Faithful

In Kenmore Square, the Globe comes with a GO SOX poster and red and blue Mardi Gras beads. On Lansdowne, Puma is handing out posters of Johnny sitting on the ground by home plate, flashing a smile and a peace sign. Back at the players’ lot, the mood is loose and goofy. Manny shows up in a Michael Vick jersey, which we give him grief for, and then El Jefe arrives in his badass Cadillac roadster with the retractable roof (El Monstro is its name) and is wearing—incredibly—a Tennessee Titans cap. “Let’s go Pats!” we holler.

In BP, David usually spoons the first few pitches down the line in left before pulling a bunch of rainbows over the bullpens or hooking them around the Pesky Pole. Today he keeps working on going the other way, poking shots to the hole between third and short, dropping doubles into the garage-door corner. The scouting report must say the Angels will try to work him away, the same way we’ve worked Guerrero.

As closer Troy Percival saunters out to warm up, I say we haven’t seen much of him.

“I know,” he says. “I wish I was in there.”

“You guys are a better team than you’ve shown the first two games, but much respect for beating Oakland. Maybe we’ll see you tonight, huh?”

“I hope so,” he says.

A nice guy, and I’m also thinking ahead to the off-season, when he becomes a free agent. His 96 mph cheese would be a nice complement to Foulkie’s 74 mph change.

Our scalped seats are in back of the Sox bullpen, giving me and Caitlin a prime view of Bronson warming up. Dave Wallace stands behind him, clicking off each pitch on a handheld counter. Bronson works from the windup, with that high leg kick. He throws his two pitches, his fastball and his curve, until sweat’s dripping off his chin. He stops and towels off, then works from the stretch, popping Tek’s glove. He’s still throwing when the Dropkick Murphys take the portable stage right behind him to play the anthem. When they finish and start in on their Red Sox anthem, “Tessie,” he takes a couple more, and that’s it, he’s ready.

And he is. He’s got the curve working, and the ump’s giving him a nice wide zone. We pick up some runs early, then some more. The only mistake Bronson makes is trying to sneak a fastball by Troy Glaus, who sticks it on the Monster, but by then we’re up 5–1, 6–1. It’s a party.

And then, in the seventh, Bronson walks the leadoff guy. Myers relieves and walks the only guy he faces. Timlin comes in and gives up a single to Eckstein, then with bases loaded nibbles at Darin Erstad and ends up walking in a run, bringing up…Vladimir Guerrero.

In batting practice, Guerrero hits the ball so hard that everybody stops to watch him. Today before the game, he blasted one high off the Volvo sign on the Monster, hitting the very top so that the steel beam behind it chimed like a bell and the ball ricocheted back past the outfielders shagging flies in left-center.

Timlin nibbled at Erstad. Now on 0-1 he throws Guerrero a fastball up in the zone, and Vladi jumps on it, driving the ball toward right-center. It arcs through the darkness above the .406 Club straight for us like a crashing satellite. No doubt about it, it’s going to make the bullpen easily. Trot’s angling over, trailing the play. Trot’s an active Christian—he has a cross hanging from the rearview mirror of his Mini Cooper—but as the ball clears the wall, he loudly mouths: “God dammit!” You can almost hear it except for the overwhelming groan. Grand slam. It’s 6–6. The party’s over.

Not again. With the shaky Wake going tomorrow, this could be crucial. We don’t want to go back to Anaheim.

Now comes the nail-biting. Johnny has to flash back to the track in deepest center to make a great leaping catch. Foulke works through bases-loaded jams in the eighth and ninth, and then Lowe has to battle with men on first and third in the tenth. We’re standing and screaming with every pitch, hoping, wishing. K-Rod is on for the Angels, with Troy Percival warming. This is their one great strength. With apologies to Eric Gagne and Darren Dreifort of the Dodgers, Anaheim’s the only team in the majors with two bona fide closers. It looks like it’s going to be a long night.

The Red Sox won 8–6 in ten, and this series is over. The Angels are done for the season, and the 2004 baseball version of Woodstock Nation is going to play for the American League pennant. Is it great? Yes. Is it wonderful? You bet. Is it pretty suh-veet, as William H. Macy’s car salesman character in Fargo was wont to say? That is such a big ten- four.

