Faithful

by Stephen King

  According to this morning’s box score, there were 35,120 in attendance, but if the Red Sox pull off the ultimate miracle of St. Fenway and go on to the World Series—unlikely, especially with the ALCS now returning to Yankee Stadium, [77] but no longer wildly improbable—ten years from now there’ll be a million New Englanders, most of them from Massachusetts, telling their children, grandchildren, bar buddies and anyone else who will listen that they were there on the night the Sox beat the Yanks in fourteen.

  Both managers used up almost every damned reliever they had once the starters (Martinez for Boston, Mussina for New York) were gone. Boston finished up with Tim Wakefield, the goat in last year’s ALCS Game 7 (the Boone home run), the hero last night… in spite of Jason Varitek’s miseries with the knuckleball behind the plate. The Yankees finished with Esteban Loaiza, who barely made the New York playoff roster. Loaiza, nothing short of horrible for the Yankees during the regular season, was terrific last night until the fourteenth… and even then he did not beat himself. David Ortiz, who has pretty much carried the Red Sox offensively this postseason, beat Loaiza and necessitated Game 6; if the Yankees win the ALCS and then lose the World Series, it may be Ortiz who they will blame.

  Mark Bellhorn led the bottom of the fourteenth doing what he has, unfortunately, done best offensively for his team in the postseason: he struck out. Then Johnny Damon, who had a good ALDS and is having a hideous ALCS (in his previous at-bat, he popped out weakly to Jorge Posada while trying to bunt, effectively killing what might have been a game-winning rally in the eleventh), worked Loaiza for a walk. Cabrera struck out. Manny Ramirez coaxed a second walk from Loaiza, and that set the stage for Papi.

  Ortiz, who won Game 3 against the Angels with a walk-off home run and beat the Yankees in the twelfth the same way two nights ago, has been little short of Jacksonian this October (that would be Reggie, not Andrew). All he did last night was get the first RBI of the game, scoring Cabrera with a single, and then plated the second run himself (bases-loaded walk to Varitek). In the eighth, he struck a solo home run to left-center, meaning that of the four runs Boston scored in the first nine innings, Ortiz was involved in three.

  What I remember most clearly about his last at-bat are the fans to the right of the backstop as I looked toward home plate. They were leaning over the low railing and pounding on the padded face of the backstop, screaming for a hit. Everyone in the park was on their feet. The kids in front of me were wearing their hats on backwards, and turned inside-out for good measure. For the first time since I’ve known him, Stewart O’Nan turned his hat around backwards and inside-out. I don’t do that; for me, the rally-cap thing has never worked. I took mine off instead and held it with the bowl up to the sky, shaking it in that ancient rainmaking gesture. Two guys in the row behind me started doing the same thing.

  Ortiz put on an incredible ten-pitch at-bat. Loaiza must have made a couple of bad pitches in there, because the count eventually ran to 2-2, but I barely remember them. What I remember are those people to the right of the backstop, leaning over and pounding, pounding, pounding on the green. What I remember is Stew in his rally cap, looking weirdly like someLe Mans race-car driver from 1937. What I remember is thirty-five thousand people screaming and screaming under the lights as Big Papi fouled off pitch after pitch, one to the backstop, one to the glass of the .406 Club, one up the left-field foul line, one screaming down the right-field line, just on the wrong side of the Pesky Pole.

  Finally, on the tenth pitch of the at-bat, he hit one fair. The sound of the bat was spongy rather than sharp, not the authoritative crack of good wood, but Ortiz still got all of his broad back into it. The ball flew between Derek Jeter and Miguel Cairo, and well out of reach of either man. Damon was off and running at contact, and the mob was waiting for him at home plate.

  “I thought I was gonna be the first one to get to [Ortiz],” Doug Mientkiewicz is quoted as saying in today’s paper, “but Johnny Damon’s hair was already in my face.”

  So tonight Father Curt Schilling will get what he probably never thought he would: a second chance to shut up those fifty thousand Yankee fans. He’s got a special boot, they tell us, and several million faithful Red Sox fans—in New England and scattered all across the country—will be praying for that boot. Not to mention the ankle inside it.

  The big chant last night was Gary Sheffield’s “Who’s your deal-er?”

  The big pitch was Pedro going up and in and putting Matsui—who’s been lunging across the plate all series and hitting .500—on his big Ultra-man ass.

