Faithful

Leskanic came on and gave up a three-run homer to Gary Sheffield; Wakefield lasted three and a third largely ineffective innings; Embree followed Wakefield and was worse; then came Mike Myers and the song remains the same. There may have been others. “You could look it up,” Ole Case used to say, and he was right, but for that I’d have to buy a Boston Globe, and while I might be able to avoid Dan Shaughnessy’s curse-mongering, my eye would surely fall on the hairy, downcast mugs of the Red Sox players.

Coming back from New York, already down two games to none thanks to Schilling’s bad ankle and Olerud’s home run, the Sox players kept telling reporters they were loose. And so they were; last night they were so loose all four wheels fell off their little red wagon. It’s true that Ramirez, Mueller, Cabrera and especially Jason Varitek found their offensive strokes, but putting eight runs on the board means little when you could double that and still lose by three.

Yet still we are faithful; to steal the title of the movie that played in New England this past spring (a spring that now seems impossibly distant and hopeful), still we believe. Tonight we’ll once again fill the old green church of baseball on Lansdowne Street, in some part because it’s the only church of baseball we have; in large part because—even on mornings like this, when the clean-shaven Yankee Corporate Creed seems to rule the hardball universe—it’s still the only church of baseball we can really love. No baseball team has ever come back from a three-games-to-none deficit to win a postseason series, but a couple of hockey teams have done it, and we tell ourselves it has to happen sooner or later for a baseball team, it just has to.

We tell ourselves Derek Lowe has one more chance to turn 2004 from tragickal to magickal.

We tell ourselves it’s just one game at a time.

We tell ourselves the impossible can start tonight.

* * *

During BP, a liner dings off the photographers’ well in front of me and bounces out into the shallow outfield grass. Don Mattingly’s walking back from the cages under the center-field bleachers with a balding guy in a champagne-colored suit, and as they near the ball, I realize it’s Reggie Jackson. “Reggie,” I holler, “hit the mitt,” and hold out my glove, and he does—maybe for the first time as an outfielder.

I hustle over to Steve to show him the ball. I can rationalize my excitement because Reggie, in my mind, will always be an A—and one of those hairy, wild A’s from a team much like this year’s Sox, kind of goofy and out of control, full of personality. I’m jazzed, just watching the parade of celebrity sportscasters when Steve hands the ball back. On it, he’s written: The curse is off, and then on the sweet spot has signed it: Babe Ruth.

Later, another piece of luck: in the tenth inning, in an incredibly tight and great game, Bernie Williams fouls one high off the roof facing, and the ball plummets directly toward me. All I have to do is raise my arm and the ball hits dead center in the pocket of my glove. The next inning I’m on the JumboTron with my mitt, and my particles are beamed out across the nation to friends and relatives everywhere—and I have enough sense left (or maybe I’m just too tired) not to point at myself and go, “Look, I’m on the JumboTron!”

And this is just the beginning. From here the night just gets better.

October 18th/ALCS Game 4

It turned out that Mr. Lowe was pretty magickal, and so we live to fight another day. Today, in fact. This afternoon, at 5:10 P.M., when Pedro Martinez and Mike Mussina match up in the year’s last American League game at Fenway Park.

Last night’s twelve-inning tilt was the longest game in postseason history, clocking in at five hours and two minutes. I went with my daughter-in-law, and we finally left when Boston failed to score in the bottom of the eleventh. My reasoning was simple enough: if Boston won, I’d be back the next day (make that the same day; it was ten past one when we finally made our way out of the park). If Boston lost, I didn’t want to be there to see the Yankees dancing on the carefully manicured pair of green sox decorating the infield.

As things turned out, our final (and winning) pitcher of the night—Curtis“The Mechanic” Leskanic —was superb in relief after being just one more slice of bullpen salami in the Game 3 blowout. He gave up one of those dying-quail singles to Posada to open the twelfth (this we heard on the radio, heading back to the hotel on eerily deserted streets), then got Ruben Sierra to ground out and Tony Clark to fly out.[75] Miguel Cairo fanned, setting the stage for the dramatic Red Sox finish, which I arrived back in my hotel room just in time to see.

