Faithful

by Stephen King

  By contrast, the Cards’ Larry Walker took to the big stage in a big way, making two great catches in right (a Manny liner down into the corner with men on, and a windblown pop he had to run a long way and then lunge for at the last second), and hitting a double, a homer, a single and another double. This is Walker’s first World Series, after a long and brilliant career in the hinterlands of Montreal and Colorado, and it was heartening to see him show the world his A game. If Pujols, Rolen and Edmonds had done anything to help him out, we’d be down 0-1.

  Mark Bellhorn, meanwhile, seems determined to enforce the curse of the ex-Cubs (that is, the team with more ex-Cubs is bound to lose the Series—the Cards have five while we only have two, Marky Mark and Billy Mueller). Before his home run off Julian Tavarez, he was 2 for 3 against him lifetime, so his success didn’t surprise me, only the magnitude of it. It was no fluke. Tavarez didn’t fool him at all. Marky Mark ripped the pitch before his Pesky Pole shot high and deep down the line in right, but foul. All he had to do was reload and straighten it out, making him one of a very rarefied club—players who’ve homered in three straight postseason games.

  October 24th/World Series Game 2

  On the street outside the players’ lot I run into Andrew on his way out to buy some salads for the guys. We’re surrounded by a crowd of tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of the stars. Camera crews, cops. Andrew still can’t believe this is all happening—a common reaction among the Nation, even those deep inside it. I ask him about Schill’s ankle, and tell him about seeing Dr. Morgan yesterday. Yeah, he says, they had him on the table, but he tried to stay away from there.

  “How’s he look?” I ask.

  Andrew just shrugs. “We’ll have to see.”

  Inside, I catch Tony Womack along the left-field wall, joking with an old friend in the stands about beating him at golf next week. When he gets a break, I ask him how his collarbone feels after taking that David Ortiz smash off it last night.

  “I’m fine,” he says, and I tell him how much I’d been rooting for him in spring training.

  “You ran great, bunted great, stole bases. I wish you could have played the field.”

  “Man,” he says, shaking his head, “they didn’t want me.”

  We shake hands, and a minute later he calls Larry Walker over.

  Walker looks puzzled until he sees Tony’s friend.

  “You know this guy?” Tony asks.

  “Know this guy?” Walker says. “This guy owes me eight grand!”

  It’s Sunday, and in the concourse crowds are gathered around the wall-mounted TVs watching the Patriots beat the Jets for their twenty-first consecutive win. If the Pats can win twenty-one straight, the logic goes, why can’t we win eight?

  Our seats are down in the corner where I normally post up for BP—better seats than I’m used to. How good? Above us in the Monster seats is Jimmy Fallon, and two rows in front of us, so close I could lean forward and tap his shoulder, is Eagles QB Donovan McNabb. He played an outstanding game today in Cleveland, his long scramble setting up an overtime win. He must have showered and gotten right on the plane. He’s so tired that the only time he stands up during the game is to go to the restroom, but, like us, he stays for every drizzly, windswept pitch.

  October 25th

  One summer night in the mid-1960s, right around the time the Beatles were ruling the American music charts, a young music producer named Ed Cobb happened to be walking with his girlfriend beside the Charles River in the quaint old city of Boston, Massachusetts…or so the story goes. Out of the shadows came a thief who tried to mug him out of his wallet (or maybe it was out of her purse; on that the story is not entirely clear). In any case, the musically inclined Mr. Cobb foiled the thief and got an idea for a song as a bonus. The song, “Dirty Water,” was eventually recorded by a group of Boston proto-punks called the Standells and released by Capitol, who wanted a record Cobb had produced for Ketty (“Anyone Who Had a Heart”) Lester. No one expected much from the raw and raunchy [84] “Dirty Water,” but it went to #11 on the Billboard pop charts and has remained a standard on the Boston club scene ever since.

  It was revived by the new Red Sox management and has become the good-time signature of Boston wins. For the Fenway Faithful, there’s nothing better than seeing the final out go up on the scoreboard and hearing that six-note intro with the familiar first-note slide leading into the verse: Down by the riiiiver…And so it seemed a particularly good omen to see the resurrected Standells in deep center field before the game last night, a lot grayer and a little thinner on top but still loud and proud, singing about that dirty water down by the banks of the River Charles.

