by Stephen King
Did we want them?
The fan in me sort of wanted Minnesota, especially after Santana had been bent, folded, stapled and mutilated by the patient Yankee hitters.
The sibyl in me says the Yankees have been our Daddy and will continue to be our Daddy; that we are the Pequod, they the great white whale.
The commercial writer in me says this is just the matchup we need to sell the book; that after this, the World Series would be so much wavy gravy.
SO: All we’ve got to do is go 8-6. Can Mr. Schill, Petey and B-yo with the curve working go 8-6? I dare say they can, with some run support. Will they? Only the baseball tiki gods know for sure.
Santana had very little trouble with the Yanks: 1 earned run in 12 innings, with 12 Ks. No idea why Gardenhire removed him yesterday after only 85 pitches and still looking fine like cherry wine. The commercial writer in you is right: it’s the matchup MLB needs, and they got it. It’s like Hollywood—you need stars to sell a picture, and, sorry, Jacque Jones and Corey Koskie, but you Rock Cats grads just don’t have the wattage (or the superagents).
And if you look closely at our series, there are some wild hairs there too: Figgins’s glove leading to six runs in Game 1; the absolutely horrible plate umpire in Game 2; and the sudden appearance (and disappearance) of Jarrod Washburn to end Game 3, when all-time Angels save leader Troy Percival was rested and ready.
I’ll hold the league to the same rules I apply to Hollywood: it’s cool as long as it’s entertaining and believable. So far it’s been entertaining.
The 2004 numbers say we do better against the Yanks than against the Twins (or the O’s, Cleveland, Texas…), but you can’t go by that—just by himself, Santana warps the curve. That’s how tough he was.
One chance in four. One chance in two would be more than wavy gravy. It’d be Destiny.
October 11th
“It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Yogi said that—not the one from Jelly-stone National Park, but the one who hung out in New York and swung a productive bat at many bad pitches back in the good old days when men were men and baseball players still smoked Camels. [69] Once more the Red Sox have entered postseason via the wild card. Once more they have faced the West Coast team and beaten them (this time quite a bit more tidily, ’tis true). Once more it was Mr. Lowe—magickal rather than tragickal—who was the Last Pitcher Standing, this time notching the win instead of the save. And once more the Yankees have beaten the Minnesota Twins after spotting them the opening victory. It is our ancient enemy—now routinely called the Evil Empire almost everywhere north of Hartford—that we will have to face, and vanquish, if we are to go to the World Series.
I spent most of the weekend in Boston, although this book did not precisely demand it; the Boston-Anaheim series was over, and the Boston–New York series wouldn’t start for another four days. Mostly what I wanted was to sample the atmosphere, and what I found myself breathing in was disturbing, bad for sleep. [70] I would describe it as a kind of nervy bravado—think of all the old gangster movies you’ve seen where the bad-guy hero is driven into a final blind alley, draws both automatics from the waistband of his gabardine pants, and then screams, “Come and get me coppers! But I’m gonna take a buncha youse wit’ me!”
Doormen, taxi drivers, a guy from Boston Public Works, a driver on the Boston Duck Tour, a clerk at Brentano’s, two homeys at the mall with their hats turned around backwards (Homey A in a METALLICA RULES T-shirt, Homey B wearing one showing Albert Einstein in the audience at a Ramones concert), a woman on the Boston Common walking her little white furball, even a grizzled old two-tooth toll-taker on New Hampshire’s Spaulding Turnpike—all these hailed me with variations on the same theme: “Yo, Stevie! We got just who we wanted, right?”
I’m back with a sick smile and a little wave, like Whatever, dude. Because I’m thinking of that old saying, the one that goes Be careful what you wish for. And when you get right down to where the rubber hits the road, does it even matter? When you get right down to where the rubber meets the road, the Yankees just seem to be our fate, our ka, our name written on the bottom of the stone.
Or maybe that’s just so much literary bullshit. Probably is. God knows the Boston Red Sox have generated enough to fill two or three hundred Mass Pike Port-o-Sans. It’s déjà vu all over again, that much is a pure fact. We can only hope that this time Act II will be different, allowing us still to be onstage, and in uniform, when the curtain goes up on Act III.
