Faithful

by Stephen King

  SO: I hear the Yanks will start Kevin Brown in Game 3. So they had better win tomorrow night.

  October 6th

  They do, though it’s as fishy as Jonah’s old clothes—to my nose. The Twins are leading by one in the bottom of the twelfth with one out and closer Joe Nathan toiling through his unheard-of third inning of work. Nathan throws ten straight balls to put men on first and second, then grooves one to A-Rod. It’s hit deep to the left-center gap, and the whole Yankee dugout leaps up—except A-Rod’s missed it, and the ball barely makes the track (so why leap up when you’ve seen hundreds of flies to the track there and never moved an inch before?). Left fielder Shannon Stewart, playing back so nothing can get through, should have a bead on it but is uncharacteristically slow getting over and then doesn’t even make an attempt. It hits the track, and should win the game anyway, but bounces over the wall for a ground rule double, meaning the trail runner, Jeter, has to go back to third. So with a tie game and one out, Matsui steps in. He’s not patient, and ends up hitting a soft liner to right. Jacque Jones is playing in to cut down the run at the plate, and right field in Yankee Stadium is the smallest in all of baseball. Jones, with a decent if not spectacular arm, should have an excellent shot at getting Jeter. It’s a situation an outfielder dreams of: there’s no other play, no contingency. It can’t be more than 180 feet, and he’s got time to make sure he gets it there in the air so his catcher doesn’t have to deal with a hop. As long as he’s not way off-line to the first-base side, he should have Jeter by five steps, easy.

  Instead, he flips the ball flat-footed to first baseman Matthew LeCroy, who relays it, late, and the Yankees win. ESPN’s commentators make no comment on this, which is just as bizarre. So the Yankees split.

  SO: Man, I could have thrown out Jeter from there. What the hell was Jacque Jones thinking? Fix! Fix!

  SK: Say it ain’t so, Stew! Next you’ll be telling me Jacque Jones was on the grassy knoll.

  October 7th

  The stuff between my ears feels more like peanut butter than brains this morning, and with good reason; the Red Sox–Angels contest that started last night at 10 P.M. East Coast time didn’t go final until five to two in the morning. That’s just shy of a four-hour baseball game. A nine-inning baseball game.

  Part of the reason is national TV coverage—the breaks between half-innings are longer to allow for a few more of those all-important beer commercials—but in truth that isn’t the largest part. I’ll bet you could count the number of postseason games under three hours during the last seven years on the fingers of your hands, not because of the extra ads but because the style of baseball changes radically once the regular season is over. It becomes more about the pitching, because most managers believe the aphorism which states that in seven games out of every ten, good pitching will beat good hitting. [67] Games about the pitching become games about the defense. And games about defense and pitching in the field often become, for the offense, games about what is now called by the needlessly deprecating name of “smallball.” Few twenty-first century baseball teams are good at smallball, and their efforts to bunt the runner over are often painful to watch (although Doug Mientkiewicz of the Soxput down a beauty in Game 1, and it resulted in a run), but smallball certainly does burn up the hours. I bet they sold a sea of beer in Anaheim last night, and the hopeful fans had plenty of time to twirl their Rally Monkeys and beat their annoying Thunder Sticks, but in the end neither the monkeys or the sticks did any good. The Angels must now come to our park down 0-2, and their fans have only this consolation: for them, the game was over before 11 P.M., and they won’t have to spend much of this lovely fall day feeling like what Ed Sanders of the Fugs so memorably called “homemade shit.”

  Pedro Martinez got the win in last night’s/this morning’s game, leaving with a 4–3 lead after seven innings, mostly thanks to a two-run Jason Varitek dinger and a scratch run provided by Johnny Damon. The invaluable Damon stole second after reaching on a fielder’s choice, took third when loser Francisco “K-Rod” Rodriguez (who bears a weird resemblance to movieland’s Napoleon Dynamite) uncorked a wild pitch, then scored on a Manny Ramirez sac fly. It turned out to be the winning run, because a relay of Boston relievers—Timlin to Myers, Myers to Foulke—were lights-out.

