Stephen King - Faithful

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The Boston Globe ’s Dan Shaughnessy.

Where it festers.

In the first two meetings of this year, we beat them by scores of 6–2 and 5–2, and the Yankees’ big off-season acquisition, Alex Rodriguez (who Red Sox fans see, rightly or wrongly, as a player stolen out from under our very noses by George “I’ll Spend Anything” Steinbrenner) went 0 for 8. Well enough. In the third game, however, The Team That Will Not Die is leading the Sox 7–3 in the fourth inning.

Shaughnessy again: “…only three collapses approximate this one: the 1915 Giants led the Boston Braves by fifteen games on the Fourth of July and finished ten and a half behind; the 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers led the Giants by thirteen games August 11, got tied on the final day of the season, then lost the playoff; and the 1964 Phillies led the Cardinals by six and a half games with twelve to play, then lost ten straight. The Giants, Dodgers and Phillies eventually won championships. The Red Sox…” Well, do we need to finish that? Fuck, no, we’s fans .

Who went to the unusual length of issuing an apology after the game—fat lot of good it did us.

Who will not be eligible for the win today, I’m happy to report.

When Zim was the Red Sox field general, Sox pitcher Bill Lee once called him “the designated gerbil.”

Harvey Frommer and Frederic J. Frommer, Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry (Sports Publishing/Boston Baseball, 2004). This is a Boston-biased book, but most of the color photographs show celebrating Yankees and downcast Red Sox…wonder why.

Ibid.

The Yankees won today’s game, 7–3. The final game of the series will be played tomorrow at 11 A.M. (it’s the annual Patriots’ Day game in Boston), and with today’s win and tomorrow’s matchup—Boston’s Bronson Arroyo versus the Yankees’ Kevin Brown—the Yankees have an excellent chance of earning a split… curse them.

The loser, I’m very sorry to say, happened to be ex–Red Sox closer Tom Gordon, the star of a book I wrote…and in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Flash will be the Red Sox closer forever. Sorry, Mr. Steinbrenner, but there’s not a thing you can do about that one.

Here’s what I understand about hockey: Bulky men wearing helmets and carrying sticks in their gauntleted hands skate around for a while on my TV; then some guy comes on and sells trucks. Sometimes chicks come on and sell beer.

The record he shares, perhaps not so coincidentally, with fellow former Portland Sea Dog Kevin Millar. SO

There was a time when you could see The Wave going around at almost all baseball parks and football stadiums; to my knowledge, only at Fenway does it survive. Survive? Nay, sir or madam, it thrives! Tonight it went around and around in the eighth, when the Sox sent eleven men to the dish and scored six times. I myself refuse to wave unless I am also allowed to scream Sieg heil! at the top of my lungs.

48 degrees, according to Channel 4 weather when I got back to my hotel.

The start of last night’s game was held up for an hour and a half in anticipation of rain showers that never came.

In truth, Tek—for some reason only known to himself, Stewart O’Nan always calls him Tek Money—did not try very hard to avoid this pitch; it was a classic case of taking one for the team if I ever saw one. And, as a man who got to watch Don Baylor play, I’ve seen my share.

Greek God of Walks… but you knew that.

It’s true that Smarty Jones lost the Belmont Stakes in the final hundred yards yesterday, but he can’t bat cleanup or go to his left on a ground ball hit deep in the hole, so fuck him.

Today’s newspapers described Wells’s latest stint on the DL only as resulting from an “off-field incident.” A guy I know who follows the game closely says Wells injured his wrist when he fell off a barstool. I assume that was a joke, but given Wells’s declared proclivities, one cannot be entirely sure.

Although he was clearly pleased (at one point during his postgame comments, Pedro called it a “dream game”), and given the outcome—no runs and just two hits in eight innings pitched—he had every right to be.

Go, you Pistons! Stick it to ’em! Booya, Shaq! Double -booya, Kobe!

And maybe that giant skeletal Coke bottle in left field.

So what the heck does that make me and O’Nan?

Everyone except Warren Oates has played first base for the Red Sox this year. Manager Francona had Oates down for it one night, but had to scratch him when he found out that Oates had died some time ago.

Nor has it hurt that Johnny Damon is off to what may be a career year at the plate.

The “almost” qualification is easily explained. Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz are playing tonight. I don’t want either of them hurt, as Pedro Martinez almost certainly hurt his arm by throwing too hard in the 1999 All-Star Game.

The Los Angeles Dodgers were also 48-38 at the break, good enough to lead the NL West by half a game.

On the replay Varitek appears to be saying either “Take your fucking base” or “Get the fuck to first base.”

Mientkiewicz did his best to make Epstein look like a genius in his first game as a Red Sox, going 2 for 4, both singles. The second hit came in the top of the ninth against Minnesota—the only pro baseball team he’d ever played for until this evening—in a game which the Twins led by a score of 5–4. He got to second base—into scoring position, in other words—before Kevin Youkilis struck out to end the game. The other new Boston players should join the club tomorrow.

But the great thing about the wild card—what I absolutely love about it—is that it is, by its very nature, a slippery beast. If Oakland slides into first place in the AL West—hey, presto!—the Red Sox are wild-card-competitive again, only against a different team. There are baseball purists who hate the innovation for this very reason, but they would be folks who, for the most part, haven’t been stuck with George Steinbrenner’s bloated wallet for the last twelve years or so.

The decision to wave Roberts home seemed out of character for the usually cautious Sveum and more like his predecessor, Wendell Kim, known to the Fenway Faithful as “Send ’Em In” Kim.

Haven’t seen him at Fenway all year.

In this context it does not hurt to remind ourselves that Globe ownership, New York Times ownership, and Red Sox ownership all overlap. In other words, they’re all in it together. Time to put the tinfoil on the windows, line our baseball caps with lead, and check our phones for radioactive bugs.