Stephen King - Faithful

How ugly? He was the first pitcher in seventy years to surrender six home runs and still get the win. The Tigers hit seven long taters in all, the last coming off reliever Mike Timlin. The Red Sox hit three, one from David Ortiz and two from Kevin Youkilis.

If the more analytical (and amusing) Dennis Eckersley had been teamed with Caron, he probably would have given this part of the Millar fatwa the horselaugh it deserved.

A trait he shares with stopped clocks.

Latest victim of the injury bug is Kevin Youkilis, who suffered a jammed ankle at home plate after being waved in from second by Dale Sveum in the final game of the Red Sox–White Sox series two days ago (Youkilis was out).

The Texas Rangers have won six in a row and show no sign of their usual August heat prostration.

In it, a dreamy Manny fantasizes about becoming the World Series MVP.

Back then, of course, it was Nomar’s fault; even while on the DL he was sticking pins in his Terry Francona voodoo doll.

The last time it happened was September 1940, to George Caster of the Philadelphia Athletics, who beat us despite six dingers.

For reasons he probably could not explain (it’s a fan thing), Stewart O’Nan calls the Red Sox knuckler not Wake but Tim- MAY . Hey, I don’t make the news, I just report it.

Call this a lie if you want to; I prefer to think of it as a part of my rich and continuing fantasy life.

In a 1993 game against Atlanta, Wakefield went ten innings for the Pirates and threw 172 pitches. In 1996, while pitching for the Red Sox, he threw 162 pitches in a game against the White Sox. Don’t dismiss these numbers by saying, “Yeah, but he’s just a knuckleball pitcher,” until you yourself have tried to throw 150 or so pitches, even soft tosses, the regulation distance of sixty feet and six inches from the pitcher’s rubber to home plate on a hot afternoon. I think by number 90 or so, your shoulder’s going to be feeling like a turkey drumstick on Thanksgiving day.

In this case, first and second place in the wild-card standings.

And to Jerry the Detroit Tigers are always the Tigizz.

A technical baseball term.

Fever Pitch , based on a nonfiction book by Nick Hornby, describes a romantic triangle in which a young man must choose between his girl and his baseball team. He loves both madly, deeply, truly. That the baseball team turns out to be the Red Sox should come as no surprise. As pointed out elsewhere in these pages, the Red Sox is the team of choice for romantics. Can you imagine a poet writing an ode to the Yankees? As for lovers and the Yankees… good God, you might as well plight your troth in the lobby of the Marine Midland Bank as at Yankee Stadium, that symbol of baseball commerce. No, when it comes to romance and baseball, you pretty much have to have Fenway Park. Wrigley Field has its ivied outfield wall and a certain rusty exterior charm, but I think Fenway remains America’s true Field of Dreams.

With this one utterly unforgivable exception: don’t ever let me hear of an official (or a player) who takes money to tip a game in which millions have invested their hopes and the energy of their collective imagination.

The once more hapless Devil Rays, and please God may they (or the troublesome El Birdos) not poke a stick in our spokes as we race down this season’s home stretch.

That could change if Oakland loses its hold on first place in Outer Weird Pacifica, but even if the A’s do drop to second, our position vis-à-vis the wild card won’t change much. For the record, I think Oakland will hold on and win the West.

Unlike, let us say, the supposed Campbell’s Chunky Soup Curse, where I can only find four football players—Terrell Davis, Kurt Warner, Jerome Bettis and Donovan McNabb—who actually suffered injuries after appearing in the ads, despite all the rumors.

Nine is the number that comes to mind, but you know what Ole Case said: “You could look it up.”

I am allowed to say stuff like this, because according to John Cheever, the belles lettres version of Ole Case, “all literary men must be Red Sox fans.” My reputation as a literary man is actually in some dispute, but I am a man, a Red Sox fan and a writer, so…fuggit. I think Norman Mailer said that, in The Naked and the Dead .

Tanyon Sturtze, for instance, lately miserable in middle relief for the Yankees (he went two-thirds of an inning in his last appearance), was utterly brilliant last night.

That would be roughly seventy-five hundred, most of them equipped with Yankee hats, Derek Jeter T-shirts, and upturned middle fingers for people wearing Red Sox gear.

Sorry, Blue, but that slo-mo replay has no mercy.

Ah, but under the circumstances, the always crafty Joe Torre really had little choice; by then it was a fool’s mate.

Three out of five rather than four out of seven.

The Indians at Jacobs Field, the Rockies at Coors, and the Giants at Pac Bell.

For the record, I think that hitting Millar was an accident. But, accident or on purpose, Kazmir did the Boston batters one hell of a favor by dealing himself out.

It would be their fifth win in a row.

Loathsome El Birdos.

NAH—it’s just a common sports malady: choking disease. SK

But of course, as Red Sox fans, we can no more not worry—even with a six- or seven-run lead—than we could not blink if you were suddenly to jab your fingers at our open eyes.

For the record, so do I—I grew up watching Bob Gibson pitch in the World Series, and listening to Sandy Koufax on my transistor radio earphone. Those were the days when the games were still played in the afternoon and pitching the batter high and tight was considered standard operating procedure.

Earlier in the season she threatened to write the team a letter saying, “You better do it this year, or I can’t promise to be around.” I don’t know if she carried through on that or not.

Yogi Berra was a Yankee, but how could you not love a man who said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”? My favorite Yogi Berra story features Hank Aaron. Yogi was a catcher, of course, and when he was crouched behind the plate, he’d always talk to distract the hitter. During the 1958 World Series, he kept telling Henry Aaron to “hit with the label up, Hank, you don’t want to do it that way, hit with the label up .” Finally Hammerin’ Hank looked back over his shoulder and said—not unkindly—“I came up here to hit, not to read.”

On the night after the final game against Anaheim, I dreamed that Johnny Damon and I were digging through mounds of discarded equipment—gloves, pads, shin guards—in some filthy, forgotten equipment shed, looking for a magic pitching machine. I think that hitting a few balls thrown by this machine turned you into Mark McGwire. We never found it.