Faithful

by Stephen King

  Meanwhile, on other fronts:

  The hapless Devil Rays will be more hapless still if Ivan, third and worst hurricane to menace Florida in the last thirty days, blows away their JuiceDome down there in Tampa; like a certain unlucky Jew, they may be doomed to simply wander, dragging their dusty equipment bags behind them, playing everywhere and always batting in the top of the first. “We once had a home,” they’ll tell those who will listen. “It wasn’t very full, and most of the folks who showed up were old, many equipped with shunts and pee bags, but by God it was ours.”

  In Foxboro, the New England Patriots, proud winner of exactly one preseason game, prepare to defend their Super Bowl title.

  And on I-95, just north of Augusta, Maine, at a little past noon and in a driving downpour (the remains of Hurricane Frances, or so the radio assured me), I saw an oak tree blazing with orange leaves.

  Football, autumn colors, hurricanes: omens of the end. Hurry up and finish your four games with Seattle, Red Sox. Hurry up and come home. It’s almost time to deal with the Yankees.

  SO: Maybe because all this is happening late at night way out West there isn’t the crazy celebrating like last week, but it almost seems too easy, too calm. It’s quiet…too quiet.

  SK: It’s like people are getting used to it. If so, bad people. Bad people. Ungrateful, BAD people. Or maybe, who knows, they’re just not as crazy as we are. Also, they ARE away. And some people DO have to get up and go to work. Not us, I mean, but SOME people.

  Tonight in the top-left corner of the country, Seattle throws a rookie lefty I’ve never heard of—Bobby Madritsch, whose route to the bigs included time in the independent leagues, the outlaws of the minors—while Tim Wakefield takes the hill for us. Wake came out flat in his last start (our last loss), so he’s due for a solid game. Wrong. The Mariners score early and often, and when a fly to the track goes off Manny’s glove in the fifth for a two-run error, this one’s done. We lose 7–1 while the Yanks sweep a doubleheader from the D-Rays, the first game of which has an officially reported attendance of zero. Zero, as in no one. Zero, as in one less than the guy sitting at his desk writing this. If the Yankees win and no one sees it, does it still count?

  September 10th

  SO: I’m definitely making the Tuesday game next week versus Tampa, and if you’re not using the tix, I could see myself there Wednesday and Thursday too. There just aren’t that many games left. Here on Monday I went to the Rock Cats’ last game of the year; after they won, the players tossed their hats and batting gloves and all the balls in the dugout and even the leftover bubble gum to the crowd, and I realized that once the season’s over, that’s it, it’s fall and then winter. I didn’t like the feeling one bit, and I guess I’m doing what I can to stave it off.

  SK: You’re so right. Winter’s coming. I felt a change in the weather the day after Labor Day.

  Losing two straight to the last-place M’s, with Schilling going, isn’t likely, and I’m uncharacteristically certain of this one from the start. Seattle keeps it close till the fifth, when David Ortiz sneaks a line-drive homer over the wall, and then, after an error by backup second baseman Jose Lopez, with two outs, Bill Mueller singles, Dave Roberts doubles, Johnny Damon triples and Mark Bellhorn singles. The next inning, Manny, who started our scoring with a solo shot, piles it on with his 17th career grand slam, and Schilling cruises to become the majors’ first 19-game-winner.

  Meanwhile in Baltimore, Javier Vazquez melts down, walking and hitting batters with the bases loaded, and the Yanks go down hard, so we’re two and a half back. Anaheim wins and the A’s lose again, so the Angels are a mere game off the pace in the West. With the unbalanced schedule, the Angels have six games remaining against the A’s and a chance to make them our wild-card rivals.

  September 11th

  Manny Ramirez hit home runs 39 and 40 last night to amble past Boston’s Dwight Evans on the all-time list and further enhance his MVP chances (although for that to happen Boston will almost certainly have towin the American League flag). Boston didn’t look particularly good against Seattle’s collection of battered veterans and freshly called-up farmhands in the first of the teams’ four-game series and Tim Wakefield suffered for it, but the whole team appeared to be ambling in that game, probably a natural enough result of having just finished an 8-1 tour of duty against Oakland, Texas, and Anaheim. Father Curt took matters in hand last night, thank God (he “righted the ship,” as the Sports Cannibals like to say), and bagged his 19th win in the process.

