Faithful

In quiet counterpoint, the Angels, in their street clothes, walk in broken single file across the grass behind short, across right field and out a gate beside their bullpen, headed for the team bus and their hotel, maybe even the airport. We wave to Vladi and David Eckstein, and give them a polite hand. It’s true what I told Percival: they’re a much better club than they showed in this series, and deserving of much respect.

Outside, at the players’ lot, an even rowdier crowd presses against the barriers to watch the Sox leave. With each car, a new wave of screaming, pushing, a galaxy of cameras flashing. There are riot cops in helmets everywhere, and people literally falling down drunk. Pedro comes out and shoots us Manny’s gunslinger fingers, and we go nuts.

After he leaves, a man holding a baby on his shoulder shoves by me, then sets the baby down, and the baby stands and walks away. It’s a little person with the wizened face of Scatman Crothers in The Shining—it’s Pedro’s good-luck buddy Nelson de la Rosa, two feet tall and waddling up Yawkey Way like a hobbit.

But the best is Tek. He comes out in his uniform, carrying a plate of food from the postgame spread. Some relatives of his are leaving in an SUV, and he wants to catch them to say a final good-bye. “VAR-i-tek, VAR-i tek!” we cheer. Security stops them and Jason gives the woman driver (maybe his aunt?) a kiss on the cheek to Jerry Springer cheers (“Kiss her! Kiss her!”), then pads back towards the clubhouse with his plate, and I think, it’s just like Little League when we’d go to the Dairy Queen, still wearing our cleats. It’s the same game.

October 9th

SO: Jefe say: Somebody got-ta pay. That’s why he’s the chief.

I’m hoarse, my hands are swollen from clapping, and my mitt smells like beer. I’m a most happy fella.

SK: It was a great game.

And yes, we’re getting a shot at redemption, because the Yankees beat the Twins, though “beat” is maybe too strong a word. In Game 4, down 2–1, Ron Gardenhire throws Santana on three days’ rest. With the score 5–1 Twins after five, he inexplicably pulls Santana, meaning—like in that last regular-season series in the Bronx—the Yanks have four innings to get to the Twins’ pen. It’s totally incoherent, given Gardenhire’s now-or-never strategy. Santana’s around 85 pitches and has been sharp, and the Twins’ pen is thin and tired. Predictably, the Yanks come back against instant goat Juan Rincon and then win in extras, ensuring Major League Baseball and Fox of their greatest ratings ever. Is it a tank job? I sure get a whiff, but who except a Twins (or Rock Cats) fan would complain? Finally we’ve got our cage match, our Thunderdome. Two teams enter, one team leaves.

The ALCS BEYOND THUNDERDOME

October 10th

SK: My feeling about having to face the Yankees is extremely conflicted. I heard twenty fat cats (not to mention a very grizzled toll-taker on the N.H. turnpike today) say “Ayyy, Stevie! We got the Yankees, just like we wanted!”

Did we want them?

The fan in me sort of wanted Minnesota, especially after Santana had been bent, folded, stapled and mutilated by the patient Yankee hitters.

The sibyl in me says the Yankees have been our Daddy and will continue to be our Daddy; that we are the Pequod, they the great white whale.

The commercial writer in me says this is just the matchup we need to sell the book; that after this, the World Series would be so much wavy gravy.

SO: All we’ve got to do is go 8-6. Can Mr. Schill, Petey and B-yo with the curve working go 8-6? I dare say they can, with some run support. Will they? Only the baseball tiki gods know for sure.

Santana had very little trouble with the Yanks: 1 earned run in 12 innings, with 12 Ks. No idea why Gardenhire removed him yesterday after only 85 pitches and still looking fine like cherry wine. The commercial writer in you is right: it’s the matchup MLB needs, and they got it. It’s like Hollywood—you need stars to sell a picture, and, sorry, Jacque Jones and Corey Koskie, but you Rock Cats grads just don’t have the wattage (or the superagents).

And if you look closely at our series, there are some wild hairs there too: Figgins’s glove leading to six runs in Game 1; the absolutely horrible plate umpire in Game 2; and the sudden appearance (and disappearance) of Jarrod Washburn to end Game 3, when all-time Angels save leader Troy Percival was rested and ready.

I’ll hold the league to the same rules I apply to Hollywood: it’s cool as long as it’s entertaining and believable. So far it’s been entertaining.

The 2004 numbers say we do better against the Yanks than against the Twins (or the O’s, Cleveland, Texas…), but you can’t go by that—just by himself, Santana warps the curve. That’s how tough he was.

One chance in four. One chance in two would be more than wavy gravy. It’d be Destiny.

October 11th

“It’s like deja vu all over again.” Yogi said that—not the one from Jelly-stone National Park, but the one who hung out in New York and swung a productive bat at many bad pitches back in the good old days when men were men and baseball players still smoked Camels.[69] Once more the Red Sox have entered postseason via the wild card. Once more they have faced the West Coast team and beaten them (this time quite a bit more tidily, ’tis true). Once more it was Mr. Lowe— magickal rather than tragickal—who was the Last Pitcher Standing, this time notching the win instead of the save. And once more the Yankees have beaten the Minnesota Twins after spotting them the opening victory. It is our ancient enemy—now routinely called the Evil Empire almost everywhere north of Hartford—that we will have to face, and vanquish, if we are to go to the World Series.

I spent most of the weekend in Boston, although this book did not precisely demand it; the Boston-Anaheim series was over, and the Boston–New York series wouldn’t start for another four days. Mostly what I wanted was to sample the atmosphere, and what I found myself breathing in was disturbing, bad for sleep.[70] I would describe it as a kind of nervy bravado—think of all the old gangster movies you’ve seen where the bad-guy hero is driven into a final blind alley, draws both automatics from the waistband of his gabardine pants, and then screams, “Come and get me coppers! But I’m gonna take a buncha youse wit’ me!”

Doormen, taxi drivers, a guy from Boston Public Works, a driver on the Boston Duck Tour, a clerk at Brentano’s, two homeys at the mall with their hats turned around backwards (Homey A in a METALLICA RULES T- shirt, Homey B wearing one showing Albert Einstein in the audience at a Ramones concert), a woman on the Boston Common walking her little white furball, even a grizzled old two-tooth toll-taker on New Hampshire’s