Faithful (18 page)

We’ve got Monster seats and get going early. I’m taking the kids while Trudy’s bringing her parents from the shore. The weather’s clear, traffic’s light on I-84, and a cop stops me for speeding. So the morning, which started so promising, turns bitter even before we hit the Mass Pike. I worry that the feeling will linger and ruin the whole day, but there are enough miles to put it behind us.

We hit Lansdowne Street, where the sausage vendors are open early for the family crowd. A woman Trudy’s mother’s age has a sweatshirt that says FOULKE THE YANKEES.

* * *

I’m sure that Stew was at the ballpark today for what turned out to be an extraordinary game, and probably in the prime real estate of my second-row seats next to the Red Sox dugout, but I enjoyed it fine at home in my living room with my wife close by, propped up on the couch with the computer on her lap and the dog by her side. I’ve come down with a fairly heavy cold as a result of my week of chilly carousal at Fenway, and there is something especially satisfying—akin to the pleasures of self-pity, I suppose—about watching a baseball game with the box of Kleenex near one hand and the box of Sucrets near the other, coughing and sneezing your way through the innings as the shadows on both the infield and your living room carpet gradually creep longer.

This game had a little bit of everything. Curt Schilling flirted with perfection into the sixth; Keith Foulke blew his first save of the season (his first blown save in his last twenty-four attempts, it turns out) when Raul Ibanez hit a dramatic three-run home run, putting the Mariners up 7–5 in the eighth inning; the Red Sox came right back to tie it in the bottom of the eighth. Then, in the bottom of the twelfth, Sox sub David McCarty crushed a 3-0 fastball to what is the deepest part of the park to give the Red Sox the win.

And at the risk of sounding like Angry Bill in
Still, We Believe,
I called the shot. Yeah! Me! I’d claim my wife as a witness to this feat of prediction, except she was pretty heavy into the computer solitaire by then and I doubt like hell that she was listening. The Mariners’ fourth pitcher of the afternoon, a young man with the unfortunate name of J. J. Putz, entered the game with a reputation for wildness, but was into his third inning of exceptional relief work (he struck out both David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez in the eleventh) when the roof fell in. After getting the first out in the twelfth, he hit Jason Varitek with a soft breaking pitch.
[17]
Enter McCarty, inserted into the lineup mostly as a defensive replacement. The count ran to 3-0. Most batters are taking all the way on such a count, but Terry Francona gives most of his guys the automatic green light on 3-0. (I like this strategy as much as I loathe his refusal to bunt runners along in key situations.) I said—mostly to the dog, since my wife was paying elzilcho attention, “Watch this. Putz is gonna throw it down the middle and McCarty is gonna send everyone home in time for supper.” Which is just what happened, and thank God the camera did not linger long on the head-hanging misery of young Mr. J. J. Putz as McCarty went into his home run trot. These are the kind of games you either win or feel really bad about losing, especially at home. I feel badly for Putz (pronounced
Pootz,
thank you very much), but the bottom line? We won it. And the bonus? The Yankees lost to Tampa Bay (who just barely held on), which means we’re back in first place.

There are three major milestones in a baseball season: Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day. The first of these milestones in the 2004 season comes tomorrow, when we play a makeup game with Baltimore, and for a team with so many quality players on the disabled list, we’re doing pretty damned well going into the first turn. Especially when we can look forward to two of those—Nomar Garciaparra and Trot Nixon—coming back between Memorial Day and the Fourth. A third, Bill Mueller, may return to the club between the Fourth and Labor Day.

That brings us back to Kevin Youkilis, Mueller’s replacement, who has now begun to attract so much notice that Terry Francona has had to publicly state that no, Youkilis will
not
be keeping the job at third once Mueller’s fit and ready to play no matter
how
well the GGOW
[18]
does between now and the happy day of Mueller’s return.

A piece in the Portland Sunday
Telegram
today by Kevin Thomas (who knows Youkilis from Youkilis’s days with the Portland Sea Dogs, the BoSox double-A affiliate) points out that Youkilis’s locker is on the far wall of the clubhouse, the traditional place for players who are just up for a cup of coffee in the bigs…as is undoubtedly the case with Andy Dominique, who delivered today’s game-tying hit in the bottom of the eighth. Thomas also points to previous Red Sox minor leaguers such as Wilton Veras, who came up to play third with high hopes, only to fade into obscurity.