  My reward for staying up long past my usual bedtime was watching Orlando Cabrera make the Angels pay for disrespecting him. With two on and two out in the top of the ninth, Brendan Donnelly, the final Angels pitcher of the night, walked Jason Varitek, loading the bases in order to get to Cabrera, who came to the Red Sox touted not only as a Gold Glove but as a “doubles machine.” He cranked one of those to left-center in the wee hours of the morning, taking third on a throw home that didn’t come close to nailing Varitek.

  And essentially, that was your ball game. Foulke ended it by striking out Curtis Pride approximately one hour after the Yankees came up off the mat to put Minnesota away in the twelfth, and now the Red Sox come back to Fenway, hoping to hear “Dirty Water” tomorrow night.

  And finally, from our Department of the Late Night Surreal, we have Angels manager Mike Scioscia, on the umpiring in last night’s game (by Jerry “I Ain’t Missed Many” Meals):

  “I think as far as the strike zone, you know, if you are a good team, if you are a good team, you, is that my throat or is it a thing, I know I am hoarse, but you know, when you go through a…if you are ateam and you are a good team, then you absorb things like maybe a break bad, a line drive and doesn’t fall in or an umpire strike zone.”

  Thus spake Zarathustra.

  SO: You said exactly what I’m feeling today. I’m getting too old to be staying up that late. Let’s hope that’s the last time we’ll have to (barring a Dodger resurgence, which I’d accept).

  October 8th

  It’s a brilliant day and the leaves are turning along the Mass Pike, a New England idyll worthy of a coffee-table book. It doesn’t hurt that we’re up two games to none and I’ve got tickets to Game 3. It would be our first playoff clincher at home since ’86 against these same Angels, and our first sweep since taking the A’s in the ’75 ALCS. Both years are good omens, and the fact that we have Bronson Arroyo going is even more comforting. In his last nine starts we’re 9-0.

  In Kenmore Square, the Globe comes with a GO SOX poster and red and blue Mardi Gras beads. On Lansdowne, Puma is handing out posters of Johnny sitting on the ground by home plate, flashing a smile and a peace sign. Back at the players’ lot, the mood is loose and goofy. Manny shows up in a Michael Vick jersey, which we give him grief for, and then El Jefe arrives in his badass Cadillac roadster with the retractable roof (El Monstro is its name) and is wearing—incredibly—a Tennessee Titans cap. “Let’s go Pats!” we holler.

  In BP, David usually spoons the first few pitches down the line in left before pulling a bunch of rainbows over the bullpens or hooking them around the Pesky Pole. Today he keeps working on going the other way, poking shots to the hole between third and short, dropping doubles into the garage-door corner. The scouting report must say the Angels will try to work him away, the same way we’ve worked Guerrero.

  As closer Troy Percival saunters out to warm up, I say we haven’t seen much of him.

  “I know,” he says. “I wish I was in there.”

  “You guys are a better team than you’ve shown the first two games, but much respect for beating Oakland. Maybe we’ll see you tonight, huh?”

  “I hope so,” he says.

  A nice guy, and I’m also thinking ahead to the off-season, when he becomes a free agent. His 96 mph cheese would be a nice complement to Foulkie’s 74 mph change.

  Our scalped seats are in back of the Sox bullpen, giving me and Caitlin a prime view of Bronson warming up. Dave Wallace stands behind him, clicking off each pitch on a handheld counter. Bronson works from the windup, with that high leg kick. He throws his two pitches, his fastball and his curve, until sweat’s dripping off his chin. He stops and towels off, then works from the stretch, pop
ping Tek’s glove. He’s still throwing when the Dropkick Murphys take the portable stage right behind him to play the anthem. When they finish and start in on their Red Sox anthem, “Tessie,” he takes a couple more, and that’s it, he’s ready.

  And he is. He’s got the curve working, and the ump’s giving him a nice wide zone. We pick up some runs early, then some more. The only mistake Bronson makes is trying to sneak a fastball by Troy Glaus, who sticks it on the Monster, but by then we’re up 5–1, 6–1. It’s a party.

  And then, in the seventh, Bronson walks the leadoff guy. Myers relieves and walks the only guy he faces. Timlin comes in and gives up a single to Eckstein, then with bases loaded nibbles at Darin Erstad and ends up walking in a run, bringing up…Vladimir Guerrero.

  In batting practice, Guerrero hits the ball so hard that everybody stops to watch him. Today before the game, he blasted one high off the Volvo sign on the Monster, hitting the very top so that the steel beam behind it chimed like a bell and the ball ricocheted back past the outfielders shagging flies in left-center.