Odd news: two relatives of Yanks closer Mariano Rivera were killed over the weekend in a freak accident at his house and he has to fly down to Panama for the funeral, meaning he’ll have to jet back just in time for Game 1. And former NL MVP Ken Caminiti, who admitted his steroid use and became a baseball pariah, dies of heart failure at age forty-one (a cautionary tale for anyone on the juice, not just Gary Sheffield).
We also declare our ALCS roster, making only one change.
SO: So Youk’s out and Mendoza’s in. I guess we’re hoping he has the book on his old club. And that Billy Mueller doesn’t need a breather at third.
And dunno if you’ve looked this far ahead, but do you know what night Game 7 of the World Series falls on? That’s right: Halloween.
October 12th/ALCS Game 1
The hype leading up to Game 1 is typical and idiotic. The game’s on Fox, and they’ve prepared a five-minute Star Wars intro, complete with Johnny as Chewbacca. If that’s not enough, they play the theme from The Odd Couple over and over. The announcers are desperate to tell us what the story lines are, and the personal dramas. This is one reason I hate playoff baseball—the national networks think the viewers have just tuned in. On NESN, Jerry and Don have no need to fill us in on “The Rivalry,” they just call the game. They also don’t call Bronson Arroyo “Brandon” (McCarver—the true inspiration behind the mute button) or compare A-Rod’s and Jeter’s mediocre years to Manny’s and David’s MVP-type seasons.
The game itself is dull and disappointing from the very first. Schilling can’t push off on the ankle and gives up runs in bunches (later, Dr. Bill Morgan will describe the injury as a tear in a sheath covering a tendon—shades of Nomar!), while the Orioles’ Mike Mussina is spot-on. After three, it’s 6–0 Yanks, through six, 8–0, and the only drama is whether Moose will keep his no-hitter. And then, just as news time is rolling around, and viewers naturally think of bailing, the Sox explode for seven runs, and who should be called in to save the game but plucky Mariano Rivera, who just arrived in the fourth inning from the funeral of blah blah blah native Panama. What an astonishing twist! Why, who could have foreseen such etc., etc.! The announcers play it up for all it’s worth, and if there’s a more egregious use of a human-interest story in sports, please, don’t show it to me. Rivera even gets to start the game-ending DP against his nemesis Bill Mueller. It’s like watching a cheesy movie, every step feels utterly false and plotted. I mean, come on, who writes this stuff?
October 13th
Last night’s game against the Yankees was a good-news/bad-news kind of thing. You know, like in all the jokes you’ve heard. Doctor comes bopping into his patient’s examination room and says, “Mr. Shlub, I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news. Which do you want first?”
“Gimme the bad news first,” Mr. Shlub says. “Save the good news.”
“The bad news is that you’re going to die of a horribly painful disease in six weeks or so, your blood’s going to boil and your skin’s going to creep right off your body, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it,” the doctor says. “Now do you want the good news?”
Mr. Shlub starts to blubber. “What good news can there be after something like that?” he asks the doctor, when he can speak coherently.
“Well,” the doctor says in a confidential tone of voice, “I’m dating a nurse from Pediatrics, and she is so hot!”
The worst news to come out of last night’s ALCS Game 1 is, of course, that we lost it. The good news is that the Red Sox made a ga
me of it after being no-hit by Mike Mussina into the seventh. Starting with Mark Bellhorn’s one-out double in the top of that inning, Boston smacked a total of 10 hits and scored 7 runs, coming back from what was an 8–0 deficit (with the tying run on third in the eighth, the camera caught father-son Yankee fans exchanging caps in some arcane but endearing good-luck ritual). The Sox gave the Yankees a scare; the Sox silenced the Yankee fans; the Sox even gave their own fans something to go to bed at quarter to midnight feeling good about.
The good news about Curt Schilling’s head is that it’s on straight. Father Curt says he doesn’t believe in the so-called Curse of the Bambino. “I’m a Christian,” he says fearlessly. The bad news about Father Curt’s ankle is that it’s not on straight. He couldn’t push off on his right foot last night, threw only two fastballs at speeds greater than 90 mph, and the Yankees made him pay, pounding out 6 hits and 6 runs over three innings. [71]
The bad news is that this ankle injury happened at a cursedly bad time. The good news is that Father Curt—who doesn’t believe in that publicity-stunt curse, anyway—threw only 58 pitches in last night’s mortar attack, and if the ankle gets better, he should be more than ready for Game 5, always assuming there is one.
