Faithful

It’s a little breezy, but when the wind is blowing right you can smell the burgers grilling. The sun’s out, Lowry’s with us, and when Kevin Millar doubles into the corner in the first, scoring Bill Mueller, the day seems ideal.

The pitching matchup’s in our favor, or should be. Contreras is their fourth starter, and a weak link. The worry is that Lowe, working on ten days’ rest, will be too strong and leave the ball up. In the third that’s exactly what happens. After he walks A-Rod, he gives up a single to Giambi, a double to Sheffield, a single to Matsui and a double to Posada—all of them down the line in left. Lowe strikes out Travis Lee, but Enrique Wilson singles to right, scoring Matsui to make it 4–1. Jeter grounds out, scoring Posada, then Bernie Williams doubles down the left-field line. That’s it for Lowe: 2²/₃ innings, 8 hits, 7 runs.

The Sox get two back in the bottom of the inning, chasing Contreras. We should have more except for a blown call. With two on and two out, Tek slaps one down the first-base line that Travis Lee has to dive to spear. Reliever and ex-Sock Paul Quantrill beats Tek to the bag, but Lee has trouble getting the ball out of his glove, and by the time the throw arrives, Quantrill’s well past the base. The ump punches Tek out to end the inning, bringing Francona from the dugout to argue, though by then it’s pointless.

Also during this inning, the Yanks haul out their Cuban National Team tactics, slowing down the pace of the game in the middle of our rally to quiet the crowd and throw off the hitters’ timing. Posada visits the mound. They send the trainer out in midcount, as if the pitcher has some injury. He doesn’t, but because the trainer accompanies Torre, the visit doesn’t count as a visit by the manager. They send the pitching coach. They change pitchers. They have an infield conference. They send the pitching coach again in midcount. The pitcher himself wanders behind the mound to stall. They change pitchers again. Technically it’s only semilegal, a judgment call with the league’s new rules requiring umps to pick up the pace of the game. A good crew chief wouldn’t put up with this nonsense.

It stays 7–3. There’s not much action, and the crowd’s grumpy and distracted. From time to time the bleachers rise and roar, signaling a fight. The cops haul some Yankee fans away, and everyone cheers, “Yank-ees suck! Yank-ees suck!” In the seventh, Tom Gordon comes in to some moderate boos, but it’s hard to get too excited, down by four runs. The sole highlight of the late innings is an awkward sliding catch by Sheffield along the right-field line. The crowd salutes him with the old Atlanta tomahawk chop, with the finger attached.

We lose 7–3. It was basically a one-inning game, over after the third. The loss can’t ruin the day—walking on the field, seeing the guys, sitting on the Monster—but it makes for a quiet ride home. And tomorrow’s their matchup: Kevin Brown against Bronson Arroyo. Okay, now who’s the fatalist?

SK: Not quite s’good t’day, and with KBrown tomorrow, the Yanks look good for the split, curse them.

SO: It was a dull game, even up on the Monster. The wind was blowing in hard, and knocked down two balls from Manny that would have been gone any other day.

Saw the new Williams statue by Gate B—pure schmaltz. He deserves better.

SK: Yep. Putting his hat on the little kiddie’s head. Cute. And, out of the side of his mouth: “Now get outta my way, you little rat-bastard.”

SO: Hey, imagine what Steinbrenner’s statue’ll be doing.

SK: Cast in bronze with his wallet out.

The Rivalry—April 18th

The Yankees have never beaten the Red Sox in the World Series; with both teams in the American League, that, of course, is impossible. Nevertheless, the Yankees (who are playing the Red Sox in the third game of their first four-game set of 2004 as I write this) have become the Sox’s principal rival over the last fifty or sixty years, and as someone who has written a great many scary stories during his career, I almost have to write about them. For Red Sox fans, the Yankees are the thing under the bed, the boogeyman in the closet. When they come to us, we expect bad luck on horseback; when we go to them, we expect, in our hearts, not to return alive.[3]

The rivalry has captured hearts in both Boston and New York, with fans cross-pollinating freely (and sometimes fistily) at the games. On April 16th, the New York Post’s front page showed a pin-striped Darth Vader with a Yankees logo on his helmet and a bat on his shoulder. It quoted Red Sox president Larry Lucchino, who in 2002 called the Yankees “the Evil Empire,” and trumpeted MAY THE CURSE BE WITH YOU. On the Fox Game of the Week that night (of course it was the Game of the Week, are you kidding), the announcers displayed a souvenir T-shirt proclaiming SHOWDOWN IN BEANTOWN. That one must have been officially sanctioned by Red Sox management. In the bleachers, the ones reading JETER SUCKS are much more popular. I understand there’s one featuring A-Rod with an even more obscene sentiment, but I haven’t seen that one yet (I’m sure I will). And how many fightin’ fans have been ejected by the security people over the years? I have no idea, but as Ole Casey used to say, “You could look it up.”