  A great many things about baseball in general and the Red Sox in particular are about the bridges between past and present—this was just one more provided by a current Yawkey Way administration that seems pleasantlyaware of tradition without becoming enslaved to it. And when the Red Sox had put this one away in the cold mists of a late Sunday evening, the sounds of “Dirty Water” rang out again, this time with the tempo a little faster and the tones a little truer. And why not? This was the one recorded when the Standells were young. This is the version that hit the charts four months before Curt Schilling was born.

  He was awesome last night. The word is tired, clapped-out from overuse, but I’ve had a 170-mile drive to try and think of a better one, and I cannot. The crowd of just over thirty-five thousand in the old green Church of Baseball knew what it was seeing; many of them may have been in Fenway Park for the first time last night (these Series-only fans are what Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy so rightly calls the “Nouveau Nation”), but even they knew. The galaxy of flashbulbs that went off in the stadium, from the plum dugout seats to the skyviews to the distant bleachers to those now perched atop the Green Monster, was chilling in its cold and commemorative brilliance, declaring by silent light that the men and women who came to the ballpark last night had never seen anything quite like it for sheer guts and never expected to see anything quite like it again. Not, certainly, with their own eyes.

  Edgar Renteria, the Cardinals’ leadoff hitter, battled Schilling fiercely—first six pitches, then ten, then a dozen, running the count full and then spilling off foul after foul. [85] He might have been the game’s key batter, and not the ones Schilling had to face following more Boston miscues (another four) that allowed the Cardinals extra chances upon which they could not capitalize.

  Before finally hitting sharply to shortstop (and the often-maligned Kevin Millar made a fine pick at first to complete the play), Renteria tried every trick in the book. Every trick, that is, save one. He never attempted to lay down a bunt. In three starts on his bad peg—two against the Yankees and now one against the Cardinals—no one has tried to make Curt Schilling field his position. I’m sure the Red Sox infielders have discussed this possibility and know exactly how they would handle it…but it has simply never come up. And when this thing is over, when the hurly-burly’s done, all the battles lost and won, someone needs to ask the Yankee andCardinal hitters why they did not bunt. Of course I can imagine the boos that would rain down on a successful bunter against Father Curt at Fenway, but is it beyond the scope of belief to think that even Yankee or Cardinal fans might find it hard to cheer such a ploy for reaching first (well…maybe not Yankee fans)?

  Could it have been—don’t laugh—actual sportsmanship?

  Whatever the reason, the Cards played him straight up last night—I salute them for it—and for the most part, Father Curt mowed them right down. Tony Womack and Mike Matheny had singles; Albert Pujols had a pair of doubles. And, as far as hits against Schilling went, that was it. He finished his night’s work by striking out the side in the sixth.

  For the Red Sox, it was a continuing case of two-run, two-out thunder. Two runs scored after two were out in the first; two more after two were out in the fourth; two more in the sixth, the same way. [86] By the end of the game (Mike Matheny, groundout), the deep green grass of the field and the b
right white of the Red Sox home uniforms had grown slightly diffuse in the thickening mizzle. The departing fans, damp but hardly dampened, were all but delirious with joy. One held up a poster depicting a Christlike Johnny Damon walking on water with the words JOHNNY SAVES beneath his sandaled feet.

  I heard one fan—surely part of Mr. Shaughnessy’s Nouveau Nation—actually saying he hoped the Red Sox would lose a couple in St. Louis, so the team could clinch back on its home soil (yes, Beavis, he actually said “home soil”). I had to restrain myself from laying hands on this fellow and asking him if he remembered 1986, when we also won the first two, only to lose four of the next five. And when a team is going this well (RED HOT RED SOX, trumpets this morning’s USA Today), one loss can lead to others. Winning two at home, within a sniff of the River Charles, may have been vital, considering the fact that the Cardinals have yet to lose a single postseason game in their own house.

  Tomorrow night, Pedro Martinez will face the Cards near the dirty water of a much larger river, in a much larger stadium. It will be his first World Series start, and given that no team has ever climbed out of an 0-3 World Series hole (and surely that sort of thing can’t happen twice in the same postseason… can it?), I think it’s going to be the most important start by a Red Sox pitcher in a long, long time. Certainly since 1986.