Obscurity would not seem to be in young Mr. Youkilis’s future, however. “I know I’m going to be playing,” he told Kevin Thomas in today’s interview, speaking with quiet certainty, and with every passing game his on-base percentage seems simultaneously harder to believe for a rookie and less like a fluke. Moved up to the two-hole today, all Youkilis did was gothree for five, with three runs scored. His batting average is .317, and his OBP is hovering right around .425. The fans know that Bill Mueller may have to battle for his old spot back, no matter what Terry Francona has to say on the subject.

It sounds like they’re booing the kid when he walks to the plate, but the grin on Youkilis’s face says he knows better; that sound sweeping around the ballpark like a soft wind is the first syllable of his last name:
Youk…Youk…Youk…

Two weeks ago he was playing triple-A ball in Pawtucket; tomorrow, on Memorial Day, he’s going to be playing the Orioles before a packed house, for the first-place Boston Red Sox. And I don’t want to jinx the kid, but do you know what I think, after having watched him in almost all of those games?

I think a star is born.

After the McCarty walk-off job, Netman learns from fan services that the Sox have decided to ban his net from Fenway. Like the speeding ticket, it could taint the day, but I won’t let it. I’ve had a great run with the net, and it was a wild game today—half a no-hitter topped by a late-inning comeback and then the tension of extra innings released with McCarty’s game-winner. The Yanks lost at the Trop, so we’re in first place. Happy birthday, Manny.

Hell, I’m better with the glove anyway.

In response to flooding on the border of Haiti and the Dominican, David Ortiz, Manny and Pedro are joining with the Sox to collect donations for aid. I send a check, and while this book won’t be out for another six months, I’m sure the victims down there will still need the support then. The address is Dominican Relief Effort, Red Sox Foundation, Fenway Park, Boston, MA 02215.

Of Boston’s four established starting pitchers—the other three being Pedro Martinez, Tim Wakefield and Curt Schilling—Derek Lowe has been the most obviously troubled. In his last three winning starts, all at home and all shaky, his teammates have been wearing their red jerseys instead of the usual white ones, so it’s no surprise that those were the onesthey were wearing when they took the field for their makeup game against the Orioles.

It was Lowe’s best start in weeks, but this time the red tops didn’t help. The real problem today wasn’t Lowe so much as it was the middle relief. Like most teams in the wretchedly overstocked major leagues, Boston can’t boast a lot in that regard. Yes, there’s Timlin and Embree, but Francona doesn’t like to throw them in when the Sox are down by more than a couple, and both of them have worked a lot lately and needed the day off. So it was the PawSox Pitching Corps, mostly, and no way were they equal to the task. The Sox were down 9–0 before you could say Lansdowne Street. We’ve played from behind a lot on this home stand, and have
come
from behind a lot… but not from this far behind. Not against Oakland, not against Seattle, and not against Baltimore today.

So now we’re off to the West Coast, Nomar’s almost ready to come back (always supposing his rehabbed ankle stays rehabbed after some actual game action with the triple-A club, where he went 0 for 3 last night), and the first third of the season is over. The biggest surprise—at least to me—has been how quickly, after the initial scramble, the teams aligned themselves just as they have in previous years. Pick of the first fifty: the Sox taking six of seven from the Bronx Bombers. And in spite of that, we’ve reached the Memorial Day marker fifty-one games into the season in a dead tie for first with them.

Who woulda thunk it?

Steve calls, and we dissect the game. They came out flat, we agree. But, overall so far, Steve says, we’re playing way over our heads. Look at these guys who’ve been getting it done for us: Youkilis, McCarty, Bellhorn. Nomar’s not too far away, and Trot. Sure, we’re headed out West and the Yankees are coming home, but historically we do okay out there.

He’s more optimistic than I am—a rarity—but he’s right too. And yet, after I hang up, I’m still worried about Lowe, whose ERA must be pushing 7.00, and who hasn’t made it out of the sixth inning in over a month.

Last night in Louisville Nomar went 2 for 3 with a walk, a reason for some optimism. I know he’s not going to solve all our problems when he comes back, but having a live righty bat won’t hurt.

