Faithful (14 page)

Brigham’s ice cream is coming out with a new flavor, Reverse the Curse. Vanilla with fudge sauce, caramel, chocolate and peanuts, the product looks suspiciously like their Big Dig, but I appreciate the sentiment. They say that after the Sox win this October, they’ll have a contest to rename it.

The paper says Nomar took batting practice in the cage yesterday, another hopeful sign, but there’s still no schedule for his return. Trot’s headed back to Florida for more rehab on the quad. Also headed to Florida is Manny, to Miami, to become an American citizen. He’ll miss tonight’s game against Cleveland.

He’s lucky. This one’s a mess from the very beginning. Besides Lou Merloni’s return to Fenway, there’s not much to cheer about. Kim’s ineffective, and the Indians can hit. They bang on the Monster three times in the first, giving Dauber a crash course in left field. He looks terrible on the first one—getting caught too close to the wall so Johnny has to come over and back him up—but on the last one he throws Ben Broussard out at second to end the inning.

Dauber provides some offensive highlights as well, lining a two-run double off the wall and later homering into the Indians’ bullpen; he even backs up Johnny nicely on a double off the Bob’s sign, but the story of the game is Kim. He’s topping out at 86 and can’t find the plate. He and Tek get their signs mixed up, and an elusive passed ball scores two more. When Kim leaves with one out in the top of the fourth, he’s thrown 80 pitches, 46 for strikes, and it’s 4–4 with the bases loaded. The sellout crowd boos. Lefty Lenny DiNardo comes in and gives up a single to outfielder Coco Crisp.

Cleveland leads the rest of the way, and the rest of the way is mighty ugly, a parade of relievers for both teams. DiNardo gives up a run of his own, Embree gives up a pair (thanks to Timlin, who walks the first guy he sees and can’t wriggle out of the jam), Malaska lets one in. Foulke, at least, throws a clean inning. It’s a long game, lots of base runners. Cleveland’s line score says it all: 2 2 0 2 0 1 2 0 1.

The final’s 10–6. No alibis, no one play to point to, we just plain stunk. The whole Kim-Arroyo debate’s sure to heat up. I try not to overreact. It’s just one game, and tomorrow we’ve got Pedro going.

Theo and Francona don’t waste any time: Kim’s out of the rotation, Arroyo’s in. They must have made the decision after the game, since it’s in the morning paper.

Tonight it’s Cleveland at the Fens, and a rematch of Pedro versus C. C. Sabathia, who has to be the pimpest pitcher in the American League (maybe in all of baseball): big, baggy uni, hat worn cocked arrogantly to one side. We’re not off to a good start. After striking out the first batter, Pedro has allowed three straight hits (the second one tainted, a bouncer from Omar Vizquel off first baseman David Ortiz’s glove) and Cleveland leads, 2–0.

At least it’s a decent night for baseball. I may have said this before, but it bears repeating: spring baseball in New England is usually rotten for the fans and sometimes dangerous for the players (especially the pitchers). I mean, night baseball in April? In
Boston?
Where the temperature’s forty-six degrees and the wind blowing in off the Back Bay makes it feel like twenty-seven? I’d say you’ve got to be kidding me, but we all know I’m not, just as we know it’s all about the money. Baseball is a lazy game, meant to be played on long, lazy summer afternoons and into the purple twilight—when fans so inclined can exchange their iced tea or Cokes for cold beer—but money has changed all that. Tonight at least we have a foretaste of summer: eighty degrees at game time, according to Joe Castiglione inthe radio booth, and coincidentally or not, it’s also Boston’s eightieth straight home sellout. Stewart O’Nan’s there tonight, I think. Lucky dog. This older dog will be there a little later on this month, when the warmth may be a little more reliable.