  October 26th/World Series Game 3

  SK: Dear Stewart-Under-the-Arch: Here’s my idea of the doomsday scenario, also known as the Novelist’s Ending. The BoSox win one game in Saint Loo. Come back to Boston up three games to two. Lose Game 6. And… have to start Father Curt for all the marbles in Game 7.

  Stewart, this could actually happen.

  SO: I’m hoping we can steal one out there, and hey, if we get two, I won’t be crying about eating my Game 6 tickets. It’s just like the Yankee series: we just have to win one game—the game we’re playing.

  SK: All lookin’ good. Now, if Pedro can only do his part.

  You know, I think he will.

  SO: Pedro remains inscrutable. We can’t hit like it’s a regular Pedro game; we have to pretend it’s John Burkett out there. Think seven or eight runs. Go Sox!

  The Sox are up 4–0 as the game rolls into the ninth, and I find I can’t sit down. As Foulke comes in, I’m muttering the lyrics to his Fenway entrance music, Danzig’s “Mother” (“And if you want to find Hell with me, I can show you what it’s like”). He gets Edgar Renteria, then has Larry Walker 0-2 when he just lays a fastball in there, and Walker golfs it out. I watch Johnny turn and watch it, then I’m out of the room, swearing and pacing through the house. It’s okay, we’ve got a three-run lead and there’s no one on. Foulkie just has to go after hitters and not walk anybody. Pujols gets behind and jaws at the ump after a borderline call, then skies one deep to left (oh crap) that Manny settles under (whew)—that’s two. Scott Rolen, 0 for the series, is taking, gets behind, then inexplicably takes the 1-2 pitch, which, while slightly in, is clearly a strike, and the ump punches him out to end the game. We’re up 3–0 and I’m jumping around the room.

  Petey came through so big, and Manny, and Billy Mueller hitting with two down. We’re a game away. I’ve been a strike away before, so I’m already trying to play it down, but, damn, I didn’t expect us to ever be up 3–0 on the Cards. The idea of winning it all sends me romping through the house, bellowing the Dropkick Murphys’ “Tessie,” even though I don’t know all the words: “Up from third base to Hun-ting-ton, they’d sing another vic-t’ry sooooooong—two, three, four!”

  Boston has now won seven in a row (tying a postseason record), pushing the Cards to the brink where the Red Sox themselves stood only a week ago. The most amazing thing about the World Series part of the Red Sox run is that the Cardinals have yet to lead in a single game. Their manager, Tony La Russa, certainly knows this, and while his part of the postgame news conference seemed long to me, it must have seemed interminable to him. He looked more like a middle-level racketeer being questioned in front of a grand jury than a successful baseball manager. Part of the reason for La Russa’s long face may have had to do with the game’s key play, which came in the third inning, when Cardinals base runner (and starting pitcher) Jeff Suppan was thrown out at third.

  Suppan led off the inning with a slow roller to third. Mueller handled it cleanly, but not in time to get Suppan at first. Edgar Renteria followed with a double to right that had Trot Nixon falling on his ass because of the wet conditions in the outfield. [87] Suppan probably could have scored right there, tying the game, but perhaps he was held up by the third-base coach. (We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, anyway.) So with runners at second and third and nobody out, up came Larry Walker, a gent who is absolutely no slouch with the stick. He hit a ground ball to Mark Bellhorn.

  At that point the Boston infield was playing back, conceding Suppan’s run, which would have tied the score, 1–1. But Suppan didn’t score when Walker made contact, nor did he when Bellhorn threw Walker out.Instead he broke toward home, broke back toward third base, then broke toward home a second time. Meanwhile, Boston’s new kid on the block at first base, David Ortiz, in the lineup because the designated hitter doesn’t exist in National League parks, was observing all this. From Ortiz’s side of the diamond, Suppan must have looked as frantic and disoriented as a bird trapped in a garage. He fired across the diamond to Bill Mueller just as Suppan darted back toward third base a second time. Suppan dove for the bag, but Mueller was able to put the tag on him easily.