We’re playing late in Anaheim, a 10:05 start. I catch some of the pregame—Jerry the former Angel back where he started—but by game time I’m so busy finishing up everything I didn’t get done during the day that I miss the first couple of innings. When I tune in, it’s bedtime, 11:30, and it’s only the top of the third. We’re up 2–1 and Colon has runners on first and second with one out. Millar singles to left, and Sveum sends Manny, but Manny decides not to go. Good thing, because the throw from Jose Guillen is a strike. Youkilis steps up, and I think we’re going to break the game open, but the first-base ump calls an obvious check swing a strike and then the home-plate ump rings him up on a pitch well outside. Youkilis swears, and Jerry says the rookie’s got to be careful not to get tossed. Colon goes 3-1 on Pokey before unleashing his good stuff, and we come away with nothing. Through three we’ve left seven men on base.

I’d love to stay up and see how it turns out, but it’s almost midnight. It’s a defeat, in a way, voluntarily leaving an interesting game in progress. I’ll feel disconnected and behind until I read the score in the paper tomorrow morning. For now, I just have to trust Arroyo will hold them and that our big guys will get to Colon.

We lost, 7–6, though only a ninth-inning two-run shot by Dauber off Troy Percival made it look that close. We had a three-run lead at one point, but Arroyo didn’t make it out of the sixth. With the score tied, Vladimir Guerrero ripped a two-run double, and we never really threatened after that. And the Yanks beat the Orioles again, running their record against Baltimore to 1,000–0 over the last couple years, so we’re a full game back.

And while the paper agrees that Nomar could join the big club as early as Tuesday against the Padres, it also says that Trot’s had yet another setback with his quad and will sit out several extended spring-training games. Fifty games into the season, it’s hard to imagine there are that many guys still stuck down in Fort Myers. The facility must be a ghost town, lots of empty parking spots. Even while he’s sitting out, Trot will take batting practice; one of the pitchers he’ll be facing—Ramiro Mendoza.

Since I missed last night’s game, I make a point of staying up for tonight’s, even scoring it on a Remy Report sheet. Johnny’s not playing; I’d heard his knee is still bothering him from the ball he fouled off it—and that had to have been a month ago. On the mound for the Angels is lefty Jarrod Washburn, who was Cy Young material two years back but hasn’t thrown well since. We’ve got Pedro going. He’s said he hasn’t been able to throw his curve much because of the cold weather (the grip, I suppose), so I’m discouraged in the first when Vladimir Guerrero yokes a hanging curve over the wall in left for a two-run shot.

Don Orsillo takes this opportunity to inform us that the Yanks have come from being down 5–0 to beat the O’s 6–5. I don’t know who I hate more, the Yankees for being the Yankees or the O’s for rolling over.

Manny gets one back in the second with a solo blast to dead center, and in the third an Ortiz sac fly brings in Bellhorn to tie the game (to a healthy “Let’s go, Red Sox” chant). But in the bottom of the inning Guerrero puts the Angels in the lead again with a two-run double.

Neither starter has anything. The Sox chase Washburn in the fourth with six straight hits, scoring five. We’d have more, but Ramon Ortiz comes on and gets Millar to bounce into an easy 6-4-3 DP. Still, we’ve come back to take a 7–4 lead on the road, and I’m happy I stayed up to watch this one.

In the bottom of the inning, Guerrero hits a sac fly to score Bengie Molina, making it 7–5. Vladi has all five of their RBIs.

It’s midnight, past the Sox’s bedtime, and their bats go the way of Cinderella’s coach. The rest of the game, they manage just one two-out single.

Pedro’s done after David Eckstein’s fourth single of the night (the former Sox prospect will go 5 for 5, the Angels’ first three batters a preposterous 12 for 13) and a four-pitch walk to Chone (pronounced Shawn) Figgins. I’m glassy, a little pissed off but dull and punchy, fatalistic. Timlin comes on to face Guerrero and ends up facing the left-field fence, watching a three-run shot knock around the rocks out there. It’s 8–7 and Guerrero has all eight RBIs. He pops out of the dugout for a well-earned tip of the cap.

The Angels add two more in the seventh, when Foulke, coming in early in hopes of keeping it close, lets two of Timlin’s runners score. Guerrero’s in the middle of the rally again, knocking in his ninth run of the night.

Sitting there by myself in the dark house, facing the screen, I have nothing to distract myself from the terrible baseball I’m seeing. There’s no one to commiserate with or to help absorb the loss; it’s all mine. We’ve hit the ball well enough, and while our outfield isn’t close to their cannon-armed trio of Jose Guillen, Raul Mondesi and Vladi Guerrero, we’ve fielded decently, but our pitching has been horrendous. All three pitchers we ran out there tonight got their butts whipped. By the ninth inning, as Francisco “K-Rod” Rodriguez strikes out David Ortiz and then Manny, I’m in a sour mood, blaming the Sox for my own impatience and irritability. The final’s 10–7, the third time in a week we’ve given up double digits—and we came in with the league’s best ERA. It’s one o’clock, only a three-hour game, though with all the scoring it feels like four, four and a half. I feel crappy and blue. I feel like I’ve earned the day off tomorrow.

