon. Mr. Kim, however, appears done for the year. The PawSox finished their season yesterday (as did Cesar Crespo and Brian Daubach, who both contributed to the big club early on), and Theo says they’re putting together a conditioning program so the $10 million man (and his eleven innings of work this year) will be ready in the spring.
Of course, there’s nowhere to put all these guys. The roster, like the dugout, is overflowing. Youk hasn’t seen action in weeks, or McCarty, or Ricky Gutierrez.
No one’s going to rock the boat, though. The team’s doing too well. Tonight Johnny celebrates being back in action by leading off the game with a home run. It’s Derek Lowe’s first appearance in Oakland since his alleged crotch-tugging in the direction of the A’s bench after clinching last year’s divisional playoffs, and the crowd lets him know it. He scuffles early (as usual), but Gabe Kapler clocks a two-run shot for a 3–0 cushion, Billy Mueller makes three highlight-reel stops at third, and once again we bul
ldoze their number four starter Mark Redman for a 7–1 win, making us 7-1 in our gut-check stretch against Anaheim, Texas and Oakland.
September 8th
I’m primed to stay up late and watch the Pedro–Tim Hudson series finale, hoping for the sweep, but Hudson can’t find the plate, and after three it’s 7–0 Sox and he’s gone, and we haven’t really even hit the ball yet. What do you do when the one strength of your club fails you? You lose. We sweep the A’s at home after sweeping them in Fenway in July.
Even better, the Angels lose, so we’re five up in the wild card. And the rain left over from Hurricane Frances—in a fitting revenge—wipes out the Yanks-D-Rays doubleheader, so we’re only two back in the East, and with the makeups, their rotation’s a mess.
September 9th
The Red Sox offense didn’t beat Tim Hudson last night, and Pedro Martinez can’t exactly take credit, either. After walking the first three batters of the game (four in the first inning) and giving up a double to David Ortiz and a single to Jason Varitek, Hudson pretty much did the job on himself.
Meanwhile, the Yankees’ current series with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, [51] a seemingly endless exercise in baseball existentialism during which the D-Rays never win and the Yankees never seem to gain ground in the standings, is continuing this afternoon, with the New Yorkers leading in the first game of a doubleheader by a score of quite a bunch to one. I could check and get an exact score, but it hardly seems worth it. Based on my last peek I can tell you that a.) there’s hardly anyone in the stands at the Stadium, and b.) Rocco Baldelli looks like he wishes he were playing for the Tokyo Sunflowers, assuming there is such a team. After last night’s rainout and the Red Sox win in Oakland, the gap in the AL East shrank to a mere two games for the first time since early June, and reading the sports pages of the New York tabs has become a wonderfully cheering pastime for Red Sox fans; the Post and Daily News baseball columnists, used to a steady diet of Yankee triumphs down the stretch, have started to sound like holy-rolling revival-show ministers, warning that the Horsemen of the Apocalypse are on the horizon: Behold, I saw a pale horse, and on him was Manny, and he spake, saying, “Hey man, we gotta jus’ keep goin’.”
