Faithful

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 emigre 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.

May 14th

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.

May 15th

It’s eighty-nine degrees, a record, and my old car, which I just got back from the shop, breaks down on the commercial strip in town—maybe vapor lock? While I’m outside Party City waiting for the wrecker, a guy pulls up with the game on and waits while his wife runs inside.

“Who’s winning?”

“I just turned it on,” he says. “I know McCarty has an RBI.”

He sees my Fenway 1912 shirt, I see his—from last year’s ALCS—and he gets out to talk. In February he went down to the Civic Center to see the Sox Winter Caravan and got autographs from Kevin Millar and Bill Mueller. “I was worried it would be weird, you know, the big-kid thing, but once I got up to the table, I got this smile on my face, and the guys were cool.”

We weigh our chances for the season.

“Now there’s a rumor Nomar might have a tear,” he says, “not just a strain like they’ve been saying.”

He also wonders why Trot’s taking so long to come back from a hamstring, and we bat around the possibility of him being on steroids (or off them now).

His wife returns, and they’ve got to run. “Go Sox!” she calls, and they’re gone.

The tow truck comes, finally, and Trudy, to drive me home. It’s too hot upstairs, so I go down to the cool basement and watch the rest of the game on her parents’ old TV. It’s 4–0 Sox, and Arroyo’s only given up three hits. He’s going after guys with his fastball, dropping his sweeping curve in for strikes. Toronto’s a good-hitting club, and the SkyDome’s a launching pad, but he’s putting down Wells, Delgado and Hinske in order.

There’s a grounder to third, and to my surprise, Kevin Youkilis fields it. Bill Mueller’s knee is aching, so Francona doesn’t want him playing on Toronto’s hard turf. When Youkilis comes up to bat, they show him earlier in the game, hitting his first major league home run and then trotting back to the dugout, where the guys give him the silent treatment—a tradition with rookies. Youkilis gets it, giving phantom high fives. Only after he sits down do the guys break up and congratulate him.

Arroyo’s making his case to be the number five starter. Yesterday, in Pawtucket, in the first inning of his first