The bad news is that the Yankees scored 6 of their 10 runs after two were out. The good news is that the Red Sox scored all 7 of their runs after two were out, and stranded only two runners all night.
The bad news is that the Red Sox don’t win when Johnny Damon doesn’t hit—2004 baseball history pretty well proves this—and last night Johnny wore that fabled golden sombrero, striking out four times and looking more lost each time. The good news is that Jason Varitek socked a two-run dinger over the center-field wall, ending a personal 0-for-36 drought at Yankee Stadium, and followed the dinger with a single against Mariano Rivera to open the ninth when the Red Sox once again—splendidly, against all probability—brought the tying run to the plate. Before the game, Curt Schilling said he couldn’t think of anything better than “making fifty thousand or so Yankee fans shut up.” He wasn’t able to do that, but in the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings last night, Boston batters were.
The bad news is that if this series goes more than four games, Moose Mussina will be back. The good news is that the Boston batters who brought the late-inning thunder last night will also be back, and in each and every remaining game.
The bad news is that Boston is a game in the hole. The good news is that at this point in the season they don’t make you turn in your uniform and condemn you to spend the winter playing golf unless you lose three more.
And finally, there’s the most fascinating bad-news/good-news matchup of them all, and the best reason I know to tune in to baseball rather than to the third presidential debate tonight: Pedro will be starting for the Red Sox. The Yankees have hammered him this year, and Pedro has publicly proclaimed them his Daddy. That’s the bad news.
But no one has more heart than Pedro Martinez, and no one will try any harder to send the Red Sox back to Fenway Park with a split. That’s the good news.
Let’s see what news they lead with on the sports page tomorrow.
SO: What a horribly convoluted endgame to get Rivera a save and exorcise the Ghost of Billy Mueller. At 8–0 there’s no reason for him to come in, so in the seventh Matsui has two balls go off his glove, Bernie commits the worst error on a ground-ball single I’ve ever seen, and Tek hits a homer, something he hasn’t done in the Stadium in years. In the ninth, down three, I knew we couldn’t go in order so I wasn’t surprised that we got the two guys on to reach Mueller. And wasn’t surprised by the double-play ending. The only consolation is that the powers that be have to give us a win to make up for this train wreck.
You’ll notice, though, that in all the hubbub they made sure Moose kept his win.
SK: Hey, I thought Moose deserved that win. And when the hurly-burly’s done, when the game is lost and won, who gets the blame? Wakefield, for serving up a pair? Timlin, for serving it up to Bernie? Meanwhile, I think Father Curt’s done for the year. Maybe there really is a curse. Looks like the tragickal Mr. Lowe in Game 5 (if there is a Game 5; I presume there will be, and the way the weather looks, it’ll be about October 25th). Meanwhile, who’s your Daddy? Jon Lieber or Pedro Martinez? Or is it…Hideous Hideki? Is he your Daddy?
Go Sox!
Wear that hair!
SO: No blame, just an ugly game. But look at it this way: we’ve already got half of the split (just the wrong half—a-huh a-huh). Let’s see what the tiki gods decree tonite. Pedro’s got to have it, and we’ve got to hit early.
Jon Lieber: Pittsburgh Pirate. Bronson Arroyo: Pittsburgh Pirate.
Yeah, the weather’s going to test us—scattered showers all weekend, and we’re talking three night games, with the temp down around forty-five. Add a little wind and wetness and we’ll be sitting in deck chairs on the SS Fenway.
October 14th/ALCS Game 2
I could continue with the good-news/bad-news thing, there’s plenty of material for it, [72] but with the Sox headed back to Boston down two games to none, I don’t have the heart for it. It’s been thirteen years since a team has climbed out of an 0-2 hole in an LCS, and the Red Sox have never done so.
I blame some of this on numb bad luck. I think most Red Sox fans (certainly this Red Sox fan) were counting on Father Curt to bring the team back from Yankee Stadium with a split. Now it turns out that Schilling’s ankle problem is not a mere tweak, not even a strain, but (oh shit) a probable season-ending injury that will need surgery.
