Faithful

by Stephen King

  With one down, Pujols singles through Foulke’s legs, right through the five-hole, a ball Foulke, a diehard hockey fan, should have at least gotten a pad on. We’re nervous—another runner and they’ll bring the tying run to the plate—but Foulke’s cool. He’s got that bitter disdain—that nastiness, really—of a great closer. He easily strikes out Edmonds (now 1 for 15), then snags Edgar Renteria’s comebacker and flips to Mientkiewicz, and that’s it, it’s that simple: the Red Sox have won the World Series!

  While we’re still hugging and pounding each other (Trudy’s crying, she can’t help it; Steph’s laughing; I’m just going: “Wow. Wow. Wow.”) Caitlin calls from Boston. In the background, girls are shrieking. She’s at Nickerson Field, formerly Braves Field, where B.U. is showing the game on a big screen. I can barely hear her for the noise. “They did it!” she yells. “They did!” I yell back. There’s no analysis, just a visceral appreciation of the win. I tell her to stay out of the riots, meaning keep away from Fenway, and she assures me she will. It’s not until I get off the phone with her that I realize the weird parallel: when I was a freshman there, my team won the World Series too.

  It’s more than just a win; it’s a statement. By winning tonight, we broke the record for consecutive playoff wins, with eight straight. Another stat that every commentator unpacks is that we’re one of only four championship teams to have never trailed in the Series.[89] Thanks to Johnny, O.C., Manny and Papi, we scored in the first inning of every game, and our starters, with the exception of Wake, shut down St. Louis’s big sticks. Schill, Petey and D-Lowe combined for 20 shutout innings. Much respect to pitching coach Dave Wallace and his scouts for coming up with a game plan to stop the Cards. As a team, they batted .190, well below the Mendoza Line. Scott Rolen and Jim Edmonds went 1 for 30, that one hit being a gimme bunt single by Edmonds against a shifted infield. Albert Pujols had zero RBIs. Reggie Sanders went 0 for 9. It’s not that we crushed the ball. We scored only four runs in Game 3 and three in Game 4. Essentially, after the Game 1 slugfest, we played NL ball, beating them with pitching, and in the last two games our defense was flawless. In finally putting the supposed Curse to rest, we dotted every i and crossed every t. And to make it all even sweeter, the last out was made by Edgar Renteria, who wears—as a couple of folks noted—the Babe’s famous #3.

  October 28th

  It came down to this: with two outs in the St. Louis half of the ninth and Keith Foulke on the mound—Foulke, the nearly sublime Red Sox closer this postseason—only Edgar Renteria stood between Boston and the end of its World Series drought. Renteria hit a comebacker to the mound. “Stabbed by Foulke!” crowed longtime Red Sox radio announcer Joe Castiglione. “He underhands to first! The Red Sox are World Champions! Can you believe it?”

  I hardly could, and I wasn’t the only one. A hundred miles away, my son woke up his five-year-old son to see the end. When it was over and the RedSox were mobbing each other on the infield, Ethan asked his father, “Is this a dream or are we living real life?”

  The answer, it seems to me this morning, is both. The only newspaper available at the general store was the local one (the others were held up because of the lateness of the game), and the Sun-Journal’s huge front-page headline, of a size usually reserved only for the outbreak of war or the sudden death of a president, was only two words and an exclamation mark:

  AT LAST!

  When the other New England papers finally do arrive in my sleepy little pocket of New England, I’m confident they will bear similar happy headlines of a similar size on their front pages.

  A game summary would be thin stuff indeed compared to this out-pouring of joy on a beautiful blue and gold New England morning in late October. [90] Usually when I go to get the papers and my 8 A.M. doughnut, the little store up the road is almost empty. This morning it was jammed, mostly with people waiting for those newspapers to come in. The majority were wearing Red Sox hats, and the latest political news was the last thing on their minds. They wanted to talk about last night’s game. They wanted to talk about the Series as a whole. They wanted to talk about the guts of Curt Schilling, pitching on his hurt ankle, and the grit of Mr. Lowe, who was supposed to spend the postseason in the bullpen and ended up securing a magickal and historickal place for himself in the record books instead, as the winner in all three postseason clinchers: Game 3 of the Division Series, Game 7 of the League Championship Series, and now Game 4 of the World Series. And while none of those waiting for the big-time morning papers—the Boston Globe, USA Today, and the New York Times—came right out and asked my grandson’s question, I could see it in their eyes, and I know they could see it in mine: Is this a dream, or are we living real life?

  It’s real life. If there was a curse (other than a sportswriter’s brilliant MacGuffin for selling books, amplified in the media echo chamber until even otherwise rational people started to half-believe it), it was the undeniable fact that the Red Sox hadn’t won a World Series since 1918, and all the baggage that fact brought with it for the team’s long-suffering fans.

