Faithful

Spaulding Turnpike—all these hailed me with variations on the same theme: “Yo, Stevie! We got just who we wanted, right?”

I’m back with a sick smile and a little wave, like Whatever, dude. Because I’m thinking of that old saying, the one that goes Be careful what you wish for. And when you get right down to where the rubber hits the road, does it even matter? When you get right down to where the rubber meets the road, the Yankees just seem to be our fate, our ka, our name written on the bottom of the stone.

Or maybe that’s just so much literary bullshit. Probably is. God knows the Boston Red Sox have generated enough to fill two or three hundred Mass Pike Port-o-Sans. It’s deja vu all over again, that much is a pure fact. We can only hope that this time Act II will be different, allowing us still to be onstage, and in uniform, when the curtain goes up on Act III.

Odd news: two relatives of Yanks closer Mariano Rivera were killed over the weekend in a freak accident at his house and he has to fly down to Panama for the funeral, meaning he’ll have to jet back just in time for Game 1. And former NL MVP Ken Caminiti, who admitted his steroid use and became a baseball pariah, dies of heart failure at age forty-one (a cautionary tale for anyone on the juice, not just Gary Sheffield).

We also declare our ALCS roster, making only one change.

SO: So Youk’s out and Mendoza’s in. I guess we’re hoping he has the book on his old club. And that Billy Mueller doesn’t need a breather at third.

And dunno if you’ve looked this far ahead, but do you know what night Game 7 of the World Series falls on? That’s right: Halloween.

October 12th/ALCS Game 1

The hype leading up to Game 1 is typical and idiotic. The game’s on Fox, and they’ve prepared a five-minute Star Wars intro, complete with Johnny as Chewbacca. If that’s not enough, they play the theme from The Odd Couple over and over. The announcers are desperate to tell us what the story lines are, and the personal dramas. This is one reason I hate playoff baseball—the national networks think the viewers have just tuned in. On NESN, Jerry and Don have no need to fill us in on “The Rivalry,” they just call the game. They also don’t call Bronson Arroyo “Brandon” (McCarver—the true inspiration behind the mute button) or compare A-Rod’s and Jeter’s mediocre years to Manny’s and David’s MVP-type seasons.

The game itself is dull and disappointing from the very first. Schilling can’t push off on the ankle and gives up runs in bunches (later, Dr. Bill Morgan will describe the injury as a tear in a sheath covering a tendon—shades of Nomar!), while the Orioles’ Mike Mussina is spot-on. After three, it’s 6–0 Yanks, through six, 8–0, and the only drama is whether Moose will keep his no-hitter. And then, just as news time is rolling around, and viewers naturally think of bailing, the Sox explode for seven runs, and who should be called in to save the game but plucky Mariano Rivera, who just arrived in the fourth inning from the funeral of blah blah blah native Panama. What an astonishing twist! Why, who could have foreseen such etc., etc.! The announcers play it up for all it’s worth, and if there’s a more egregious use of a human-interest story in sports, please, don’t show it to me. Rivera even gets to start the game-ending DP against his nemesis Bill Mueller. It’s like watching a cheesy movie, every step feels utterly false and plotted. I mean, come on, who writes this stuff?

October 13th

Last night’s game against the Yankees was a good-news/bad-news kind of thing. You know, like in all the jokes you’ve heard. Doctor comes bopping into his patient’s examination room and says, “Mr. Shlub, I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news. Which do you want first?”

“Gimme the bad news first,” Mr. Shlub says. “Save the good news.”

“The bad news is that you’re going to die of a horribly painful disease in six weeks or so, your blood’s going to boil and your skin’s going to creep right off your body, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it,” the doctor says. “Now do you want the good news?”

Mr. Shlub starts to blubber. “What good news can there be after something like that?” he asks the doctor, when he can speak coherently.

“Well,” the doctor says in a confidential tone of voice, “I’m dating a nurse from Pediatrics, and she is so hot!”

The worst news to come out of last night’s ALCS Game 1 is, of course, that we lost it. The good news is that the Red Sox made a game of it after being no-hit by Mike Mussina into the seventh. Starting with Mark Bellhorn’s one-out double in the top of that inning, Boston smacked a total of 10 hits and scored 7 runs, coming back from what was an 8–0 deficit (with the tying run on third in the eighth, the camera caught father-son Yankee fans exchanging caps in some arcane but endearing good-luck ritual). The Sox gave the Yankees a scare; the Sox silenced the Yankee fans; the Sox even gave their own fans something to go to bed at quarter to midnight feeling good about.

The good news about Curt Schilling’s head is that it’s on straight. Father Curt says he doesn’t believe in the so-called Curse of the Bambino. “I’m a Christian,” he says fearlessly. The bad news about Father Curt’s ankle is that it’s not on straight. He couldn’t push off on his right foot last night, threw only two fastballs at speeds greater than 90 mph, and the Yankees made him pay, pounding out 6 hits and 6 runs over three innings.[71]

The bad news is that this ankle injury happened at a cursedly bad time. The good news is that Father Curt—who doesn’t believe in that publicity-stunt curse, anyway—threw only 58 pitches in last night’s mortar attack, and if the ankle gets better, he should be more than ready for Game 5, always assuming there is one.

The bad news is that the Yankees scored 6 of their 10 runs after two were out. The good news is that the Red Sox scored all 7 of their runs after two were out, and stranded only two runners all night.

The bad news is that the Red Sox don’t win when Johnny Damon doesn’t hit—2004 baseball history pretty well proves this—and last night Johnny wore that fabled golden sombrero, striking out four times and looking more lost each time. The good news is that Jason Varitek socked a two-run dinger over the center-field wall, ending a personal 0-for-36 drought at Yankee Stadium, and followed the dinger with a single against Mariano Rivera to open the ninth when the Red Sox once again—splendidly, against all probability—brought the tying run to the plate. Before the game, Curt Schilling said he couldn’t think of anything better than “making fifty thousand or so Yankee fans shut up.” He wasn’t able to do that, but in the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings last night, Boston batters were.

The bad news is that if this series goes more than four games, Moose Mussina will be back. The good news is that the Boston batters who brought the late-inning thunder last night will also be back, and in each and every remaining game.

The bad news is that Boston is a game in the hole. The good news is that at this point in the season they don’t make you turn in your uniform and condemn you to spend the winter playing golf unless you lose three more.

And finally, there’s the most fascinating bad-news/good-news matchup of them all, and the best reason I know to tune in to baseball rather than to the third presidential debate tonight: Pedro will be starting for the Red Sox. The Yankees have hammered him this year, and Pedro has publicly proclaimed them his Daddy. That’s the bad news.

But no one has more heart than Pedro Martinez, and no one will try any harder to send the Red Sox