By then Paul Quantrill was pitching for the Yankees. Joe Torre rolled the dice by bringing Mo Rivera on to pitch two innings and try to close out the series. Rivera is the game’s premier closer, but he has occasional problems with the Red Sox, and last night he blew the Yankees’ one-run lead in the ninth, giving up a single to Bill Mueller with speedy Dave Roberts, pinch-running for Kevin Millar, on second.[76] Gordon replaced Rivera and went two scoreless. Quantrill—not exactly chopped liver—was what was left. He never got an out. After yielding a single to Manny Ramirez, he threw David Ortiz what looked to me like either a fastball or a slider. Whatever it was, it was in Ortiz’s wheelhouse, and Big Papi crushed it.

Like every other Red Sox fan, I’m delighted that this isn’t going to be a sweep, like most postseason series that start off 3–0. As a contributor to this book, I’m even more delighted to have a victory to write about before the ultimate sign-off. But one who loves the Boston Red Sox is also one who loathes the New York Yankees; it’s as true as saying night follows day. So it pleases me most of all to point out we are now 12-11 overall this year against George Steinbrenner’s team of limousine longballers, and that last night’s victory, combined with the ALCS best-of-seven format, ensures an odd and wistfully wonderful statistical certainty: the Yankees can’t beat us this year. Not overall. They can go on to the World Series (and probablywill, although I still harbor faint hopes we can prevent that), but the best they can do against us for the season is a tie…and they can only do that by winning today. That will not matter a single whit to them, of course, but when you’re a Red Sox fan, you take consolation wherever it is available.

Last night after the game, I hung around the dugout to shout “Jefeeeeeeeeeeee!” to David Ortiz and chant “Who’s your Pa-pi?” with the rest of the diehard Faithful. When I finally got out onto Yawkey Way it was two o’clock, and most of the players had left. On Brookline Ave, the riot cops were standing in close formation on the bridge to Kenmore Square, forcing us stragglers to walk down Lansdowne and then along the scuzzy streets bordering the Mass Pike. I didn’t mind. There were a couple other fans in sight, and we were all ditzy from the win and just how very late it was. The street I was on curved up to Boylston, and as I reached the intersection, a motorcycle cop came wailing up on his Electra Glide and stopped in the middle of the street. He hopped off and started pointing to the oncoming cars, waving them to the side of the road, and as it dawned on me what was happening, here came the Yankees’ team bus—appropriately from Yankee Bus Lines, and appropriately yellow—and my legs found a strength and a spring I thought I’d lost back in the fifth inning, carrying me to the exact spot I needed to be in, the right place at the right time. I watched heads inside turn toward me, bleary faces puzzled by this apparition in black in a PawSox hat standing in the vacant other lane, lit like a devil by the red stoplight, proudly holding up his middle finger.

Today the guys show up at the parking lot before Game 5 wearing their very best suits and wheeling luggage like it’s any other travel day—a good sign, I think. Yesterday when Mark Bellhorn walked by, a few people booed, and he didn’t look over. Today I holler, “Hey Mahk, don’t let the bastards get you down!” and he smiles and nods. Johnny’s had an adhesive Ace bandage on the meaty flat of his right hand (his lead hand) for a couple of weeks now, and I wonder if he can grip the bat correctly. Every day I ask, “How’s the hand, John?” and he says it’s okay, but without conviction, as if it’s still bothering him. These are the guys we need to set the table for Manny and David. If they don’t pick it up, we’re going nowhere.

Just before game time, I visit with Bob the usher over in Section 32. We chat and then say good-bye, shake hands. It’s our last home game of the ALCS, and there’s a fall feeling of the season being over, things being packed away, but I can’t let it stand.