Faithful

yesterday, we are five and a half ahead in the wild card. So in the end, it’s just two more games off the ever- diminishing schedule.

Ah, but this afternoon comes the cherry on the banana split: Martinez versus Mussina. 1:05 P.M., at the Stadium. Wonder if I could scalp myself a little ticket to that game?

Hmmmm.

Later: I did, and Pedro was awful. The Red Sox were awful. The New York fans were loathsomely jubilant. I paid $350 for a box seat and watched the Yanks put an 11–1 pounding on my Sox. This afternoon, even the sunshine was awful. It was, in many ways, the apotheosis of the Dark Side Red Sox fan experience: the Red Sox fan not as Fearless Booster of the Underdog but as Beaten Loser, slinking from the park with his head down, eager to put the sound of those cheering fans behind him and clinging to the twin tenets of the Manny Ramirez Credo for comfort: Turn the page and We gotta jus’ keep goin’, man.

Tomorrow, Wakefield faces the Birds at Fenway Park. I hope, because I am faithful. I fear, because I know that when you’re going bad, you usually get more of the same.

The best news is quiet news from the West Coast: the Angels are also weekend losers, and we’re still five and a half games up in the wild-card race. On that side of the dance card, it’s just two more games off the schedule. But yes, I fear the Orioles, with whom we have gone 1-4 so far this season at Fenway, where we have won so many against other teams.

Today we get our asses kicked again, 11–1, with most of the damage done in an eight-run fifth, as the Yanks chase Pedro. It’s humiliating, the kind of loss your friends at school will taunt you about tomorrow.

It’s also strangely unreal. The Yankees aren’t this good (even with performance-enhancing drugs), and we’re not this bad, and I have a creeping suspicion that this is payback for Friday night. We—Sox fans, I mean—get the thrilling comeback win, and their fans get the revenge blowouts. Looking back at how Mo blew the save Friday night (walk, hit batsman, missed location (and Sheffield’s bad throw), bloop that Lofton for some reason pulls up on), I suspect (at the risk of being labeled paranoid) this is all being orchestrated to ramp up interest on both sides. When a team does nothing to win and still wins, you have to wonder. Of course, 1986’s Game 6 is a classic example of that: walk, hit batsman, muffed grounder.

Mo also blew the Tek–A-Rod game with a gopher ball to Bill Mueller after throwing one to Trot that he just missed.

And Mo blew Game 7 of the 2001 series. This fan’s got to wonder.

The goal would be the dullest but most important of goals—financial security. Obscene TV ratings lead to obscene TV contracts. And who could blame the league? TV money floats the whole show. Just look at the NHL (if you can find them) for the flip side.

September 20th

Wake tonight against Baltimore, and there’s a sense of letdown, as if these games mean less. It’s not true, of course; it’s just a by-product of all the hype, and the fact that it’s Monday. (It’s no coincidence that of the six series we play against the Yanks, all but one straddle a weekend.)

Wake’s lost three straight and has looked awful. Tonight he’s sharp until the fourth, when he walks a batter, gives up a ground-ball single, hits a guy, walks a run in, then surrenders a grand slam to B. J. Surhoff. The O’s add three more in the fifth, walking and stealing bases, taking advantage of a passed ball and a blown rundown, and while we chip away late to make the final 8–6, this one was in reach only for one or two at-bats.

The Angels win so they’re four and a half back. Most of the Faithful think the wild card’s in the bag, but we have problems with the O’s, and face them seven times in our last thirteen games. Honestly, I’d rather play the Yankees.

September 21st

SK: My son Joe says that Derek Lowe (and a number of other Red Sox) were out partying hearty on Friday night (and into the wee hours of Saturday morning) under the assumption that the Saturday game (i.e., our game) would be a rainout. Have you heard this? Is it a Sons of Sam Horn thing?

SO: That Lowe rumor (stumbling in at 4 A.M. from the China Club)—true or not—points to how unprepared and spacey he looked in the first. I can see the logic: only someone still half-drunk would have made that throw to third behind Bernie. But look how we played last night after a good night’s sleep. That hot streak seems long ago and faraway.

Dear Red Sox,

It’s my birthday, and I’d like you to give me a present. After three straight losses, I’d like a win tonight, and with Father Curt on the mound, I think I have a chance of getting one. Even more than a win, I’d like you guys to take stock of your current situation—do you think you could do that for me?

First, since the splendid (and cattily crafty) win over the Yankees on the 17th, when Red Sox pitching gave up just two runs, the Boston staff has given up an average of eleven runs per game. The starters, so good during the August run, have been horrible.

Second, Baltimore continues their absolute dominance of the Red Sox, and this had better change. The regular season has now dwindled to a mere thirteen games, and seven of them—the majority, in other words —are with these perennial Red Sox killers.

Third, the Angels show signs of snapping out of their funk. They won last night, shaving a full game off your wild-card lead. You guys had better realize that wild-card deal isn’t sealed yet. Yes, the Angels have six games left against the A’s…but we have three left against the Yanks. It’s time to start winning some damn games against Baltimore. It’s been a long time since a sellout Fenway crowd was as quiet as the one last night (especially with the Yankees losing). I think they sense you guys going bad and are waiting, hoping, for you to shake it off. So am I. So start tonight with a win, okay? Because, after the glory of the last six weeks, a September choke would be dismal, indeed.

Thanking you in advance,

Stephen King

10:35 P.M.: Baseball’s a funny damn game. I got my birthday present, but it was Red Sox second baseman Mark Bellhorn who gave it to me after thehome-plate umpire tried to snatch it away (and after he did snatch away Curt Schilling’s twenty-first win of the season).

After seven and a half innings of scoreless baseball, during which Father Curt bagged fourteen Birds by way of the K, the Red Sox—who have had to struggle far too hard for the five or so wins they’ve managed against the O’s this year—manufactured a single skinny run. On came Keith Foulke, the Boston closer. He got the first two guys, then surrendered a base hit. This brought Sox-wrecker Javy Lopez to the plate. Foulke, who had never surrendered a hit to Mr. Lopez before tonight, massaged the count to 0-2. Then, twice, he threw clear strikes[58] which the umpire called balls. Finally Foulke hung a 2-2 slider that Lopez lost, high and gone, into the night.

In the bottom of the ninth, Boston put runners on second and third with nobody out (my man Kevin Youkilis led the inning with a walk). Then David McCarty popped up and Johnny Damon struck out. Just when I was absolutely convinced that the Sox were going to scuffle to their fourth loss in as many games, this time squandering a brilliant pitching performance in the process, Bellhorn laced a double to right, winning the game and bringing the Sox out of the dugout in a joyous mob of red-and-white uniforms while the Standells played and the crowd went bonkers: a little touch of Fenway magic on my birthday, not bad.