Faithful

So this is limbo, not knowing anything until it’s already over (and even then not knowing the results from Anaheim or Oakland). All I can say, today, is that in mid-August we’re solidly in the wild-card race, and possibly in the lead, and that, from all evidence, as a team we’re having the exact same problems we had two months ago— the same problems, really, we had last year.

August 17th

I need to go back to the Garciaparra trade again, and it probably won’t be for the last time. It’s going to be one of the big Red Sox stories of the year, certainly the big story if this wounded, limping, patched-together team[38] doesn’t make postseason (or even if it does but doesn’t advance).

When we got Doug Mientkiewicz and Orlando Cabrera in return for Nomar, we were assured by management that this was a lot more than trade-mania, the equivalent of the crazy buying that goes on at the annual Filene’s Wedding Sale. We were “plugging defensive holes.” In addition to that, Cabrera’s .246 batting average was deceiving; he was “a doubles machine.”

Right, and we won in Vietnam; mission accomplished in Iraq.

Mientkiewicz, although not used as an everyday player by Terry Francona, has played solid, unflashy baseball for Boston, and no surprise there; as a Minnesota Twin he’s played on plenty of contending teams, and he’s used to the pressure. Cabrera is a different story. Players who come from forgotten teams (and surely the Montreal Expos are the forgotten team) either blossom or shrivel when they come to contending teams and pressure-cooker venues like Boston; Cabrera has so far done the latter. The press has been patient with him, but you’d expect that; in Boston most of those guys shill for management, and while they have no problem making Nomar look bad, they’d love his replacement to look good so they can say, “See? He’s great. Toldja.”

More interesting to me—also more surprising and endearing—has been the fans’ patience with Cabrera…who probably helped himself enormously by hitting a home run in his first at-bat in the Red Sox uniform. None since, though, and his Montreal batting average of .246 has shrunk to something like .225. Worse, he hasn’t looked like anyone’s idea of a Gold Glover at shortstop. Last night, in Boston’s game against Toronto—the first of a three-game set—Cabrera racked up a pair of RBIs, one on a base hit and one on a sac fly. Then, in an agonizing, rain-soaked seventh inning that seemed to go on forever, he gave them both back plus one to grow on with two box-score errors and a third, mental, error that allowed a run which should have been kept right where it was, at third base.

Cabrera’s hitting in the clutch has been nonexistent. In the game previous to last night’s—the final game of the Red Sox–White Sox series—Cabrera ended things by grounding softly back to the pitcher, leaving the tying run stranded at third after the Red Sox had battled back from a multirun deficit. So in last night’s game I was a little saddened but not really surprised to hear the first scattered boos in the rain-depleted crowd when Cabrera came up following his seventh-inning follies, which turned a 5–1 Red Sox cruise into a 5–4 nail-biter against the American League’s bottom dogs. The crowd wants him to be good, and I have no doubt that he is—no doubt that Terry Francona is exactly right when he says that Cabrera (who, unlike Mientkiewicz, plays every day) is pressing at the plate—but I also have no doubt that the Nomar trade has already cost this Red Sox team at least three games it could ill afford to lose, and that it will quite likely cost them more unless Orlando Cabrera quickly finds his stride.

I’m not man enough to predict that the Sox will win eight of the current twelve, but they could, with half of the next dozen coming against the abysmal Blue Jays and two more against the only slightly better Tigers. And they should, if they are to retain their position as the team to beat in the wild-card race, and perhaps even put some distance between themselves and the other contending teams. But the injury situation continues to grow worse rather than better; with Youkilis down, we were last night treated to the bizarre sight of Doug Mientkiewicz playing second base for the first time in his life. And, aside from getting knocked down once by Carlos Delgado, he did a damned good job.

One final note: as the season wears on, I find it easier and easier to spell Mientkiewicz. People can adjust to just a-damn-bout anything, can’t they?

August 18th

Having said all that, let me tell you that no one in all of Red Sox Nation was any happier than I was when Orlando Cabrera finally did come through in the clutch, turning on an 86 mph Justin Speier changeup and clanging it off the scoreboard in the bottom of the ninth inning last night, chasing Johnny Damon home with the winning run in the second game of Boston’s current series against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Fenway giveth and Fenway taketh away. In the first game of the series, it tooketh away big-time from Mr. Cabrera. Last night, that funky just-right bounce gaveth back, and I went dancing around my living room, singing the Gospel According to K.C. and the Sunshine Band: “That’s the way (uh-huh, uh-huh) I like it.”

Does this mean I think the Garciaparra trade is suddenly, magically okay? No. But I was rooting for Cabrera to come through—not just for the Red Sox but for Cabrera as a Red Sock? You bet your tintype. Because, no matter what I or any other fan might think of the trade, the deal is done and Cabrera’s one of us now; he wears the red and white. So, sure, I root for him.

Thus, hooray, Orlando. May you clang a hundred more off that funky old scoreboard. Welcome to Fenway Park. Welcome home.

August 21st

SO: Guess who’s back, back again…

SK: Considering that the Red Sox have won 11 of their last 16, maybe you ought to go back where you were, and I mean find the EXACT SPOT. It was especially great to see Cabrera connect on that crazy wall-ball carom double—like something out of a psychedelic Pong game—to win the game Monday night. And then there was Big Papi hulking down on L’il Massa Lily White [Toronto starter Ted Lilly, who plunked Ortiz on the hand]. Too much fun!

SO: I’ve missed so much. A friend tells me that in one game Francona started Mientkiewicz at second. Is he shittin’ me?

SK: Nope. And Dougie played genius.

It hasn’t been Boston’s best week (I firmly believe that this season’s best weeks are still ahead of them), but we’re riding our fifth four-game winning streak of the season, and if we win again this afternoon, the Red Sox will be proud possessors of their fourth five-game winning streak of the season. There’s better news: I’ve lost track of All My Children almost completely, and am hoping that when my viewing habits once more regularize on that front, the child of Babe and the odious JR will be in middle school and developing problems of his own (kids on soap operas grow up fast).

August has certainly been the best month of the season for the Red Sox, and the team couldn’t have picked a better time to get hot. There isn’t a lot of wild-card competition on the horizon in the Central Division, but with the exception of the Mariners (now better than twenty games off the pace), the West is a shark tank. For the last week or so, all the sharks—Oakland, Anaheim, and Texas—have been feeding on