When there are fights, the first blows are usually thrown by Red Sox fans; the jeers and epithets chiefly come from Sox fans, too. Maybe Billy Herman, who managed the club from 1964 to 1966 (not stellar years), explained it best: “For Red Sox fans, there are only two seasons: August and winter.” Losing makes us sad… except when it doesn’t. Then itmakes us pissed. The attitude of your average pinstripe fan, on the other hand—unless and until directly attacked—tends to be one of indulgent, slightly patronizing good nature. Arguing with a Yankee fan is like arguing with a real estate agent who voted for Ronald Reagan.

I date the Sox/Yanks rivalry of the Modern Age from October 3rd, 1948, a day on which the Red Sox actually beat the Yankees, 10–5. What’s wrong with that, you say? Well, it got us into a one-game playoff game with the Cleveland Indians, one we lost, 8–3. That’s Heartbreak Number One.

Fast-forward past 1951 (Mickey Mantle makes his major league debut versus the Red Sox, Yanks win 4–0), and 1952–53 (the Red Sox lose thirteen in a row to the Yankees), and 1956 (Ted Williams fined for spitting at Boston fans after misplaying a Mickey Mantle fly ball, an incident Williams will never live down). Let us forget 1960, when the Yankees set the record for team home runs (192)…against Boston. And let us by all means wince past Roger Maris’s 61st home run, which came against Tracy Stallard…who pitched for Boston.

No, let’s move directly to 1978. “Nothing compares,” says Dan Shaughnessy in The Curse of the Bambino. “The mind calcifies. This was the apocalyptic, cataclysmic fold by which all others must be measured.” Yeah, and it was pretty bad, too. On July 20th of that year, the Red Sox led the Yankees by fourteen games.[4] Then came the infamous Boston Massacre, in which the Red Sox were swept—not at Yankee Stadium but at Fenway—by the Bombers in a four-game series. The Sox ended the season in a flat-footed tie with the Yankees, and lost the playoff game on Monsieur Dent’s Punch-and-Bucky home run, the pop fly heard ’round the world. That’s Heartbreak Number Two.

In 1999, the Red Sox went into postseason as the wild-card team and once again faced the Yankees. The Yanks won both of the first two games in the Stadium, both by one run; they qualify as Heartbreaks Number Three-A and Three-B. (Game 1 of this series, you may remember, wasthe one in which Chuck Knoblauch dropped a throw from Scott Brosius; the ump then ruled he’d dropped the ball while transferring it from his glove to his hand.) The third game, the first played at Fenway in the ’99 series, offered some small measure of revenge. In that game, Sox batters pummeled first Roger Clemens and then a parade of relievers, Pedro Martinez fanned twelve, and the Red Sox won, 13–1. It was the most lopsided loss in the Yankees’ postseason history, but in the end it made no difference; you can’t carry any of those runs over to later games, can you? In the following game, the Red Sox were victimized by another bad call, this time by Tim Tschida,[5] and the Red Sox ended up losing, 9–2. The Yankees won the final game, 6–1. That’s Heartbreak Number Three-C.

Whenever the eye of Red Sox management falls on a likely player, it seems that the Eye of Steinbrenner (like the Eye of Sauron in his tower) has also fallen there. It was very likely frustration as much as anything else that prompted Larry Lucchino’s “Evil Empire” comment following the signing of Jose Contreras[6] in 2002; there was even more frustration following the signing of Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod was willing to come to Boston; it was the Players’ Union that balked, citing a $15 million shortfall in Boston’s offer and claiming it would set a disastrous precedent (bullshit—ballplayers are even more egregiously overpaid than best-selling novelists). The fans understand the truth: George