Meantime, I have to look back on my own preseason musings about how much the AL East has improved—Orioles, Jays, D-Rays, blahblah-blah—and smile a little bit. Because now, as the Red Sox play into the second inning of their thirty-second contest of the season, it’s starting to look like a case of same as it ever was: Red Sox and Yankees, duking it out for first, with the long, hot summer stretching ahead. The Sox had a five-game bulge over the Yanks not long ago, but it’s been years since Boston seemed comfortable with anything like a real lead; they went into tonight’s game with just a half-game pad over the second-place Yankees and first place on the line. Baltimore is still in it, too, a game and a half back.

My mother-in-law, meanwhile, with whom I watched a good many games in Florida, is now in the hospital with respiratory problems, but I know she’ll be watching on NESN. They’re watching all over New England, tonight and every other night, in the hospitals, nursing homes, rehabs, and hospices. It’s what we do, what we’ve done for going on a century now. They’re hitting Pedro pretty well tonight, and we’re down 2–0 in the second, Cleveland with two more in scoring position, but Pedro has also struck out the side in the first inning, and two more in the second. I pause in front of this keyboard every time he throws. I want him to get those six Ks. So does my mother-in-law, Sarah Jane, over in St. Joe’s, not to mention Leo the short-order cook at Nicky’s Diner down on Union Street, and Keith Jacubois at the Texaco station over in Montpelier. This is what we do, and we’ve finally got a decent night to do it on, and we may be behind, but there are no damn blackflies yet, and for the time being, we’re still in first place.

Pedro walked Jody Miller, but now he’s 0-2 on Red Sox killer Victor Martinez. He comes to the belt…and strikes Victor out swinging. And all over New England they’re cheering in the hospitals, hospices, and roadside restaurants. When the Sox finally win this one two hours later, Pedro Martinez doesn’t get the W; that goes to Alan Embree, who gives up a go-ahead gopher ball and then vultures the victory when the Sox come back in the bottom of the eighth.

The win allows the Sox to stay in first, because the Yankees beat the Angels—finally, after two rain delays, in front of approximately sixteen remaining fans—in the Bronx, in ten. The final score is high and Kevin Brown doesn’t get the win. The Yankees have finally started to roll, but their pitching remains suspect as ever—a good sign.

And a rather endearing postscript having to do with our other Ramirez: to wit, one Manny. In Cleveland, he was usually silent and often viewed as sullen even when he was clearly enjoying the game. In Boston—a town where the sports reporters are often compared to the shark in
Jaws
—he has become more expansive with each passing year; not even management’s efforts in the off-season to trade him for A-Rod seem to have fazed him in the slightest, and by the kickoff of the 2004 festivities, Manny was downright chatty. Not stupid, though. Asked for a comment following the Sox five-game massacre of the Yankees, Manny’s deference was both charming and diplomatic: “They got all the World Series rings, man,” he said. “We got nothing.”

He has been the one completely dependable hitter in the Red Sox lineup this year, at this date in May batting roughly eighty points higher than Alex Rodriguez, the man for whom Theo Epstein hoped to trade him. He has played in every game of the season except for this Monday’s (May 10th) trouncing by Cleveland, his old team. Manny was unavailable to play on that day because he was taking the U.S. citizenship test…which he passed. At the start of tonight’s game he ran out to his position in left field with a big grin on his face and a small American flag in his right hand. Manny’s People in left gave him a standing O.

Way to go, Manny Ramirez—welcome to the
real
big leagues.

Mr. Kim’s headed for Pawtucket, where they say he’ll throw only two innings at a time. Supposedly this will help him get back his velocity faster. Theo says BK’s shown he can dominate major league hitters, and that that quality doesn’t just go away, but it’s hard to tell if he truly believes this.

A note in the
Courant
’s Sox column says that Trot took BP yesterday and hit some out, and that Nomar knocked a couple over the Monster. It’s possible, since the Sox were batting a little before the gates opened. I didn’t see Trot until after the game, congratulating the line of guys coming off, but I saw Nomar take around thirty swings, and nothing was close to going out.

