Faithful

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.

May 12th

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.

May 13th

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