Boston’s on the West Coast, and I hate it. We always seem to do poorly out there during the regular season, and the pennant hopes of more than oneRed Sox team have been buried in places like Anaheim and Oakland. This year is looking like no exception. The Angels have now beaten us twice in a row, and in both cases we’ve come from behind only to blow the lead again.
Youch.

And when they go out there, I always feel as if the Olde Town Team (Boston
Globe
writer Dan Shaughnessy’s term) has voyaged over the curve of the earth and clean out of sight. News travels faster than it used to, granted—I can get game highlights on NESN instead of just a bare-ass score on the morning radio—but details are still pretty thin unless you actually stay up and watch the game, as O’Nan was threatening to do last night (and gosh, he must have gone to bed grumpy in the wee hours, if he did). What I want most of all is a
box score,
dammit, and there won’t be one until tomorrow, by which time last night’s game will already be old and cold.

Or maybe Boston’s West Coast swing and current three-game losing streak are only cover stories for a deeper malaise. Later, in August and September, I’ll dumbly drop my neck and accept the yoke of fan-citizenship in Red Sox Nation, but in June and July I resist a rather distasteful truth: as summer deepens, I find that instead of me gripping the baseball—apologies to Jim Bouton—the baseball is gripping me. This morning is a perfect case in point. The alarm is set for 7:30 A.M., because I don’t really have to get up until quarter of eight. But I find myself wide-awake at 6:15, staring at the ceiling and wondering if the Red Sox managed to come back from a 4–2 deficit, which was where I left them. I’m also wondering if the Yankees, who were playing Baltimore at home, managed to win yet again. I’m thinking that the Orioles, with good hitting and fair pitching, must have managed to beat the Yanks at least
once
. I’m also wondering what Nomar Garciaparra’s status is, and if there’s any update on Trot Nixon.

By 6:30 I can stand it no longer. I get out of bed (still cursing my own obsessive nature) and switch off the alarm. It will not be needed today. I go to the TV and have only to punch the ON button; it’s already on NESN, NESN is right where I left off seven hours ago, NESN is where the electronic Cyclops in my study is gonna be for most of the summer. Just like last summer. (And the summer before.) A moment later I’m sitting there on the rug in my ratty Red Sox workout shorts, hair standing up all over my head (“Your hair is excited,” my wife says when it’s this way in the morning), looking at Jayme Parker, who is for some incomprehensible reason doing the sports today on location from Foxwoods Casino, and although she’s as good-looking as ever (in her pink suit Jayme looks as cool as peppermint ice cream), all the news is butt-ugly: the Sox blew their lead and lost, the Yankees came from behind and won. The Evil Empire now leads the AL East by two games. Even Roger Clemens, the pitcher then-Sox general manager Dan Duquette proclaimed all but washed-up and then traded away, won last night; he’s 8-0 for the Astros.

The Red Sox continue their West Coast swing tomorrow night. It’s way too early to liken this particular tour of duty to the Bataan Death March (although that simile has done more than cross my mind in other years, on other nightmare visits to Anaheim, Oakland, Seattle, and yes, even Kansas City, where we go next), but not too early to restate my original scripture: on the whole, I’d rather be at Foxwoods.

Francona’s talking like Nomar will be back on Tuesday and that he’ll be used as a DH for a while, letting Pokey, Marky Mark and Youk stay on the field and in the lineup. Ultimately though, he’ll have to sit someone. Pokey’s the glove and the glue, Bellhorn’s the table-setter, but it’s hard to pull Youk after how well he’s played. For his .318 average and .446 OBP, he’s been named May’s AL Rookie of the Month.

A stray stat in the paper: since 2001, the Yankees are 44-17 against the O’s.

Make that 45-17, as the O’s succumb once again. They’re under .500 now. The problem, I think, is that the O’s are basically a cheaper version of the Yanks—so-so pitching backed by lots of free-agent bats. Like the Yanks, they’re designed to overwhelm mediocre clubs, a wise enough strategy in this post-expansion era (the same strategy the Yanks used in the ’50s, when their ace was the lackluster Whitey Ford and they feasted on the second division), but no guarantee of success in the playoffs. As the D-Backs, Angels and Marlins (and 1960 Pirates) have proven, to beat a club that grossly outspends you, you have to bring a whole different
style
of ball. There’s no way the O’s can match George’s payroll, so they’ll always be a few bats short.