The website says right-handed reliever Jamie Brown will be taking Mr. Kim’s spot on the roster, making him something like our twentieth pitcher this season. Whatever happened to Bobby Jones? Instead of all these kid relievers, I’d rather see them bring up a big righty stick like perennial triple-A prospect Andy Dominique for late-inning situations. Twelve pitchers seems like a luxury, and I’m not sure we’re getting anything out of it. There’s such a traffic jam in the pen that Williamson hasn’t thrown in six days.

Tonight it’s Wake versus Cliff Lee, a young lefthander who’s 3-0 with a nifty ERA. It seems every time the Indians have someone on, they take advantage of Wake’s slow delivery and steal. Twice Bellhorn lets throws from Mirabelli skip by him into center. The Indians get a run in the second, and the third, and the fifth, and two in the sixth on a Monster shot by Tim Laker. Wake’s just not sharp, and Lee is. In the ninth, down four, the crowd rallies. It’s louder than it’s been all night when Dauber’s pinch double scores Bill Mueller. Johnny hits a hopper up the middle; Vizquel and Belliard look at each other, and it rolls into center, scoring Dauber. It’s 6–4, and up to the plate steps the tying run in the form of Mark Bellhorn. The count goes 2-0, David Ortiz is on deck and Betancourt is sweating like Calvin Schiraldi. Just last week, Bellhorn hit that two-run shot in the ninth to tie the game against KC—at the same score too, 6–6. He must be thinking the same thing, because he goes fishing for a couple balls well off the plate and Ks to end the game.

So Cleveland takes two out of three from us, and we go 3-3 on the home stand. Now it’s off to Toronto for four games—all against righties, mercifully.

Please, please, let the Yankees lose.

In the mail, a phantom piece: a pennant with the Sox logo and printed signatures of all the players surrounding WORLD CHAMPIONS 1986. Earlier this week I received a phantom soda cup that would have been sold at Wrigley during the much anticipated Sox-Cubs World Series last year. They’re not fakes, just survivors of large runs, the majority of which were destroyed by reality. On eBay I’ve seen phantom tickets for playoffs and World Series dating back to the sixties, including some years in which we never even came close (say, 1970, 1987). There’s a twinge of pain attached to these no-longer-possible futures, but also, by the pieces’ existence, a validation of what should have happened.

Unless something weird happens, we’re done for the season with Cleveland, and considering that we finished 3-4, that’s probably a good thing. “Looks like Wakefield’s carriage turned back into a pumpkin, Dad,” my son Owen said during last night’s postgame call. (Not so fast, kid—Wake’s been down before, but he’s never been out.) Now we’re on to Toronto, and what my
other
son likes to call the CreepyDome, because it’s been so empty over the last three or four years…and especially now, while playoff hockey is still wending its slow way through the lower intestine of bigga-time sport.
[12]
Schilling is starting for us tonight, and since Toronto beat him last time when Schill insisted on holding on to the ball in the late innings, this should be a game worth watching. But first I have to watch
Jeopardy
. This is Political Gasbag Week, and I have to root for Keith Olbermann, himself a recent émigré from the Land of Bigga-Time Sport.

Later:
“This one’s no masterpiece,” Jerry Remy of the TV crew opines in the seventh inning of tonight’s tilt, and that’s an understatement. Every pitcher seems to have one team he just can’t seem to beat, and for Curt Schilling, it’s the Jays. He went into this game with only one victory against them in something like half a dozen tries (that one win came in his Diamondback days), and he’s not going to improve on that record tonight. The final score is 12–6. Schill struggled, and he’ll probably get tagged with the loss, but that’s not the real story of this game; he only gave up three runs, and the Sox have already scored twice that many as we play into the eighth.