  The big run—besides the game-winner—was pinch runner Dave Roberts (once again) scoring on a sac fly to tie the game in the eighth.

  The big hit could have easily been Tony Clark’s. In the ninth, with the score tied at 4, two out, and Ruben Sierra on first, he fought off Keith Foulke with two strikes and laced a ball down the right-field line. It hopped off the track, struck the top of the low wall along the corner and popped almost straight up, into the very first row of the stands, for a ground rule double. Sierra, who would have scored easily, had to go back to third, giving Foulke one more chance to work out of the jam, which he did, getting number nine hitter Miguel Cairo on a pop-up. So the Yanks lost this one, literally, by an inch. It’s the kind of break—like El Jefe’s humpback single—we never get, and the kind of break the Yankees always seem to, and I gotta say, it feels good.

  And the big stats: our pen threw eight scoreless, and the Yanks left 18 on base. So don’t feel too bad for them, they had every chance to win.

  Driving home late this rainy morning, I flash on a usually blank Mass Pike message board on an overpass just before the tollbooths at Newton. There, for every westbound traveler to appreciate, including the several hundred New York fans who’d hoped to drink champagne in our ballpark, instead of a construction or accident report, is a simple message, easily decipherable by our would-be alien invaders:

  RED SOX 5

  YANKEES 4

  No team in major league history has ever come back from an 0-3 hole to win a postseason series (no team in an 0-3 hole has even forced a Game 7), but it’s been done twice in the NHL. The last time it was done, it was done to my team. I was a Pittsburgh Penguins fan in 1975 (I’m still a Penguins fan, dammit) when the New York Islanders came roaring back from 0-3 to shame us, winning by the slimmest of margins game after game, several of those in overtime. I was at Game 6 at the Civic Arena, and there was a dispiriting sense in the crowd that we were doomed to lose even though we had a 3-2 lead in games and were playing the last two on home ice. It was like a nightmare, knowing the horrible thing was going to happen but being powerless to stop it. Once we’d lost Game 6, there was hardly any point in playing Game 7, and everyone knew it. We were cooked, broken, useless. We barely showed up, and the Isles push-broomed us into the dustbin of history. Now, granted, the New York Yankees aren’t the Pittsburgh Penguins, but I must say that these Red Sox are as hungry as those young Islanders—a team, you might remember, that matured and went on to win four straight Stanley Cups.

  SK: Almost game time. Will they play? I think maybe they will. And Mr. Schill? Father Curt? I think maybe he will. And if the Red Sox do instead of die, I’ve made arrangements to be in Yanqui Stadium tomorrow night for the kill. Drive those banderillas home, boys! One from Arroyo! Two more from the magickal Mr. Lowe! And one more—in the ninth—the killer—from Pedro, the Closer from Hell.

  SO: It’s on. Gotta hit, and gotta field behind whoever’s on the hill. We’ve overcome big injuries all year, so why change now? I hope to hell you are there tomorrow, and the boys bring it home. And if not, we made ’em sweat blood.

  Billy Mueller in the #2 slot—good move. Bellhorn and Cabrera weren’t getting it done. Billy Mueller, Yankee Killer!

  October 20th/ALCS Game 6

  At Fenway Park this morning, the groundskeepers will continue their little field-grooming chores instead of embarking on the larger chores that go with making a major league baseball f
ield ready for winter. The concessionaires remain on standby, and the spectator gates will still be up on Yawkey Way. Incredibly, long after the baseball pundits on ESPN’s SportsCenter and the sports cannibals in the Boston media had given them up for dead, the Boston Red Sox remain alive; in the words of the immortal Huey Lewis, the heart of rock ’n’ roll is still beating.

  Terry Francona kept Mark Bellhorn on the field and in the lineup even though the abovementioned pundits and cannibals [78] were by yesterday morning all but screaming for the manager to slot Reese in at second base, and Bellhorn responded with a three-run home run in the fourth inning. The rest of the night belonged to Father Curt, who dominated the Yankees for seven innings (his only mistake was a fat 3-1 pitch to Bernie Williams, who made him pay by stroking his 22nd postseason home run), and to Red Sox relievers Bronson Arroyo and Keith Foulke. The former ran into trouble when he gave up a double to Miguel Cairo and a single to Derek Jeter; the latter nearly gave me heart failure by walking Matsui and Sierra in the bottom of the ninth. In the end, however, Tony Clark ended the game by doing what he did so many times for the Red Sox in clutch situations—he struck out. Last night, and in the season’s most crucial situation, the Yankees stranded their comeback on first base.

