Faithful

glooms of July are gone, replaced by a giddy nervousness that’s not quite a playoff atmosphere. Seconds before Bronson Arroyo throws his first pitch, the PA announcer informs the sellout crowd that it’s seventy-seven degrees —the exact temperature of perfect childhood summer evenings, if I remember correctly. New England’s First Church of the Baseball Unfulfilled is once more ready to rock, my son and three-year-old grandson are with me (the latter more fascinated by the Hood blimp cruising overhead than anything happening on the field), and the Yankees are now almost close enough to touch.

For the second night in a row I wait for Anaheim’s pitching, which has been largely responsible for taking them to eighteen games over .500 in the fiercely competitive AL West, to show up, and for the second night in a row it never does. For the second night in a row Boston puts a four-spot on the board in its half of the first. The difference is that we’ve got Bronson Arroyo going instead of Curt Schilling, and Arroyo is still years away from Curt Schilling’s craftiness. Also, for some reason the kid just doesn’t pitch well in Fenway. Tonight the Angels come back from what sportscasters like to call “the early deficit” and briefly make a game of it; after three innings the score is tied 5–5 and Arroyo is gone. In the end, it makes no difference; the final score is 12–7 Boston, and my scorecard suggests there are going to be some very tired Anaheim outfielders tomorrow. I see fourteen fly-ball outs and five strikeouts through eight innings. Add in the sixteen or eighteen hits that had to be chased down, and that’s an awful lot of running for the, ahem, Angels in the outfield.

Anaheim came into Fenway on fire. After two consecutive poundings, I’d have to guess that the fire is out, and that when Bartolo Colon takes the mound tomorrow, he’d better have his best stuff working if he wants to help his team avoid a clean sweep. As for the Red Sox, it’s now a nice balance: the team is three and a half back in the division and three and a half ahead in the wild card. The stretch drive has begun, and right now it looks as if we could go either way. Of course, I know what I’d like to see: the Yankees scrambling madly for that wild-card berth. And losing it on the last day of the season. I am a Red Sox fan, after all.

Tonight we’re on the Monster, switching between two single seats and two standing rooms. The matchup of Arroyo versus former Sock Aaron Sele seems to be in the Angels’ favor, but Sele comes out shaky and slow. Our guys are hacking at every pitch, and banjo hitters like Bellhorn are swinging for the fences. We score four in the first. The ump is squeezing Arroyo, and he gives two back in the second. We add another in our second, but the Angels tie it at five in the third, and Arroyo’s history. Francona calls on Mike Myers to get lefty Darin Erstad. The crowd groans; the PA plays the theme from Halloween. Myers comes in…and gets it done.

Mike Scioscia gives Sele an extra inning to find his bearings. Instead, he gives up three straight hits and we take the lead.

Like Mike Myers, Terry Adams has had his problems, but, like Myers, he comes in with two down and gets his man, then settles in for two scoreless innings of work (one, I must say, belongs to Tek, who throws out two runners in the fifth).

Scot Shields is their crummy middle reliever. We beat him like a rock, Millar sealing the win with a three-run Coke-bottle shot. And to cap it, after Johnny catches the last out on the warning track directly beneath us, he throws the ball up to me. The game’s on ESPN, and when we get home I’ve got e-mails from people who saw it. There I was, filling the screen, pointing and hollering thank-you, letting Johnny know—once more—that he is still The Man.

September 2nd

Improbable or not, the Sox Express keeps rolling along—this makes nine in a row and we are rapidly leaving the land of the unusual and entering that of the out-and-out, please-pass-the-happy-gas unreal. No question tonight’s game is the toughest of the lot, with Bartolo Colon throwing in the mid-nineties and the Angels offense struggling hard to salvage at least one game of the three. It is important that they do, of course, because of “the swing” that comes into play when the clubs in first and second play each other;[46] there’s a hell of a big difference between leaving Fenway two and a half games out and leaving it four and a half out. The Halos end up leaving it four and a half out mostly because baseball is also a game of luck and Boston’s still running. It would have to be, wouldn’t you say, for the Sox to go 2 for 14 with runners in scoring position…and still manage to eke out the win?

The tragickal Mr. Lowe, who has been snakebit most of the year (there have been innings when he’s been forced to get not just four outs but sometimes even six), only has to endure a couple of miscues tonight, and Adam Kennedy is the beneficiary of both. One is an error by right fielder Dave Roberts; the other is a triple that center fielder Johnny Damon should have caught, and in neither case does the speedy Kennedy end up scoring.

Lowe settles down after giving up single runs in each of the first three. The Red Sox are only able to touch up Colon for four, also in the first three (tonight the Angel bullpen is superb), but four is enough. Between the first of April and the end of July the Red Sox made losing one-run games an art, but now they have turned that around. By the time Keith Foulke faces the last Anaheim batter of the series, thirty-five thousand or so of the Fenway Faithful—Stewart O’Nan and myself among them—are on their feet, screaming, “SWEEP! SWEEP! SWEEP!”

Foulke induces a harmless fly ball to Orlando Cabrera at shortstop and the Standells launch into “Dirty Water.” Stewart and I (not to mentionthe rest of the Faithful) have what we came for. It’s unbelievable, but we have swept the Angels. Bring on Texas.

And can I say we? I think I can, and in a wider context than just my Fenway friends on this clear and slightly fallish-feeling Boston night. According to the New England Sports Network (NESN), the first of the three-game series against the Angels drew the biggest ratings of any regular-season baseball game in the network’s history. Seen in 18.5 million homes from Canada to Connecticut, it blew away all the big-network competition. Said color commentator Jerry Remy, “I don’t even know how to think about numbers like that.” (Only Remy, a Massachusetts native, cannot seem to say numbers; he says numbizz.)[47] In any case, the numbizz only underline the meaning of the ninth-inning Fenway Thunder I’ve now heard at the ballpark two nights in a row. This team has caught the imagination of New England. This year it took a while to happen, but it finally did.

And the team has caught mine, as well. This time they—and we—could go all the way. Not saying they will; the odds are still against it. But some team will become the 2004 World Champions, and yes, this could be that team. They certainly have the tools.

Christ, I hope I haven’t jinxed them, saying that.

We’ve won eight in a row and tonight we’re going for the sweep against the Angels, a very good club, yet when Derek Lowe stumbles out of the gate, the Faithful grumble. Not this Lowe, not again. The Lowe who just misses his location and gets frustrated, puts runners on and gets distracted, gets ahead of batters and then throws too nice of a strike. The Lowe who kicks absently at the air like a bummed Little Leaguer after an RBI single.

Colon is having an even worse night. It seems we have two on or bases loaded every inning, but he slows the pace of the game (doing a whole lot of yardwork on the mound), and manages to weasel out of what should be big innings. After three, it’s 4–3 Sox, and at the rate the game’s going, we’ll be here till midnight.

With one down in the Angels’ fourth, Adam Kennedy flies one to Dave Roberts in right. Roberts isn’t a right fielder by trade, and he tracks this one awkwardly, as if he doesn’t quite see it, freezing and then waving at the ball as if it’s suddenly reappeared out of the lights. It hits his glove, then his leg, then the grass. Booooooooo!

It’s tough to hear, since Roberts is an eloquent and genuinely nice guy and a recent addition, and he’s playing out of position, but it’s an important game, and the ball should have been caught. Still, I can’t help reflecting that, even in the best of times, the Faithful are a hanging jury.