  The Angels, currently five back in the wild-card race, are now the only other contender for that ticket to the postseason dance. [52] They have nineteen games left, two against the so-so ChiSox, seven against the shlubby Seattle Mariners, and ten against good teams, including six against Oakland. We, on the other hand, have six games left against the Yankees, and eight against Baltimore, who has played us tough all year. The moral of this story is simple—we gotta jus’ keep goin’, man.

  SK: We kicked their ass, all right…another granny for Manny, and it was one inning after I went to bed. As for Being There, Owen has talked me into going down to at least one game and then driving back afterward. Meantime, another day off the schedule, another day closer to the Yankees.

  SO: If you’re going to catch just one game, make it Thursday’s, Curt’s first crack at 20 wins.

  Arroyo threw well against the Mariners in his other start against them and got screwed out of a W when the pen fell apart. Tonight he’s wearing some of the ugliest dirty-blond white-boy cornrows I’ve ever seen, but he pitches beautifully, that hard curve of his dropping off the outside corner, making hitters lunge. Manny homers again, and Mark Bellhorn. Kevin Youkilis starts at third to give Bill Mueller a breather, and by the late innings Pokey Reese, David McCarty and Ricky Gutierrez all get some playing time.

  In the ninth we’re up 7–0 when Adam Hyzdu sees his first at-bat as a Red Sock. He looks anxious—and awful, chasing pitches away. He’s down 1-2, and I think how much that would suck, striking out in your one at-bat all year. Hyzdu lines a double to the wall in left, knocking in a run. So he’s batting a thousand and slugging two.

  When the Sox have to declare their playoff roster (knock wood), some of these guys aren’t going to be on it. We keep having to make room on the expanded roster for people coming off the DL—like Scott Williamson last night—and with all the guys we added in midseason, I wonder if guys like McCarty and Pokey won’t be going to the party. And can we keep Dave Roberts, Trot and Kapler as backups? Someone’s going to be left out the way Dauber and Cesar Crespo have already been left behind.

  September 12th

  SO: Did I tell you my theory that Napoleon Dynamite is about the Sox pitching staff? Eck is Uncle Rico, wanting to time-travel back to 1982, while Napoleon is the lost and tragickal Derek Lowe.

  SK: Who is the nerdy older brother? Bronson Arroyo would be my guess. “Peace out, Napoleon.” Cornrows, indeed.

  SO: I was actually thinking of Wake for the brother, but you’re right, Arroyo’s cornrows might win him the role (who did ’em—Manny? Pokey?). And I did see a VOTE FOR PEDRO T-shirt at the park the other day.

  Speaking of voting: Mr. Schill should have the inside track on the Cy Young, and Manny sure as heck looks like the MVP.

  My “too quiet” prediction comes true, as righty Gil Meche scatters five Red Sox hits for a complete-game 2–0 shutout. Manny sabotages our best scoring chance in the first: with one out and two on, he forgets how many outs there are and gets doubled up off second on what should be an easy sac fly. Derek Lowe’s only mistake is a two-run shot to Raul Ibanez. Time of game: two hours, twenty-two minutes.

  SK: What can you say? Guy pitched a great game and Manny ran us out of an inning. Oh, that crazy Manny. At least it’ll take more than this one game to cost us our dream. But 3.5 back of the Yankees. And how’s by the Angels? “White Hot Colon” (as per the Angels website) over Chicago, 11–0. Back to five up in the WC. And do you know what? I think t
he D-Rays might put a hurtin’ on us.

  SO: D-Lowe deserved better (and be sure the GM of the O’s has taken note of his last seven starts). So we’re where we were on Friday, just two games closer to the finish line. With Petey and Mr. Schill slated to go against the D-Rays, I’m optimistic. Just gotta hit.