  The worst moment for Sox fans came during A-Rod’s at-bat in the eighth, following the Jeter single. Rodriguez hit a squibber between the pitcher’s mound and first. Arroyo fielded it, saw that his first baseman (Mientkiewicz, at that point) was out of position, and went to put the tag on A-Rod himself. Rodriguez [79] slapped the ball from Arroyo’s mitt, and Jeter raced all the way around to make it 4–3.

  After Sox manager Terry Francona came out to protest, the umpires put their heads together and reversed the original decision, which had Rodriguez safe at first, and ruled him out on interference, instead. A sulky Derek Jeter (who slapped a phantom tag on David Ortiz and got an out call in Game 5 at Fenway) was forced to return to first base. He was still there when Gary Sheffield fouled out, ending the inning. Fans pelted the field with various objects; police in riot gear lined the foul lines in the top of the ninth; eventually the Red Sox did what no team has ever done before, which is to come back from a 3-0 deficit to tie a postseason best-of-seven series.

  Whether or not they can go all the way and win Game 7 tonight is very much in question, but I intend to be there and see for myself—I called around and wangled a ticket to the game. Yankee Stadium is a horrible place for a Red Sox fan to be at the very best of times, if not Hell itself, then surely the very lowest cellar of purgatory, but I think it must still beat television. After three cold nights at Fenway and one warm one in front of Harlan Ellison’s glass teat (when the Bronx fans were clearly freezing), I am prepared to testify in any court of law that being there is better. I think that if Fox had shown me one more shot of Curt Schilling’s bloody ankle last night I would have screamed—not in horror or pity, but in rage. And anyone with a lick of sense watches such big-money games only with the volume turned all the way down. Listening to the endlessly blathering announcers always makes me think of what my mother used to say about the village idiot when she was growing up in Prout’s Neck back in the late 1920s: “He’d talk about moonlight on a sunny afternoon.”

  But never mind. That sounds bilious, and I’m not in a bilious mood this morning. Far from it. Now that the Red Sox have come so far, I find it nearly impossible to believe they will come all the way…yet not completely impossible. I know this much: if there’s to be a miracle, I intend to see it with my own eyes.

  Time to hit save, eject the disc, and shut this machine down.

  Ruth King’s boy is going to New York City.

  SO: Marky Mark made those boo-birds from the other night eat their words.

  A-Rod slapping Bronson’s glove off was a weird counterpoint to B-yo hitting him to start the brawl in July. What a bald-faced cheater.

  And, man, Joe West has to be the worst umpire in the league—the 2-1 to Sierra was down the pipe.

  But the person at Yankee Stadium I feel sorriest for is the fan who had Bellhorn’s homer in his hands and dropped it. Come on, dude! Nice that the umps finally got that one right.

  Overfuckingjoyed,

  Stew

  SK: Thank God Tony Clark still owed us a couple of Special Ks.

  Off to NYC.

  SO: The rule book calls what A-Rod did “an unsportsmanlike act.” Fans everywhere are calling it an unmanlike act. So our 340K pitcher once again beat their 252M hitter. Justice prevails… for now. Just remember: the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. And cheaters never win.

  ALCS Game 7

  I’m not planning on going to Game 7. I don’t have a ticket, I’m exhausted from four straight late nights and rock-hard hotel beds, and the last time I was at Yankee Stadium we didn’t do so well. I figure I’ll watch Steve on TV from my warm comfy couch. Then at three our Fenway neighbor Mason calls. If he can swing me a ticket, do I want to go? Because he just might be able to, but he needs to know right now.

  I’m thoroughly burnt from the weekend. I mean, I’ve got nothing left—no voice, no energy. But if we’re going to win tonight, I’m going to be there. I don’t care if we lose—I do, but I think the way we’ve battled, we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of one way or the other. And if the guys don’t do it, I’d like to be there to applaud them for the great run they’ve given us, and the great year. I don’t want them to hear nothing but silence or, worse, ugly catcalls.

  “Yeah,” I tell Mason. “Come on, how can I not go?”

  “I’ve got a good feeling,” he says.