  Timlin nibbled at Erstad. Now on 0-1 he throws Guerrero a fastball up in the zone, and Vladi jumps on it, driving the ball toward right-center. It arcs through the darkness above the .406 Club straight for us like a crashing satellite. No doubt about it, it’s going to make the bullpen easily. Trot’s angling over, trailing the play. Trot’s an active Christian—he has a cross hanging from the rearview mirror of his Mini Cooper—but as the ball clears the wall, he loudly mouths: “God dammit!” You can almost hear it except for the overwhelming groan. Grand slam. It’s 6–6. The party’s over.

  Not again. With the shaky Wake going tomorrow, this could be crucial. We don’t want to go back to Anaheim.

  Now comes the nail-biting. Johnny has to flash back to the track in deepest center to make a great leaping catch. Foulke works through bases-loaded jams in the eighth and ninth, and then Lowe has to battle with men on first and third in the tenth. We’re standing and screaming with every pitch, hoping, wishing. K-Rod is on for the Angels, with Troy Percival warming. This is their one great strength. With apologies to Eric Gagne and Darren Dreifort of the Dodgers, Anaheim’s the only team in the majors with two bona fide closers. It looks like it’s going to be a long night.

  The Red Sox won 8–6 in ten, and this series is over. The Angels are done for the season, and the 2004 baseball version of Woodstock Nation is going to play for the American League pennant. Is it great? Yes. Is it wonderful? You bet. Is it pretty suh-veet, as William H. Macy’s car salesman character in Fargo was wont to say? That is such a big ten-four.

  There are all sorts of reasons why this sweep feels so good. Being able to rest Schilling and Martinez, the big pitching arms, is only a strategic reason, valid but cold. The fact that the Red Sox hadn’t clinched any postseason series in their home park since 1986 (when they beat these same Angels and then went on to play the Mets) is warmer, a soothing of the psyche. For me, the emotional payoff is that, although I wasn’t able to bring my mother—an ardent Red Sox fan who died in 1974—I was able to bring my mother-in-law, who is now eighty-one and not in the best of health. [68]

  A Red Sox Customer Service rep met us at Gate D with a wheelchair and escorted us—along with Sarah Jane’s oxygen bottle and a backup—to our seats, just to the left of the Red Sox dugout and only a row from the field, a perfect location for a lady who’s no longer up to much jumping around. I checked her oxy level before the game started, and the dial on top of the tank said three-quarters, deep in the green, very cool. She was good to go right through the eighth, but as the game neared the four-hour mark (we have discussed the grinding, defensive nature of postseason baseball games) and extra innings loomed, it seemed wise to switch her over to the spare tank, and she agreed to my suggestion that we leave after the tenth, if the score was still tied. With the fireballing K-Rod on the mound, that seemed likely, especially after he got Manny on a called strike three, with Pokey Reese (running for Bellhorn) still languishing on first.

  Instead of leaving Rodriguez in to face David Ortiz, Scioscia elected to go with Jarrod Washburn, setting up the lefty-lefty match of which the conventional wisdom so approves. What followed was, quite simply, baseball history. I can’t report it here to any reader’s satisfaction because, although I saw it, my forebrain still doesn’t really believe I saw it. Part of this is because Big Papi so rarely hits with power to left; right field is usually his porch. Most of it, though, is simply that the man’s swing was so damn quick. The ball seemed to be off his bat and gone into the night before my ears even registered the crack of wood on horsehide.

  The place went absolutely giddy-bonkers. “Dirty Water” was playing, but you could hear nothing but the bass line pumping out of the speakers. The rest was lost in the delirious chant of the crowd, not Papi, Papi but Da-VEED! Da-VEED! The cops in their riot gear, who came out to protect the sanctity of the field from marauding fans in their YANKEES SUCK T-shirts, tried to hold on to their stern don’t-tread-on-me frowns, but most of them couldn’t do it for long; they broke into delighted winner grins, smothered them, then had to do the smothering all over again as fresh grins broke out. Best of all, I turned around and saw the woman who’s been my mom since my own mom died, hands clasped below her chin, beaming like an eighty-one-year-old cherub. I had some doubts about taking her and her oxygen tanks to a potential clinch game with thirty-five thousand rabid Red Sox fans in attendance (and when I checked that second tank later, I saw that she used as much oxygen in the half an hour following Big David’s home run as she had during the entire previous four hours of the game), but now, an hour later, there’s not a doubt in my mind that tonight I did her a mitzvah. And she did me one. And the team did one for both of us and all of Red Sox Nation. There’s more work to do, but tonight there are plenty of mitzvahs to go around.