  I wonder how much Manny’s little fugue states will hurt his MVP chances. What a weird series he had. He clouts a bunch of big dingers, including that granny, makes a great flying karate-kick, give-up-the-body grab in the corner, then muffs that can of corn on the track, and today he forgets how many outs there are. It’s like Sun Ra said: space is the place.

  Somewhere I’m missing a game—our record says we have 20 left but I only count 19 on the sked. Must be a rain date in there somewhere. Ah, found it: we’ve got a doubleheader in Baltimore on the next-to-last day of the season. So that means of the 20 games we have left, 8 are with the pain-in-the-ass O’s. And 6 are with the Yanks. So we had better beat the D-Rays.

  SK: I doan like the sound of tha’, man. Too easy to see the headline: ANGELS IN AS WILD CARD, TEJADA SINKS SOX.

  You think? Say “Nahhh…”

  SO: Nahhh. They’ll be meaningless. Our starters will be Abe Alvarez and Frank Castillo. Or whoever needs the innings for his bonus. But you’re right, Tejada will hit four homers. (Talk about some fans who should (continue to) be pissed—the new and improved O’s didn’t even make .500.)

  Plus I’m looking for the Angels to knock off the A’s. Be nice to see a team with real fundamentals overcome their injuries and eliminate the Moneyball guys.

  September 13th

  In the mail, a gift from Steve: The Year of the Gerbil, by Con Chapman, a chronicle of the 1978 pennant race. The Gerbil, of course, was just part of Bill “Spaceman” Lee’s nickname for then Sox manager Don Zimmer. The whole name was The Mad Gerbil. On the cover is a shot from the TV feed from the one-game playoff, the center-field camera keying on Bucky Dent just after his fateful swing, Mike Torrez starting to follow the ball up and to his right. Torrez, I’m surprised to see, is wearing Roger Clemens’s #21. Another good reason to retire it.

  SO: Thanks, man. The title alone had me laughing (though you know by the end I’ll be grim-lipped, bumming once again at Mike F****** Torrez and Bucky F****** Dent). And this year sure looks like a photo negative of ’78. We just have to catch the Yanks at the wire and let Mark Bellhorn do the rest.

  SK: I saw the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated and my heart sank into my boots. If you don’t know why—and I’m sure you do—Google Sports Illustrated Curse.

  SO: I believe Tommy Brady and the Pats survived it, so maybe Mr. Schill can too. At least it’s not the Chunky Soup curse; that’s a career-ender (Terrell Davis, Kurt Warner). Keep your eye on Donovan McNabb!

  If we gather all these curses (Titanic, Bambino, SI) and STILL win, will folks shut up about them already? And will we get extra points for degree of difficulty (like overcoming all our injuries)?

  September 14th

  The Yankees got roughed up again last night, roughed up bad, this time by lowly Kansas City. The final score of that game was 17–8, and this morning the New York sportswriters will once more be eating their gizzards out about the pinstripes’ lack of pitching—lovely. The Red Sox, meanwhile, only split with cellar-dwelling Seattle, which is a long way from wonderful, but the road trip is over, four more games are off the schedule, and we’re coming back to Fenway Park almost exactly where we were in the standings when we left: three games behind the Yankees in the East, four and a half ahead of the Angels in the wild card. Furthermore, we’re looking at three with the hapless Devil Rays, and the Sox have been strong against them this year. So, at least until we meet the Yankees on the seventeenth, all’s okay with the world, right?

  Wrong. There’s a problem. A big one. Father Curt is on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week, that’s the problem. He’s standing on the mound at Fenway with his arms spread and every letter on the front of his uniform clearly visible.

  How could they?