  I do too. We really do have nothing to lose. If we lose, so what? Could it be as bad as 1986? I don’t think so. But if we win…If we win it will be one of the greatest wins in Red Sox history. In baseball history. And those are the only two possible outcomes: win or lose. I’ll take those odds.

  “Let me check and I’ll call you back,” Mason says, and then when he does, it’s a go. I toss my stuff in a plastic bag, kiss Trudy good-bye (“Be careful!” she urges, sure the Yankee fans will beat me senseless), hop in the car and zoom off to the Bronx. Last year I didn’t go to Game 7, and I was glad. This year, one way or the other, I’m not going to miss history.

  I get into the Stadium a half hour before game time, and it’s oddly quiet. I expected a seething full house, but here and there are empy seats, and the Yankee fans—though decked out in some of the ugliest team gear I’ve ever seen—are muttering to each other. Where’s the crude, in-your-face stupidity? The 1918 banners? The guys with paint all over them? The crowd seems wary, tight. I see far more Sox hats and shirts than I did last month. It’s like we’re taking over.

  David, the Yankee fan I sit beside, is incredibly polite and well-versed in the game—he’s a baseball fan first, and only then a Yankee fan (he began as a Giants fan, and still owes some allegiance to them). It’s an unexpected pleasure to sit with him and swap lore.

  The Yanks call on Bucky “Fucking” Dent to throw out the first pitch, hoping to stir up old ghosts. Yogi Berra, who watched Maz’s homer go over the wall in Forbes Field, catches for him.

  Maybe they should have let Bucky start, because Kevin Brown has nothing. In the first, after Johnny is thrown out at the plate on a Manny single—on the very next pitch!—Brown tries to sneak an 88 mph fastball past David Ortiz. Never happen. El Jefe lines it into the short porch (in Fenway it either falls for a single or Sheffield catches it racing in) for a 2–0 lead, and the Yanks never dig themselves out of that hole. With bases juiced in the second, Johnny Damon greets Javier Vazquez with a line-drive grand slam into the same short porch that has padded so many Yankees’ power stats over the years,[80] and the thousand or so Faithful drown out the rest of the Stadium.

  And that’s basically it. Tonight Derek Lowe, who was supposed to be the best number three pitcher in the majors, is just that.[81] He gives up one hit in six innings. I’ll say that again: he gives up one hit in six innings. As in Game 4, D-Lowe rhymes with hero
. Johnny hits a second dinger off Vazquez, just like he did on June 29th, and we’re up 8–1 and chanting “Reg-gie Da-mon!” The crowd is totally poleaxed, as if they’ve shown up on the wrong night. They revive only when Pedro comes on for a vanity appearance in the seventh and gives up two runs, one of which Mark Bellhorn (from now until eternity Mark “Fucking” Bellhorn to Yankee fans) immediately gets back with a towering blast off the right-field foul pole. Another garbage run on a sac fly, and yes, finally, that is it.

  I’m behind home with Steve as we nail down the last outs. We don’t even need our closer. It’s 10–3, and no one can hit a seven-run homer. Jeter looks sick. A-Rod and Sheffield have both gone 0-for—complete and total justice. It’s as if the Sox have walked through the Stadium driving stakes through every single ghost’s, vampire’s and Yankee fan’s rotten, cobwebby heart. It’s quiet and the upper deck is half-empty. The Yankees are cooked, and their fans can’t believe it. In the biggest game ever played in this rivalry, the Red Sox have beaten the Yankees at home, by a touchdown, on Mickey Mantle’s birthday. At one minute after midnight, the start of a new day, when Sierra grounds weakly to Pokey Reese, and Pokey flips to Doug Mientkiewicz (so simple!), the most expensive baseball team in history is history.

  And we’re sorry, George, but that’s more than half a billion dollars you’ve spent…for nothing.

  Come on now: Who’s your Daddy?

  Diamondbacks. Angels. Marlins. Red Sox.

  It’s like Papa Jack says: ain’t nuthin’ for free. SOMEBODY got-ta pay. And, Yankee fans, the one you just bought has a lifetime guarantee.

  October 21st

  Last night, in a game that was never supposed to happen, the Boston Red Sox completed the greatest comeback in the history of American professional sports. In light of that accomplishment, an inning-by-inning postmortem would be pretty anticlimactic stuff, and not very helpful in understanding the magnitude of the event. You might as well try to describe a camel by describing a camel’s eyeball.