  After El Jefe’s walk-off we hang around, dancing on our seats, singing along with “Shout” and “Joy to the World” and “Glory Days” as the locker-room celebration plays on the JumboTron. WHY NOT US? Pedro’s T-shirt reads. Euky Rojas empties the bullpen ballbag, tossing its contents to our suddenly lucky section. Thanks, Euky!

  Down at the dugout, Ellis Burks does the same. We’ve moved to the tarp along the first-base line to get closer to the celebration. Dave McCarty (not even on the roster!) comes out and sprays us with beer. Gabe “The Babe” Kapler gives us some skin. Manny and Kevin Millar jog past, slapping hands, and Mike Myers, in a Dominican flag do-rag. Johnny sits in the passenger seat of a groundskeeper’s cart while David Ortiz rides in back, kicking his legs and waving to us as they go all the way around the track to the garage door in left. It’s a good hour since the game ended, and there are only a couple hundred of us diehards. Unforgettable.

  In quiet counterpoint, the Angels, in their street clothes, walk in broken single file across the grass behind short, across right field and out a gate beside their bullpen, headed for the team bus and their hotel, maybe even the airport. We wave to Vladi and David Eckstein, and give them a polite hand. It’s true what I told Percival: they’re a much better club than they showed in this series, and deserving of much respect.

  Outside, at the players’ lot, an even rowdier crowd presses against the barriers to watch the Sox leave. With each car, a new wave of screaming, pushing, a galaxy of cameras flashing. There are riot cops in helmets everywhere, and people literally falling down drunk. Pedro comes out and shoots us Manny’s gunslinger fingers, and we go nuts.

  After he leaves, a man holding a baby on his shoulder shoves by me, then sets the baby down, and the baby stands and walks away. It’s a little person with the wizened face of Scatman Crothers in The Shining—it’s Pedro’s good-luck buddy Nelson de la Rosa, two feet tall and waddling up Yawkey Way like a hobbit.

  But the best is Tek. He comes out in his uniform, carrying a plate of food from the postgame spread. Some relatives of his are leaving in an SUV, and he wants to catch them to say a final good-bye. “VAR-i-tek, VAR-i tek!” we ch
eer. Security stops them and Jason gives the woman driver (maybe his aunt?) a kiss on the cheek to Jerry Springer cheers (“Kiss her! Kiss her!”), then pads back towards the clubhouse with his plate, and I think, it’s just like Little League when we’d go to the Dairy Queen, still wearing our cleats. It’s the same game.

  October 9th

  SO: Jefe say: Somebody got-ta pay. That’s why he’s the chief.

  I’m hoarse, my hands are swollen from clapping, and my mitt smells like beer. I’m a most happy fella.

  SK: It was a great game.

  And yes, we’re getting a shot at redemption, because the Yankees beat the Twins, though “beat” is maybe too strong a word. In Game 4, down 2–1, Ron Gardenhire throws Santana on three days’ rest. With the score 5–1 Twins after five, he inexplicably pulls Santana, meaning—like in that last regular-season series in the Bronx—the Yanks have four innings to get to the Twins’ pen. It’s totally incoherent, given Gardenhire’s now-or-never strategy. Santana’s around 85 pitches and has been sharp, and the Twins’ pen is thin and tired. Predictably, the Yanks come back against instant goat Juan Rincon and then win in extras, ensuring Major League Baseball and Fox of their greatest ratings ever. Is it a tank job? I sure get a whiff, but who except a Twins (or Rock Cats) fan would complain? Finally we’ve got our cage match, our Thunderdome. Two teams enter, one team leaves.

  The ALCS

  BEYOND THUNDERDOME

  October 10th

  SK: My feeling about having to face the Yankees is extremely conflicted. I heard twenty fat cats (not to mention a very grizzled toll-taker on the N.H. turnpike today) say “Ayyy, Stevie! We got the Yankees, just like we wanted!”