  With all the other stuff we have to worry about, how damn could they? Because while there’s no evidence of the Curse of the Bambino other than the failure of the Red Sox to win the World Series since 1918 (and they are not alone in that), there’s plenty of evidence that the Sports Illustrated Curse actually exists. [53]

  Two games after his cover appearance on SI, Kurt Warner suffered an injury that sidelined him for five games (although in Warner’s case I’m at least willing to admit the possibility that Campbell’s Soup may have been a contributing factor). One day after Anna Kournikova appeared on the SI cover, she was bounced from the French Open, her earliest exit from a Grand Slam event in three years. In his first Monday Night Football game after his cover shot, Howard Cosell went from hero to zero by referring to a Redskins wide receiver as “that little monkey.” After Dale Murphy of the Atlanta Braves appeared on the cover, the Braves dropped fourteen of their next fifteen games. Other sufferers of the SI Jinx have included Tom Watson, Kirk Gibson, George Brett, Pedro Martinez’s brother, Ramon…and ex–Red Sox franchise player Nomar Garciaparra. After Nomar, stripped to the waist and looking most righteously buff, appeared on the cover, he went down with a popped wrist tendon and played hardly at all during the first half of the season.

  And now, in addition to all our injuries and our far-from-secure lead in the wild card, in addition to a three-game bulge for the Yankees that won’t seem to shrink any lower than two games, I have to cope with the near certainty that Curt Schilling will not manage to win twenty games in the regular season, but will remain stuck on nineteen instead. Martinez, Wakefield, Arroyo, and the tragickal Mr. Lowe will have to take up the slack.

  Thanks, Sports Illustrated.

  Thanks a pantload.

  You guys suck.

  Behind Fenway, at the corner of Yawkey Way and Van Ness Street, sits the players’ parking lot. Four hours before game time the Sox take over Van Ness, barricading both ends and evicting any parked cars. By then a sizable clump of autograph hunters is already waiting. There’s no way you can get close enough to the players’ Mercedeses and Volvos and Range Rovers as they pull in (or Gabe Kapler’s and Kevin Millar’s chromed-out hogs), and the tall fence surrounding the lot is lined with a heavy green tarp so you can’t see in, but a hundred feet down Van Ness there are three horizontal slots cut into the fence about thigh-high, and as the players walk from their rides to the clubhouse entrance, some will stop to sign.

  The slots are uncomfortably close to glory holes, with all that that implies. The only way to tell who’s coming is to kneel on the concrete, press your cheek against the metal edge and peer sideways through the slot like the opening of a pillbox.

  Today I’m the first one there, and stake out a spot at the end of the first slot. Position is everything: some guys will sign just a few and then break off, leaving fans at slots two and three grumbling. I’ve also chosen a weekday for my hunting because weekends people are packed six and seven deep, and I’d feel like a heel claiming a spot before some little kid (little kids also have no qualms about stepping on you or crawling over your back).

  As the other hunters show up, I realize that compared to them, I am a little kid, a rank amateur. They’re mostly pros, dealers who owe each other money and merchandise. They bring bat-bags full of Big Sticks, boxes of balls, albums of eight-by-ten glossies—high-ticket items they can sell on eBay. As we stand there waiting for the Sox to arrive, they’re cutting deals and boasting of recent acquisitions, trading information about upcoming shows.

  “What are you working there?” one asks me. “Hat? Couple a balls?”

  I try explaining that the hat’s for me—to wear—but it’s impossible for him to understand that I’m just a fan.

  The coaches arrive first, together. No one wants them but me. No one seems to know who Ino Guerrero is, or care. I’m psyched to get Adam Hyzdu’s autograph on his PawSox card, while they just shrug. Likewise, when the middli
ng Devil Rays players come walking right past us on Van Ness, the pros let them pass (“Damian Rhodes,” one calls Damian Rolls, “used to play for Baltimore”—mixing him up with old closer Arthur Rhodes).

  When Jason Varitek signs, everyone behind me mobs the slot, crushing me down against the fence, reaching their merchandise over my shoulders and past my ears. Because all Tek can see of us are our hands, the pros get a first autograph, bounce out and grab a second bat or ball from their arsenal, shove in again and snag another. Double-dipping, it’s called, and while frowned upon (especially when not everyone gets even one autograph), it’s the pros’ bread and butter.

  “How many Variteks you get?”

  “Three.”

  “Ha, I got four.”