We all know both from gospel music and basic first-year anatomy that the knee-bone connected to the leg-bone and the leg-bone connected to the ankle-bone. The problem here, as I understand it, has to do with the peroneal tendon, where the ankle-bone connected to the foot-bone, can you give me hallelujah. In Schilling’s case, this tendon has come free of its sheath. When pushing off on his right leg during Game 1, Father Curt said he could actually hear the tendon snapping as it rubbed against the bone. Later, when speaking to the press, Sox doc Bill Morgan said additional pitching wouldn’t put Schilling’s leg at risk, and I’m thinking: He can hear that thing snapping like a garter every time he hucks the pill and you say he’s not risking his leg? Jeezis, Doctor Bill, I’m sorta glad you don’t make house calls in my neighborhood.
Well, let it pass. What it boiled down to was a piece of rotten luck (not a curse—I may not be a conventional Christian, but I was raised a Methodist) for the appetizer. The main course was a mostly excellent pitching performance by Pedro Martinez in which his teammates provided exactly two hits (the second by David Ortiz, who was promptly erased on a double play). After the game, Pedro shrugged and said: “If my team doesn’t get the hits, I can’t do nothing.” He said it softly, without rancor. I thought he showed remarkable restraint, considering the fact thathe has been in this position in most of the games he’s pitched this year. Schilling—even in the ALCS game he left trailing 6–0—gets run support. For some reason Martinez does not.
A downcast Johnny Damon echoed the erstwhile Dominican Dominator in a locker-room interview, saying that Red Sox pitching hasn’t been the problem in the ALCS; the problem has been lack of offense. No one is better qualified to speak to this issue than Johnny D, who has gone 0 for 8 in the two games. In my mind it is at this point the crucial difference between the two clubs.
And two points have to be made about the Yankees. First, their much maligned pitching has so far been exceptional. Second, their hitting has been as advertised…or perhaps I should say as expected. The Yanks could almost be renicknamed The American League Hoodoo. National League teams are less impressed by their mystique (witness the success of the Florida Marlins against them last year), but while they remain on their own little patch, the Yankees are awesome in the month of October.
What impresses me most is how balanced their attack is. Of the thirteen runs the Yankees have scored (playing exactly the same lineup both nights), Jeter has two, A-Rod h
as two, Sheffield has four, Matsui has two, Posada has one, Olerud has one (his two-run bomb last night won the game), and Lofton has one. Only Miguel Cairo and Bernie Williams have failed to score for the Yankees—this is just two games.
It’s true that all but two of the Red Sox players (Cabrera and Damon) have also scored, but Bellhorn, Ortiz, Millar, Varitek and Mueller have each only scored once, and in a single run-through of the batting order (during innings seven and eight of Game 1). Only Trot Nixon, who always seems to step his game up to Yankee levels during the postseason, scored for the Sox in both games.
Meantime, we’re done with Yankee Stadium for a while, [73] and we have the day off to regroup. Compared to those things, there is no bad news.
Yep, Pedro made a quality start (on the forty-fourth anniversary of Maz’s home run). He had some Ramon-like struggles early, but wriggled out of them and settled down nicely. The high-priced, steroid-pumped, former–All-Star, -MVP, -Japanese national hero heart of the Yankee order did as much as our own vaunted Mark Bellhorn, Kevin Millar and Orlando Cabrera, which was nothing. The home run Pedro gave up was to borderline Hall of Famer John Olerud (yet another midseason pickup, not truly a Yankee at all), with his pitch count above 100, to the short part of a shrunken ballpark. We just didn’t hit. Score one run in the AL, you’re going to lose; it doesn’t matter if you’re playing the Yanks or the D-Rays.
So we didn’t get the split. It may be demoralizing, but it shouldn’t be a huge surprise. George paid dearly for the Yankees to have the best home record in all of baseball. But guess who had the second best? We’ll have to win throwing Bronson, Wake and Lowe, but we haven’t taken the easy way all year—and that includes overcoming injuries to key players. We just have to stay hopeful and throw everything we’ve got at them Friday night (weather permitting), win that, battle on Saturday, and even the series. We could even lose a game up at Fenway and win this thing, we’ve just got to hit. Keep the Faith.