There are all sorts of reasons why this sweep feels so good. Being able to rest Schilling and Martinez, the big pitching arms, is only a strategic reason, valid but cold. The fact that the Red Sox hadn’t clinched any postseason series in their home park since 1986 (when they beat these same Angels and then went on to play the Mets) is warmer, a soothing of the psyche. For me, the emotional payoff is that, although I wasn’t able to bring my mother—an ardent Red Sox fan who died in 1974—I was able to bring my mother-in-law, who is now eighty-one and not in the best of health. [68]

A Red Sox Customer Service rep met us at Gate D with a wheelchair and escorted us—along with Sarah Jane’s oxygen bottle and a backup—to our seats, just to the left of the Red Sox dugout and only a row from the field, a perfect location for a lady who’s no longer up to much jumping around. I checked her oxy level before the game started, and the dial on top of the tank said three-quarters, deep in the green, very cool. She was good to go right through the eighth, but as the game neared the four-hour mark (we have discussed the grinding, defensive nature of postseason baseball games) and extra innings loomed, it seemed wise to switch her over to the spare tank, and she agreed to my suggestion that we leave after the tenth, if the score was still tied. With the fireballing K-Rod on the mound, that seemed likely, especially after he got Manny on a called strike three, with Pokey Reese (running for Bellhorn) still languishing on first.

Instead of leaving Rodriguez in to face David Ortiz, Scioscia elected to go with Jarrod Washburn, setting up the lefty-lefty match of which the conventional wisdom so approves. What followed was, quite simply, baseball history. I can’t report it here to any reader’s satisfaction because, although I saw it, my forebrain still doesn’t really believe I saw it. Part of this is because Big Papi so rarely hits with power to left; right field is usually his porch. Most of it, though, is simply that the man’s swing was so damn quick. The ball seemed to be off his bat and gone into the night before my ears even registered the crack of wood on horsehide.

The place went absolutely giddy-bonkers. “Dirty Water” was playing, but you could hear nothing but the bass line pumping out of the speakers. The rest was lost in the delirious chant of the crowd, not Papi, Papi but Da-VEED! Da-VEED! The cops in their riot gear, who came out to protect the sanctity of the field from marauding fans in their YANKEES SUCK T-shirts, tried to hold on to their stern don’t-tread-on-me frowns, but most of them couldn’t do it for long; they broke into delighted winner grins, smothered them, then had to do the smothering all over again as fresh grins broke out. Best of all, I turned around and saw the woman who’s been my mom since my own mom died, hands clasped below her chin, beaming like an eighty-one-year-old cherub. I had some doubts about taking her and her oxygen tanks to a potential clinch game with thirty-five thousand rabid Red Sox fans in attendance (and when I checked that second tank later, I saw that she used as much oxygen in the half an hour following Big David’s home run as she had during the entire previous four hours of the game), but now, an hour later, there’s not a doubt in my mind that tonight I did her a mitzvah. And she did me one. And the team did one for both of us and all of Red Sox Nation. There’s more work to do, but tonight there are plenty of mitzvahs to go around.

After El Jefe’s walk-off we hang around, dancing on our seats, singing along with “Shout” and “Joy to the World” and “Glory Days” as the locker-room celebration plays on the JumboTron. WHY NOT US? Pedro’s T-shirt reads. Euky Rojas empties the bullpen ballbag, tossing its contents to our suddenly lucky section. Thanks, Euky!

Down at the dugout, Ellis Burks does the same. We’ve moved to the tarp along the first-base line to get closer to the celebration. Dave McCarty (not even on the roster!) comes out and sprays us with beer. Gabe “The Babe” Kapler gives us some skin. Manny and Kevin Millar jog past, slapping hands, and Mike Myers, in a Dominican flag do-rag. Johnny sits in the passenger seat of a groundskeeper’s cart while David Ortiz rides in back, kicking his legs and waving to us as they go all the way around the track to the garage door in left. It’s a good hour since the game ended, and there are only a couple hundred of us diehards. Unforgettable.