Faithful

superimposed on white backgrounds, as at least 60 percent of these seemed to be), but when I got back to the hotel, the doorman took a look at my T-shirt (a gift from Stewart O’Nan, it features a picture of David Ortiz and reads I LOVE IT WHEN YOU CALL ME BIG PAPI) and greeted me with “Hey, Mr. King! Welcome back! Your Sox are up one-zip in the third!”

One of the car-park guys joined us at that moment, favored me with a rather loathsome smile—if it was supposed to project sympathy, it failed miserably—and said, “Nah, it’s tied, one to one.”

Then the house detective, for whom I’d signed a book earlier, came out through the revolving doors. “Nope,” he said. “It’s two to one, Yanks. Olerud just homered.”

So much for my resolution. Five minutes later—no, three—I was sitting in my room with my Red Sox cap out of my suitcase and on my head, watching the game.

Now, the players—some of them, at least—will try to tell you that a match like this is just another game, and that if it is more important, it’s because of the lateness of the season and “the swing”—first playing second. Few if any of them actually believe such nonsense. You can see it in their eyes during their locker-room interviews, and you can certainly see it in the level of play they bring to the field.[56] Yankees–Red Sox is a classic rivalry, last night’s game was one of the best in it I’ve ever seen… and I only saw it from the fifth inning on! If not for two rain delays totaling almost an hour and a half (almost exactly the length of my foreign film), I probably would have missed the whole damned thing, and I’m so glad I didn’t miss all the excitement in an effort to spare my nerves another jolt of what I was sure they would have to endure: Rivera successful, Yankees triumphant.

The part I did miss was Johnny Damon’s upper-deck shot to put the Red Sox ahead 1–0 (I also missed chortling gleefully over how George Steinbrenner must hate all that hair flying gaily in the wind as Damon rounds the bases) and the Ramirez Show: first the Shakespearian non-homer (fair was foul after all) and then the sensational Air Manny catch that robbed Miguel Cairo of his own home run. The fun of that one, of course, every bit as good on the replays, was watching Cairo run the bases in absolute surety that he’d hit the ball out, and his blank look of amazement when he was informed—after slapping the bemused third-base coach’s hand on his way home —that he’d been out during his whole tour of the base paths.

I was there, however, by then in my underwear (but still wearing my David Ortiz T-shirt and my Red Sox hat) when Mariano Rivera came in to seal the deal with the Yankees leading, 2–1, in the top of the ninth. That he’s one of the great ones there can be no doubt (Johnny Damon says flatly that Rivera is the greatest closer of all time), but he has problems with the Red Sox. Bill Mueller touched him—hard—for a two-run walk-off home run in the July rhubarb game at Fenway, and last night Rivera blew the save with one out and then blew the game with two out. You didn’t have to be a lip-reader to see what he was yelling at center fielder Kenny Lofton when Damon’s broken-bat flare (another of those dying-quail shots that seem to have decided so many games between these two clubs) dropped ten or twelve feet in front of Lofton on the wet grass:Catch the ball! But in fact, Rivera had no one to blame but himself… or the Red Sox, who simply wouldn’t quit and let Rivera pick up his fiftieth save in peace.

The Yankee closer walked Trot Nixon, who was replaced by the speedy Dave Roberts. Then he hit Kevin Millar, who was replaced by the fairly speedy Gabe Kapler. With two on and one out, I expected a game-ending double play. Instead, Orlando Cabrera singled through the hole into right. Kevin Youkilis followed with a strikeout (I love Youk, but he was simply overmatched in the ninth last night). Then came Damon, and… ball game.

You would say that tomorrow’s game—assuming the remains of Hurricane Ivan don’t wash it out —couldn’t possibly measure up. But with these two teams, I’m afraid to say anything but this: it’s going to be another game off the schedule, and last night we maintained our good hold on the wild card. The gap between us and the Yankees for the top spot in the AL East has, meanwhile, once more shrunk to a mere two and a half games.

Like happy families, all blown saves are alike. You overthrow and leave the ball up and out and walk the leadoff guy. Get behind the second guy and hit him. Miss your location and a .260 hitter goes the other way on you, and your right fielder with the best arm on the team throws one up the line so their speedy pinch runner scores. Next guy bloops one that your center fielder usually gets, but this time—for no other reason than things are going to hell—he pulls up and the ball drops, another run scores, and you’ve just blown another save.

Closers blow saves; that’s just a fact of baseball. Yankee fans will say that Mariano Rivera doesn’t, but here’s proof—-again—that it doesn’t matter if you’re Mo or John “Way Back” Wasdin or the old Derek Lowe or Eric Gagne or Eck in his prime. Closers blow saves. You just hope they aren’t important ones. Like Game 7 of the World Series. Oh, sorry, Mo.

September 18th

For our publicity mission to Yankee Stadium (where the only sellouts are the players), I wear my Bill Mazeroski jersey. On the train down, I sit beside an older Yankee fan wearing a Yogi Berra cap. As you’ll remember, Yogi was playing left that fateful October day in Forbes Field and watched the Yanks’ hopes fly over his head and over the wall. The guy next to me doesn’t recognize the jersey, and I think—perhaps uncharitably—that being oblivious of history is a luxury we, as Sox fans, can’t afford.

Later, at the Stadium, in response to the chant “Nineteen eighteen,” I turn around and bellow “Nineteen sixty.”

And—I swear to God—one kid says, “What happened in 1960?”

September 19th

The first game of this series was a pulse-pounder which the Red Sox won in their last at-bat. In yesterday’s, played under swag-bellied gray skies and in a drizzle that had become a steady rain by the seventh, the Yankees really won it in the first, when they tacked a five-spot on the tragickal Mr. Lowe, to the joy of the not- quite-full Stadium. (Not to say the relief.) They added four more in the second and were off to the races. By then Mr. Lowe was gone, suffering from a tragickal blowe to the ankle, inflicted by ye olde horsehide sphere. It was, we are told, his earliest exit from a game in five years. I wasn’t terribly surprised at how poorly he performed. Mr. Lowe is simply having one of Those Years.

As for the Yankees…well, they seem to be making a kind of goal-line stand: This close and no closer, with the this close part being two games. At one point in yesterday’s game it was 13–0 bad guys, and the mostly unremarkable Yankee hurler Jon Lieber took a no-no deep into the game, before David “I Love It When You Call Me Big Papi” Ortiz hit a home run to break up that nonsense.

Worst of all, Scribner, who plans to publish this book, had set up an interview with Bob Minzesheimer of USA Today at the ballpark, along with a photographer who took pictures of Stewart and me until every Yankee fan in our immediate vicinity[57] had gotten a good gawk and a chance to boo. I have decided that hell is probably an endless photo op at an opposing team’s ballpark where your club is getting its fudge packed most righteously, to the great glee of the sellout crowd where you are not being allowed to hide like the microbe you would dearly love to be.

At last we were allowed to escape, and could I have written all that yesterday? Technically, yes. It was a Saturday-afternoon game, and I had plenty of time later on to jot these fan’s notes. Emotionally, no. I was too bummed out. And the bottom line? The ironic bottom line? After all the emotional highs and lows of the last two games, the Boston Red Sox are exactly where they were before coming to New York. Yes! We’re three and a half behind in the AL East, and thanks to an Angels loss to Texas