Faithful

their weaker Midwestern brothers, and all of them have been winning. [39] One of these clubs will win the division. The other two—along with the Red Sox—are swimming full-tilt at a door only big enough to admit one of them. I comfort myself with thoughts of the schedule, which will eventually force the sleek sharks of the Western Division to begin dining upon each other.

The Yankees, in the meantime, have finally begun to falter a bit as their pitching arms become more and more suspect (may I note—and not without glee—that their trade for Esteban Loaiza is looking especially doubtful; there are already trade rumors floating around). They’ve lost three out of their last four—the one win an almost miraculous come-from-behinder against the Twins—and while I don’t think anyone among the Red Sox Faithful are counting on a total Yankee el floppo (but how sweet it would be), I’d guess that few among us are unaware that the New York lead, which was ten and a half ten days ago, has now shrunk to seven and a half. Still a lot, but on August 21st, seven and a half games doesn’t seem like an insurmountable lead.

August 22nd

I’m addicted to the Little League World Series the way a college hoop junkie craves March Madness. Every game is high drama, and you never know what to expect. Tonight we switch back and forth between the Sox and the Lincoln, Rhode Island, team, and after a while, like the end of Animal Farm, it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Both survive late scares. The kids’ defense falls apart in the sixth. In Chicago, the Sox are up a run in the eighth, thanks to back-to-back jacks by Manny and David, when Manny goes to plant himself under an easy fly, slips on the wet grass, recovers, then slips again, and the ball falls behind him. Timlin gets us out of it and Foulke closes, looking sharp. The Angels have swept the Yanks, and the Rangers finally lost, so we’re five and a half back in the East and a game up in the wild card. And the New England kids win.

This is terrific—we beat the White Sox again, making us 5-1 in our last six games. The Rangers also won, but the trade-off is that the Yankees took another drubbing from the Angels (and at the Stadium, hee- hee), meaning that the New York lead is down another full game. Knowing that their team has lost almost half their seemingly insurmountable lead in the space of a week cannot make Yankee fans happy. (That lead probably is insurmountable, but north of Hartford the only thing we love more than seeing the pin-stripers have a bad week is seeing them have two bad weeks.)

The Red Sox have scored 20 runs against the White Sox in the last two games. Varitek is thumping the ball, and so is Millar, but I think the big offensive story in Chicago has been Manny Ramirez. He’s been sluggish at the plate since the All-Star break, but in the last two games he’s shown a return to the batting brilliance that made him such a catch for us in the first place. He hit the 16th grand slam of his career in the second inning of the Friday night game (August 20th) and added a three-run job yesterday. He has a total of 9 RBIs in the two games.

To this you should add in Manny’s glovework, especially back home in Boston, where he has become more and more comfortable with the eccentricities of left field at Fenway, a position that has made strong baseball players cry. Manny has gotten a reputation as a bad defensive baseball player and will almost certainly carry it with him for his entire career (the only people less likely than baseball fans to change their minds about a player are other players, coaches and, of course, Ted Williams’s “Knights of the Keyboard”), but he has mastered the knack of playing the carom off the Green Monster in such a way as to hold runners at first (the world-famous “wall-ball single”), and he has made some brilliant, fearless catches, especially going to his right, into the Twilight Zone territory beyond third base where the wall is hard and foul territory is measured in mere inches. He’s no Yaz, but is he at least the equal of Mike Greenwell, and maybe a little better? Our survey says yes.

And damn, ain’t he a likable cuss! That wasn’t always the case in Cleveland, where Manny had a reputation for taciturnity (he rarely did interviews), standoffishness and laziness. In Boston, Manny always seems to be smiling, and it is a beautiful smile, boyish and somehow innocent. He hustles, and the camera frequently catches him goofing with his teammates in the dugout (in one beautifully existential contrast, the viewer sees Curt Schilling studiously poring over paperwork while Manny mugs crazily over his shoulder). He has even done a shoe commercial which has its own brand of goofy Manny Ramirez charm. [40]

Some of the change from Growly Manny to Don’t Worry, Be Happy Manny may have to do with the Dominican Mafia that, simply by chance, now surrounds him: cheery-by-nature players like Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz. Some of it may be a kind of weird alchemy in Manny’s lungs: he pulls in the baleful, media-poisoned air of Boston and exhales his own brand of nonchalant good cheer in its place. I actually sort of buy this, because not even the trade rumors that swirled around him in the off-season changed Manny as we have come to know him: he comes to work, he does his job, and if the Red Sox win, he gives a postgame interview in which he shakes his head and says, “We gotta jus’ keep goin’, man, you know? We got another sees wee’s in the season and we gotta jus’ keep goin’.”

One of the reasons I’d like the Red Sox to win the World Series is so I can see if Manny would say “We gotta jus’ keep goin’, man” in his postgameinterview, if he’s that much on cruise control. Probably not, but I’m sure he’d smile, and that smile is worth a thousand dollars.

SK: Admit it: You stole The Scream. It reminded you of how you felt in Game 7 versus the Yankees in last year’s ALCS.

SO: I stole it and shipped it to Billy Buck, who’s staring at it right now, nailed up on the wall of his shack in deepest Aryan Idaho. Edvard Munch was a Sox fan—a ChiSox fan. Talk about tanking: they were in first on July 26th; since then they’ve gone 8-19. It’s not that the Twins have played great ball, it’s just a flat-out collapse. When’s the last time we swept them in Comiskey?

SK: Been quite a few years. It’s nice to feel happy again about the Red Sox, isn’t it? If only for a while.

SO: You were dead right about how nice it would be getting 15 games over .500, but I sure didn’t count on the A’s, Rangers and Angels ALL streaking alongside of us. There’s four cars and the tunnel’s only two lanes.

SK: All is well as can be here, and Manny is stroking the shit out of the ball. Check out Chip McGrath’s “Lost Cause” piece in today’s New York Times Magazine. Good for a giggle, I think.

Or a snort of disgust.

SO: I expect it’s about the Yanks’ el foldo act the last three (make it four) years running.

SK: Can you believe the Yankees lost five games in one week??? I went to bed thinking, “If I was Joe Torre, I’d say, ‘This is why you like the big lead—you can go through a tough stretch like this and still be on top.’” I got up this morning and damned if that wasn’t just what the Skip said. What our Skip said was that when Manny dropped the pop, he swallered half his plug of tobacco. Served him right.

SO: Ol’ Joe’s got the luxury of a six-man rotation and all the bench support George can buy, so he doesn’t have to sweat September. October, though…If they choke again, there are going to be some changes. Imagine if the heavily favored Sox blew three consecutive postseasons. Why, there’d be talk of a curse.

I’d like to see a reel with all of Manny’s wildlights. He’s like Charlie Brown out there—or Pig Pen. And I ain’t gonna say it, but you know what that plug o’ chaw resembles, half-in and half-out of Terry’s mouth? Ayuh.

SK: My last bit in the August section is about Manny—Manny at the bat and Manny in the field, and how his bad fielding is a misperception. I think you’ll be amused.

SO: I’m sure it’ll be a hoot. Wonder if we’ll agree. Manny’s about style, and I can dig that, but sometimes that feigned nonchalance leads to real goofs, like not running out pops down the line that end up falling fair, or forgetting how many outs there are. He’s got a good arm, but he loves to do that cool no-look throw from the corner so much that often he doesn’t get enough zip on the ball and ends up rainbowing one in. And