The story of the game isn’t even the Red Sox defense, which has been horrible—a Johnny Damon error in center let in two runs, and Mark Bellhorn’s failure to snag Frank Catalanotto’s foul pop cost another two (Catalanotto singled on the next pitch). No, the real problem, it seems to me, is that the Sox have turned lackluster in their last five games, playing catch-up in four of them and only successfully in one of those. The Yankeeswon earlier today, beating the Angels (Mariano Rivera was shaky, but had just enough gas to survive a bases-loaded jam in the ninth), and if things don’t turn around, the Red Sox are going to find themselves with a 5-9 mark for the month of May…and in second place. They need a shake-up. This may be where our new manager really starts earning his paycheck…assuming he can, of course.

Two final notes (unless the Sox pull it out, that is): Orlando Hudson has scored five of the Jays’ runs, tying a team record. (Ask me if I give a shit.) And on the radio, color commentator Jerry Trupiano has been reduced to wondering how the sitcom
Frasier,
which finishes its run tonight, turned out.

It’s been that kind of game.

7:40 A.M.: Ordinarily I tune in to NESN’s morning sports show, which runs on a constant fifteen-minute loop from 5 A.M. to 9 A.M. seven days a week, while I do my push-ups and crunches, but not today. Not even the thought of Jayme Parker, who’s blond and
very
good-looking, can motivate me into picking up the remote this morning. The Yankee win and the Red Sox sloppy D, combining to put the Bombers back into first (thank
God
I didn’t have to look at the
New York Post
today), is bad enough; that look of lackluster, who-cares sloppiness over the last few games is worse. Last night it even seemed to have gotten to Curt Schilling; I fancied I could read it in his dispirited dugout sprawl after he was lifted.

Dammit, don’t you guys know that O’Nan and I are counting on you to win the pennant? I want to shout, “Wake up! It gets late early in this game so
wake the hell up!
”

Grumbling in the paper about Francona going to DiNardo and Malaska with games on the line. Why,
Courant
beat writer David Heuschkel asks, are we relying on our number eleven and twelve pitchers when we’ve got a stocked pen?

The answer’s obvious, and goes back to the off-season. For several years we’ve been short on lefties, and we haven’t had a reliable middle guy since Rich Garces—El Guapo—hurt his elbow. Theo never went out and dealt for a lefty, so in spring training we saw a logjam for the last bullpen spot, won, finally, by retread Bobby Jones, who lasted all of a week. The guy right behind him, Tim Hamulack, hasn’t made it up yet, while DiNardo, Malaska and Phil Seibel have all seen work. Theo probably thought the middle relief was covered by Arroyo and Mendoza. Mendoza’s on the DL (as always); Arroyo’s now part of the starting rotation. Our only major league lefty, Embree, is a situational and setup guy who throws best when going an inning or less. So when Francona needs a lefty in the sixth to hold a game, he
has
to go with the kids.

9:50 P.M.: Once upon a time (and it doesn’t seem so long ago), there were no Eastern, Western, and Central Divisions; there was just the American League and the National League, with eight or nine teams each. The bottom four or five of these were known as the
second
division, and the bottom couple of teams were the
cellar-dwellers
. (Red Sox fans from the late fifties and early sixties came to know these terms well.) Last night and tonight, the Red Sox and the Blue Jays have played like second-division teams from 1959—Boston and Washington, let’s say, battling it out for a sloppy nine in front of a few thousand dozy afternoon fans (many of them more interested in their newspapers than the game unfolding in front of them) while the Yankees cruised the stratosphere twenty or so games above them both in the standings.

Tonight the Red Sox are leading 9–3 as we go to the bottom of the ninth, but Derek Lowe was once more miles from sharp (it’s Alan Embree’s game to win, he of the bright blue eyes, scruffy beard, and amazing cheekful o’ chaw), and the Sox scored most of their runs in one inning during which the hapless Jays chucked the pill everywhere, including into the stands.

The best things you can say about tonight’s performance are that we’ll keep pace with the Yankees, who are also winning, and that better days are coming, both defensively and on the mound. Meantime, at least it’s a win at SkyDome.