  The result of this beer-league baserunning was that instead of tying the score against one of the American League’s craftiest power pitchers with only one out, the Cardinals found themselves with two outs and no runs scored. Albert Pujols followed Walker, grounding out harmlessly to end the inning. The Cards would not score until the bottom of the ninth, and by then it was too late. The irony (La Russa’s long postgame face suggested he did not need this pointed out to him) was that the National League team had been screwed by the very rules that were supposed to tip the scales in their favor. It was their pitcher who made the baserunning blunder, and our erstwhile designated hitter who saw it happening and gunned him down.

  Although Boston got a pair of insurance runs in the fifth, more two-out thunder from Manny Ramirez in the first [88] and Bill Mueller (batted home by Trot Nixon) in the fourth were all the run support Pedro Martinez needed; he, Mike Timlin and Keith Foulke spun a gem. Following Edgar Renteria’s double in the third inning, Red Sox pitching retired eighteen Cards in a row. Larry Walker broke up the string with one out in the ninth, turning around a Keith Foulke fastball to deep left center for a home run.

  So now the St. Louis deficit is 0-3. One would like to say that lightning cannot strike twice on the same patch of ground, and certainly not so soon, but in truth, one cannot say that. Especially not if one happens to have been a Red Sox fan for the last fifty years and has had the cup snatched away from his lips so many times just before that first deep and satisfying drink.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been so aware of the limitations of this narrative’s necessary diary form until today. You sitting there with the finished book in your hand are like an astronaut who can see the entire shape of the earth: where every sea ends and every coastline begins again. I just go sailing along from day to day, hoping to avoid the storms and writing in this log when seas are calm. And now I think I can smell land up ahead. I hope I’m not jinxing things by saying that, but I really think I can. Not just any land, either, but the sweet Promised Land I’ve been dreaming of ever since my Uncle Oren bought me my first Red Sox cap and stuck it on my head in the summer of 1954. “There, Stevie,” he said, blowing the scent of Narragansett beer into the face of the big-eyed seven-year-old looking up at him. “They ain’t much, but they’re the best we got.”

  Now, fifty long years later, they’re on the verge of being the best of all. One more game and we can put all this curse stuff, all this Babe stuff, all this 1918 stuff, behind us.

  Please, baseball gods
, just one more game.

  SK: Ah, but I begin to smell exotic spices and strange nerds… er, nards… could these be the scents of the Promised Land? I can only hope they are not scents sent by false sirens on hidden stones beyond a mirage of yon beckoning shore…

  But I digress.

  We rocked tonight, dude.

  SO: It’s good to be up 3-0 instead of down 0-3, but the job’s the same: win the game we’re playing. The guys have to stay on top of it.

  SK: You must have been eating the postgame spread with Tito. :-)

  October 27th/World Series Game 4

  It’s Trudy’s and my twentieth anniversary today. We were supposed to be in Chicago last weekend, eating at Charlie Trotter’s and the Billy Goat Tavern (the honest-to-God home of the Cubs’ curse as well as the chee-burger, chee-burger skit from SNL), but those plans dissolved in the face of Games 1 and 2. Tonight, at Trudy’s insistence, I call and cancel our long-standing dinner reservations at the best restaurant in town. I don’t tell the maitre d’ why. “Enjoy the game,” he says.

  Signs and portents everywhere. Tonight’s the eighteenth anniversary of our last World Series loss—Game 7 to the ’86 Mets. Not only is there a full moon, but right around game time there’s a total lunar eclipse. By the time I go outside to see the lip of the earth’s shadow cross the Sea of Tranquility, Johnny has us up 1–0 with a leadoff home run. Later, when Trot doubles on a bases-juiced 3-0 green light to give us a 3–0 lead, the eclipse is well under way, casting a decidedly red stain—blood on the moon, or is it a cosmic nod to the Sox?

  For the third game in a row, Lowe pitches brilliantly, giving up just three hits in seven innings. Arroyo looks shaky in the eighth, but Embree relieves him and is perfect for the second straight outing. As Foulke closes, I’m standing behind the couch, shifting with every pitch as if I’m guarding the line. At this point, for no other reason it seems than to torture us, Fox decides to show a montage combining all the horrible moments in Red Sox postseason history, beginning with Enos Slaughter, moving through Bucky Dent and Buckner, and finishing with Aaron Boone. I hold a hand up to block it out (to eclipse it!). At this moment in Red Sox history, I do not want to see that shit. It’s not bad luck, it’s bad taste, and whoever thought it was appropriate is a jerk.