  The Yankees and their fans have always been the heaviest of that baggage, of course. Yankee rooters were never shy about reminding Red Sox partisans that they were supporting lifetime losers. There was also the undeniable fact that in recent years the Yankee ownership—comfy and complacent in their much bigger ballpark and camped just downstream from a waterfall of fan cash—had been able to outspend the Red Sox ownership, sometimes at a rate of two dollars to one. There was the constant patronization of the New York press (the Times, for instance, chuckling in its indulgently intelligent way over the A-Rod deal, and concluding that the Yankees were still showing the Red Sox how to win, even in the off-season), the jokes and the gibes.

  The ball through Bill Buckner’s legs in 1986 was horrible, of course, but now Buckner can be forgiven.

  What’s better is that now the Bucky Dent home run, the Aaron Boone home run and the monotonous chants of Who’s your Daddy? can be forgotten. Laughed off, even. On the whole, I would have to say that while to forgive is human, to forget is freakin’ divine.

  And winning is better than losing. That’s easy to lose sight of, if you’ve never done it. I can remember my younger son saying—and there was some truth in this—that when the Philadelphia Phillies finally won their World Championship after years of trying, they became “just another baseball team.” When I asked Owen if he could live with that as a Red Sox fan, he didn’t even hesitate. “Sure,” he said.

  I feel the same way. No one likes to root for a loser, year after year; being faithful does not save one from feeling, after a while, like a fool, the butt of everyone’s joke. At last I don’t feel that way. This morning’s sense of splendid unreality will surely rub away, but the feeling of lightness that comes with finally shedding a burden that has been carried far too long will linger for months or maybe even years. Cubs fans now must bear the loser legacy all by themselves. They have their Curse of the Billy Goat, and although I am sure it is equally bogus, [91] they are welcome to it.

  Bottom of the ninth, two out, Albert Pujols on second, Red Sox Nation holding its breath. Foulke pitches. Renteria hits an easy comebacker to the mound. Foulke fields it and tosses it to Mientkiewicz, playing first. Mientkiewicz jumps in the air, holding up the index finger of his right hand, signaling We’re number one. Red Sox players mob the field while stunned and disappointed Cardinal fans look on. Some of the little kids are crying, and I feel bad about that, but back in New England little kids of all ages are jumping for joy.

  “Can you believe it?” Joe Castiglione exults, and eighty-six years of disappointment fall away in the length of time it takes the first-base ump to hoist his thumb in the out sign.

  This is not a dream.

  We are living real life.

  While the Babe may be resting easier, I barely sleep, and wake exhausted, only to watch the same highlights again and again, seeing things I missed while we were celebrating. As the Sox mob each other, in the background
Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore are kissing, shooting their fairy-tale ending to Fever Pitch (nice timing, Farrellys!).[92] In short center, right behind second base, Curtis Leskanic lies down and makes the natural grass equivalent of a Patriots snow angel. The crawl says RED SOX WIN WORLD SERIES, and I think, yes, yes they did.

  It did happen. It was no dream. We’re the World Champions, finally, and there’s that freeing sense of redemption and fulfillment I expected—the same cleansing feeling I had after the Pats’ first Super Bowl win. The day is bright and blue, the leaves are brilliant and blowing. It’s a beautiful day in the Nation, maybe the best ever.

  And yet, the season’s over, too. There will be no more baseball this year, and while I’ve said I wouldn’t mind eating my tickets to Games 6 and 7, it feels wrong that I won’t be back in Fenway again until April.

  Just for fun, I go to the website (choked with new World Champions merchandise) and poke around, looking for spring training information. There’s a number for City of Palms Park, but when I call it, it’s busy. It’s going to be crazy there next year. If I want to get in, I’d better start working on it now. I flip the pages of our 2005 calendar to February and March and wonder when Trudy’s school has its break. I wonder if there’s a nicer hotel closer to City of Palms Park, and whether they’d have any rooms left at this point.

  I have to stop myself. Okay, calm down. There’s no need to hustle now, the very morning after. I can take a day off and appreciate what we’ve done—what they’ve done, the players, because as much as we support them, they’re the ones out there who have to field shots we’d never get to, and hit pitches that would make us look silly, and beat throws that would have us by miles. And the coaches and the manager, the owners and the general manager, who have to make decisions we’ll never take any heat for. They did it, all of them together, our Red Sox.

  Congratulations, guys. And thank you. You believed in yourselves even more than we did. That’s why you’re World Champions, and why we’ll never forget you or this season. Wherever you go, any of you, you’ll always have a home here, in the heart of the Nation.

