Stephen King - Faithful

I’m not planning on going to Game 7. I don’t have a ticket, I’m exhausted from four straight late nights and rock-hard hotel beds, and the last time I was at Yankee Stadium we didn’t do so well. I figure I’ll watch Steve on TV from my warm comfy couch. Then at three our Fenway neighbor Mason calls. If he can swing me a ticket, do I want to go? Because he just might be able to, but he needs to know right now.

I’m thoroughly burnt from the weekend. I mean, I’ve got nothing left—no voice, no energy. But if we’re going to win tonight, I’m going to be there. I don’t care if we lose—I do, but I think the way we’ve battled, we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of one way or the other. And if the guys don’t do it, I’d like to be there to applaud them for the great run they’ve given us, and the great year. I don’t want them to hear nothing but silence or, worse, ugly catcalls.

“Yeah,” I tell Mason. “Come on, how can I not go?”

“I’ve got a good feeling,” he says.

I do too. We really do have nothing to lose. If we lose, so what? Could it be as bad as 1986? I don’t think so. But if we win…If we win it will be one of the greatest wins in Red Sox history. In baseball history. And those are the only two possible outcomes: win or lose. I’ll take those odds.

“Let me check and I’ll call you back,” Mason says, and then when he does, it’s a go. I toss my stuff in a plastic bag, kiss Trudy good-bye (“Be careful!” she urges, sure the Yankee fans will beat me senseless), hop in the car and zoom off to the Bronx. Last year I didn’t go to Game 7, and I was glad. This year, one way or the other, I’m not going to miss history.

I get into the Stadium a half hour before game time, and it’s oddly quiet. I expected a seething full house, but here and there are empy seats, and the Yankee fans—though decked out in some of the ugliest team gear I’ve ever seen—are muttering to each other. Where’s the crude, in-your-face stupidity? The 1918 banners? The guys with paint all over them? The crowd seems wary, tight. I see far more Sox hats and shirts than I did last month. It’s like we’re taking over.

David, the Yankee fan I sit beside, is incredibly polite and well-versed in the game—he’s a baseball fan first, and only then a Yankee fan (he began as a Giants fan, and still owes some allegiance to them). It’s an unexpected pleasure to sit with him and swap lore.

The Yanks call on Bucky “Fucking” Dent to throw out the first pitch, hoping to stir up old ghosts. Yogi Berra, who watched Maz’s homer go over the wall in Forbes Field, catches for him.

Maybe they should have let Bucky start, because Kevin Brown has nothing. In the first, after Johnny is thrown out at the plate on a Manny single—on the very next pitch!—Brown tries to sneak an 88 mph fastball past David Ortiz. Never happen. El Jefe lines it into the short porch (in Fenway it either falls for a single or Sheffield catches it racing in ) for a 2–0 lead, and the Yanks never dig themselves out of that hole. With bases juiced in the second, Johnny Damon greets Javier Vazquez with a line-drive grand slam into the same short porch that has padded so many Yankees’ power stats over the years, [80] And for all of you Hanshin Tigers fans out there, a measure of revenge: Johnny’s granny, like Jefe’s two-run shot, goes over a sign on the wall touting the Yomiuri Corporation. Ganbatte! and the thousand or so Faithful drown out the rest of the Stadium.

And that’s basically it. Tonight Derek Lowe, who was supposed to be the best number three pitcher in the majors, is just that. [81] And monster props to Terry Francona for engineering this matchup. It’s like Bill Belichick drawing up a play that isolates our hot receiver on their weakest corner. It’s a flat-out mismatch, and at an absolutely crucial time. After Game 3, Francona’s consistently outmanaged Joe Torre, whether it’s using the pen, changing the lineup around, or bringing in pinch runners and defensive replacements. Every move seems to have worked out for Tito, while Joe, with a deeper bench and pen, keeps fucking up. George, are you watching? Are you taking notes? He gives up one hit in six innings. I’ll say that again: he gives up one hit in six innings. As in Game 4, D-Lowe rhymes with hero. Johnny hits a second dinger off Vazquez, just like he did on June 29th, and we’re up 8–1 and chanting “ Reg -gie Da -mon!” The crowd is totally poleaxed, as if they’ve shown up on the wrong night. They revive only when Pedro comes on for a vanity appearance in the seventh and gives up two runs, one of which Mark Bellhorn (from now until eternity Mark “Fucking” Bellhorn to Yankee fans) immediately gets back with a towering blast off the right-field foul pole. Another garbage run on a sac fly, and yes, finally, that is it.

I’m behind home with Steve as we nail down the last outs. We don’t even need our closer. It’s 10–3, and no one can hit a seven-run homer. Jeter looks sick. A-Rod and Sheffield have both gone 0-for—complete and total justice. It’s as if the Sox have walked through the Stadium driving stakes through every single ghost’s, vampire’s and Yankee fan’s rotten, cobwebby heart. It’s quiet and the upper deck is half-empty. The Yankees are cooked, and their fans can’t believe it. In the biggest game ever played in this rivalry, the Red Sox have beaten the Yankees at home, by a touchdown, on Mickey Mantle’s birthday. At one minute after midnight, the start of a new day, when Sierra grounds weakly to Pokey Reese, and Pokey flips to Doug Mientkiewicz (so simple!), the most expensive baseball team in history is history.

And we’re sorry, George, but that’s more than half a billion dollars you’ve spent…for nothing.

Come on now: Who’s your Daddy?

Diamondbacks. Angels. Marlins. Red Sox.

It’s like Papa Jack says: ain’t nuthin’ for free. SOMEBODY got-ta pay. And, Yankee fans, the one you just bought has a lifetime guarantee.

Last night, in a game that was never supposed to happen, the Boston Red Sox completed the greatest comeback in the history of American professional sports. In light of that accomplishment, an inning-by-inning postmortem would be pretty anticlimactic stuff, and not very helpful in understanding the magnitude of the event. You might as well try to describe a camel by describing a camel’s eyeball.

Is winning the American League pennant an event of magnitude? We are, after all, fighting some kind of screwed-up war in Iraq where over eleven hundred American soldiers have already died, not to mention at least two hundred American civilians. We are fighting (or trying to fight) a war on terrorism. We are electing a president in less than two weeks, and the dialogue between the candidates has never been hotter. In light of those things, does winning the pennant even matter?

My answer: you bet your sweet ass it does.

One of the eeriest things about this year’s just-concluded Boston–New York baseball tussle is the way it mimicked this year’s ongoing political contest. John Kerry, a Massachusetts resident, was nominated in Boston and threw out the first pitch at a crucial Red Sox–Yankees game. George Bush was nominated in New York City, and Dick Cheney attended a Yankee–Red Sox game, wearing a Yankees cap over the old solar sex-panel while snipers stood posted high above the fans. As with the Red Sox in the ALCS, Kerry started far behind, then pulled even in the polls. (Whether or not he can win his own Game 7 remains very much open to question, and even if he does, it probably won’t be by the electoral college equivalent of seven runs.)