Faithful

SK: Who is the nerdy older brother? Bronson Arroyo would be my guess. “Peace out, Napoleon.” Cornrows, indeed.

SO: I was actually thinking of Wake for the brother, but you’re right, Arroyo’s cornrows might win him the role (who did ’em—Manny? Pokey?). And I did see a VOTE FOR PEDRO T-shirt at the park the other day.

Speaking of voting: Mr. Schill should have the inside track on the Cy Young, and Manny sure as heck looks like the MVP.

My “too quiet” prediction comes true, as righty Gil Meche scatters five Red Sox hits for a complete-game 2–0 shutout. Manny sabotages our best scoring chance in the first: with one out and two on, he forgets how many outs there are and gets doubled up off second on what should be an easy sac fly. Derek Lowe’s only mistake is a two-run shot to Raul Ibanez. Time of game: two hours, twenty-two minutes.

SK: What can you say? Guy pitched a great game and Manny ran us out of an inning. Oh, that crazy Manny. At least it’ll take more than this one game to cost us our dream. But 3.5 back of the Yankees. And how’s by the Angels? “White Hot Colon” (as per the Angels website) over Chicago, 11–0. Back to five up in the WC. And do you know what? I think the D-Rays might put a hurtin’ on us.

SO: D-Lowe deserved better (and be sure the GM of the O’s has taken note of his last seven starts). So we’re where we were on Friday, just two games closer to the finish line. With Petey and Mr. Schill slated to go against the D-Rays, I’m optimistic. Just gotta hit.

I wonder how much Manny’s little fugue states will hurt his MVP chances. What a weird series he had. He clouts a bunch of big dingers, including that granny, makes a great flying karate-kick, give-up-the-body grab in the corner, then muffs that can of corn on the track, and today he forgets how many outs there are. It’s like Sun Ra said: space is the place.

Somewhere I’m missing a game—our record says we have 20 left but I only count 19 on the sked. Must be a rain date in there somewhere. Ah, found it: we’ve got a doubleheader in Baltimore on the next-to-last day of the season. So that means of the 20 games we have left, 8 are with the pain-in-the-ass O’s. And 6 are with the Yanks. So we had better beat the D-Rays.

SK: I doan like the sound of tha’, man. Too easy to see the headline: ANGELS IN AS WILD CARD, TEJADA SINKS SOX.

You think? Say “Nahhh…”

SO: Nahhh. They’ll be meaningless. Our starters will be Abe Alvarez and Frank Castillo. Or whoever needs the innings for his bonus. But you’re right, Tejada will hit four homers. (Talk about some fans who should (continue to) be pissed—the new and improved O’s didn’t even make .500.)

Plus I’m looking for the Angels to knock off the A’s. Be nice to see a team with real fundamentals overcome their injuries and eliminate the Moneyball guys.

September 13th

In the mail, a gift from Steve: The Year of the Gerbil, by Con Chapman, a chronicle of the 1978 pennant race. The Gerbil, of course, was just part of Bill “Spaceman” Lee’s nickname for then Sox manager Don Zimmer. The whole name was The Mad Gerbil. On the cover is a shot from the TV feed from the one-game playoff, the center-field camera keying on Bucky Dent just after his fateful swing, Mike Torrez starting to follow the ball up and to his right. Torrez, I’m surprised to see, is wearing Roger Clemens’s #21. Another good reason to retire it.

SO: Thanks, man. The title alone had me laughing (though you know by the end I’ll be grim-lipped, bumming once again at Mike F****** Torrez and Bucky F****** Dent). And this year sure looks like a photo negative of ’78. We just have to catch the Yanks at the wire and let Mark Bellhorn do the rest.

SK: I saw the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated and my heart sank into my boots. If you don’t know why—and I’m sure you do—Google Sports Illustrated Curse.

SO: I believe Tommy Brady and the Pats survived it, so maybe Mr. Schill can too. At least it’s not the Chunky Soup curse; that’s a career-ender (Terrell Davis, Kurt Warner). Keep your eye on Donovan McNabb!

If we gather all these curses (Titanic, Bambino, SI) and STILL win, will folks shut up about them already? And will we get extra points for degree of difficulty (like overcoming all our injuries)?

September 14th

The Yankees got roughed up again last night, roughed up bad, this time by lowly Kansas City. The final score of that game was 17–8, and this morning the New York sportswriters will once more be eating their gizzards out about the pinstripes’ lack of pitching—lovely. The Red Sox, meanwhile, only split with cellar-dwelling Seattle, which is a long way from wonderful, but the road trip is over, four more games are off the schedule, and we’re coming back to Fenway Park almost exactly where we were in the standings when we left: three games behind the Yankees in the East, four and a half ahead of the Angels in the wild card. Furthermore, we’re looking at three with the hapless Devil Rays, and the Sox have been strong against them this year. So, at least until we meet the Yankees on the seventeenth, all’s okay with the world, right?

Wrong. There’s a problem. A big one. Father Curt is on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week, that’s the problem. He’s standing on the mound at Fenway with his arms spread and every letter on the front of his uniform clearly visible.

How could they?

With all the other stuff we have to worry about, how damn could they? Because while there’s no evidence of the Curse of the Bambino other than the failure of the Red Sox to win the World Series since 1918 (and they are not alone in that), there’s plenty of evidence that the Sports Illustrated Curse actually exists. [53]

Two games after his cover appearance on SI, Kurt Warner suffered an injury that sidelined him for five games (although in Warner’s case I’m at least willing to admit the possibility that Campbell’s Soup may have been a contributing factor). One day after Anna Kournikova appeared on the SI cover, she was bounced from the French Open, her earliest exit from a Grand Slam event in three years. In his first Monday Night Football game after his cover shot, Howard Cosell went from hero to zero by referring to a Redskins wide receiver as “that little monkey.” After Dale Murphy of the Atlanta Braves appeared on the cover, the Braves dropped fourteen of their next fifteen games. Other sufferers of the SI Jinx have included Tom Watson, Kirk Gibson, George Brett, Pedro Martinez’s brother, Ramon…and ex–Red Sox franchise player Nomar Garciaparra. After Nomar, stripped to the waist and looking most righteously buff, appeared on the cover, he went down with a popped wrist tendon and played hardly at all during the first half of the season.

And now, in addition to all our injuries and our far-from-secure lead in the wild card, in addition to a three-game bulge for the Yankees that won’t seem to shrink any lower than two games, I have to cope with the