We’re two and a half back for the first time all year. It’s not a hole, but it will take a streak to get us back even.

At the high school senior awards assembly, Caitlin’s friend Ryan, who we’ve been giving grief about his Yankees since April, says, “Have you seen the standings?”

“Hey,” I say, “you guys’ll do fine if you only have to play the O’s.”

It’s time to admit it: this is the dreaded Red Sox losing streak.

Worse, it’s the dreaded Red Sox losing streak combined with the even more dreaded (and apparently endless) Yankee winning streak.

No Jayme Parker on NESN’s
SportsDesk
this morning to ease the pain; it’s Saturday and Mike Perlow is subbing. And although I tune in at 7:12 A.M., near the end of the show’s fifteen-minute loop and during a story about the Olympic Torch reaching Australia (huh?), I already know the worst. Perlow is one of those late-twenty- or early-thirty-somethings who look about fourteen, and this morning there is no sparkle in the Perlow eye, no lift in the Perlow shoulders. We lost. I’m sure we lost. But of course I hang in there to be sure and of course we did. The unsparkling eye does not lie.

Our pitching staff is having the week from hell. Derek Lowe lost to Baltimore in the Memorial Day makeup game; Bronson Arroyo and Pedro Martinez lost to the Angels; last night Tim Wakefield lost to the Kansas City Royals and Jimmy Gobble (a name at least as unfortunate as that of J. J. Putz). The Yankees again won by a single run—I don’t know how many one-run victories they’ve rung up so far this year, but it seems like a lot—and we once more got half-bucked to death as KC put up a run here and a run there until the game was out of reach. It’s the kind of slow bleed that drives managers crazy. Mark Bellhorn did not help the cause any by running into an out between third and home, killing a potential rally.

I think that for serious Sox fans, this sort of losing streak is exacerbated by the fact that the Yankees aren’t losing
RIGHT NOW
combined with the sinking feeling that they will
NEVER LOSE AGAIN
. For serious control-freak fans (sigh—that would be me), it’s exacerbated even more by the fact that
I CAN’T DO A FUCKING THING ABOUT IT
; all I can do is stand by and watch. Oh, and two other things. One is to remind myself that we owned first place less than a week ago, and are now three games out of it. The other is to try and find that Stephen Crane poem where theguy says he likes what he’s eating because it’s bitter, and because it is his heart.

Stop that and stay upbeat, I tell myself. This is not impossible or even that hard to do on a beautiful June morning with the grandchildren on the way. It’s a long season, after all, and September is the only month where a losing streak can absolutely kill you, and only then if it’s combined with the wrong team’s winning streak.

Besides, I have to think of Stewart, who stayed up until maybe two in the morning to watch one of those awful games with the Angels where we blew the lead in the late innings. Man, I haven’t even dared e-mail him about that. As for tonight, I have my choice: the new
Harry Potter
movie, or the Red Sox. If my older son actually does make the scene with the grandkids, I think I’ll let him decide.

Who says I’m a control freak?

Later:
The headline of this morning’s Sox story in the
Lewiston Daily Sun
reads: GOBBLE FEASTS ON SOX. Hours later, while Peggy Noonan is getting all misty about the passing of Ronald Reagan on CNBC, I think,
GOBBLE FEASTS ON SOX,
and I crack up all over again.

When you’re losing, you take your chuckles wherever you can get them.

As I’m cutting the grass, my next-door neighbor Dave waves me over to the fence. Dave’s a big Bruins and Sox fan, and we have the occasional bitchfest about the sorry state of the two teams. Dave says the thinness of the roster is starting to show—that we’ve gone too long playing second-stringers. I say we’ve got to find a way to protect Manny; Tek and Dauber have struggled, and Millar’s been nonexistent. “And where’s our friend Mr. Kim?” Dave asks. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him.” I wonder where Mystery Malaska is, whether he’s in Pawtucket or on the DL. In the end, I tell Dave that it’s early and that we’ll turn it around.

But really, do we need to turn it around? Are we really stumbling that badly? Even with this second streak, we’re still up there with the league’s elite. It’s a luxury, worrying about being three and a half back. A lot of clubs are already well out of it.