  Go Sox!

  SO: You know how the papers are always saying you bring the team bad luck? Well, the one year you write a book about the club, we win it all. Another fake curse reversed.

  Not in your lifetime, huh? Well, brutha, welcome to Heaven!

  SK: How do you suppose Angry Bill is doing?

  SO: He’s in that box of a room in Vegas, grumbling about something—probably the Bruins.

  SK: Are you going to the V-R Day Parade?

  SO: No, but tonight I ate that Break the Curse cookie I got on Opening Day. A vow’s a vow. Washed that stiff six-month-old biscuit down with champagne and enjoyed every morsel. Life is sweet.

  Off to drink more champagne. You (and Johnny D) are still The Man.

  SK: No, Stewart, you (and Papi) are The Man. I’m giving you the two Pointy-Finger Salute.

  SO: Right back atcha, baby. Keep the Faith.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For our baseball widows,

  Trudy and Tabby

  And for Ted, Johnny, Yaz, Lonnie, Rico, Tony C, Boomer, Luis, Spaceman, Pudge, Rooster, Bernie, Jim Ed, Freddy, Eck, Ned Martin, Ken Coleman, Dewey, Hendu, Bruce Hurst, Sherm Feller, John Kiley, Marty Barrett, The Can, Mo, El Guapo, and yes, for you, Billy Buck, and even you, Rocket, and finally—finally—for you, Babe. All is forgiven.

  BOSTON RED SOX 2004 STATS

  Copyright

  SCRIBNER

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  New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 2004 by Stewart O’Nan, Stephen King

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

  DESIGNED BY ERICH HOBBING

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2004063398

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-7244-5

  ISBN-10: 0-7432-7244-7

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  Notes

  1

  The Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy.

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  2

  Where it festers.

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  3

  In the first two meetings of this year, we beat them by scores of 6–2 and 5–2, and the Yankees’ big off-season acquisition, Alex Rodriguez (who Red Sox fans see, rightly or wrongly, as a player stolen out from under our very noses by George “I’ll Spend Anything” Steinbrenner) went 0 for 8. Well enough. In the third game, however, The Team That Will Not Die is leading the Sox 7–3 in the fourth inning.

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  4

  Shaughnessy again: “…only three collapses approximate this one: the 1915 Giants led the Boston Braves by fifteen games on the Fourth of July and finished ten and a half behind; the 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers led the Giants by thirteen games August 11, got tied on the final day of the season, then lost the playoff; and the 1964 Phillies led the Cardinals by six and a half games with twelve to play, then lost ten straight. The Giants, Dodgers and Phillies eventually won championships. The Red Sox…” Well, do we need to finish that? Fuck, no, we’s fans.

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  5

  Who went to the unusual length of issuing an apology after the game—fat lot of good it did us.

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  6

  Who will not be eligible for the win today, I’m happy to report.

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  7

  When Zim was the Red Sox field general, Sox pitcher Bill Lee once called him “the designated gerbil.”

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  8

  Harvey Frommer and Frederic J. Frommer, Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry (Sports Publishing/Boston Baseball, 2004). This is a Boston-biased book, but most of the color photographs show celebrating Yankees and downcast Red Sox…wonder why.

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  9

  Ibid.

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  10

  The Yankees won today’s game, 7–3. The final game of the series will be played tomorrow at 11 A.M. (it’s the annual Patriots’ Day game in Boston), and with today’s win and tomorrow’s matchup—Boston’s Bronson Arroyo versus the Yankees’ Kevin Brown—the Yankees have an excellent chance of earning a split… curse them.

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  11

  The loser, I’m very sorry to say, happened to be ex–Red Sox closer Tom Gordon, the star of a book I wrote…and in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Flash will be the Red Sox closer forever. Sorry, Mr. Steinbrenner, but there’s not a thing you can do about that one.

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  12

  Here’s what I understand about hockey: Bulky men wearing helmets and carrying sticks in their gauntleted hands skate around for a while on my TV; then some guy comes on and sells trucks. Sometimes chicks come on and sell beer.

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  13

  The record he shares, perhaps not so coincidentally, with fellow former Portland Sea Dog Kevin Millar. SO

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  14

  There was a time when you could see The Wave going around at almost all baseball parks and football stadiums; to my knowledge, only at Fenway does it survive. Survive? Nay, sir or madam, it thrives! Tonight it went around and around in the eighth, when the Sox sent eleven men to the dish and scor
ed six times. I myself refuse to wave unless I am also allowed to scream Sieg heil! at the top of my lungs.

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  15

  48 degrees, according to Channel 4 weather when I got back to my hotel.