Stephen King - Faithful

In frame number four, Roger Clemens—never a gentleman—threw at Manny Ramirez, who responded by telling the Rocket he could go fuck himself. Roger responded by telling Manny that no, Manny could go fuck him self. A real meeting of the minds, you see. The benches erupted. Don Zimmer, the aging Yankee coach, [7] When Zim was the Red Sox field general, Sox pitcher Bill Lee once called him “the designated gerbil.” ended up rolling around on the ground, courtesy of Pedro Martinez. Later, Zim made a tearful apology… behavior which cost fellow New Englander Edmund Muskie his shot at the presidency, but maybe that’s neither here nor there.

In any case, the Yankees won the game. They also won Game 5 behind David (“Bostonians Are Psycho”) Wells. The 2003 ALCS returned to Yankee Stadium with the Bronx Bombers needing only one more win to go on to the World Series. But the Sox won ugly in Game 6, 9–6.

So, Game 7. The Red Sox got off to a 4–0 lead behind Pedro, the ace of the staff. Jason Giambi then hit a pair of solo home runs for the Yanks; David Ortiz hit one for the Sox. It was 5–2 Red Sox in the eighth inning. Mayor Rudy Giuliani thought the Red Sox were finally going towin it. [8] 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. Martinez got the first batter (Nick Johnson) he faced in that inning, and the Red Sox were five outs away from the World Series. For we Red Sox fans, that was the 2003 equivalent of Pickett’s Charge: as close as we ever got. Jeter (Jeter the Horrible, to Sox fans) doubled to right. Bernie Williams singled, driving in Jeter. Matsui hit a ground-rule double after Grady conferred with the tiring but game Martinez and decided to leave him in (hell, it had worked once or twice during the regular season). And still left him in to face Posada, who dumped one over second base to tie the game. The Red Sox manager finally came with the hook… but Red Sox Nation would pretty much agree it was too Little, too late. In the bottom of the eleventh inning, Mayor Giuliani told his wife and daughter, “You’re going to see your first walk-off home run”. [9] Ibid. The batter was Aaron Boone, and he made the mayor a prophet. Tim Wakefield, the man who was arguably the most responsible for getting the Red Sox as far as they were able to go, served up the fatal pitch, but had nothing to hang his head about. The real damage was done with one out in the eighth.

And is there a reason to drag all this history into a book about the 2004 Red Sox? There sure is. More than one, actually. First, baseball is a game of history, and those who don’t learn from it are condemned to get drubbed by it. Second, even in a much improved American League East, the Yankees and Red Sox still seem, at this point in the young season, like the two dominant teams. [10] 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 tradition and history will hang over each of these matches like grandstand shadows over the infield at 5 P.M. The Red Sox half of the tradition, unfortunately, is one of losing the big games. The history half is one of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as on the night of October 17th, 2003.

Looking the other way, into the future (into the outfield, where the shadows have not yet reached, if you will), is the simple fact that the landscape of the American League East has changed since 2003; even two weeks into the season, that seems apparent. The lowly Tampa Bay Devil Rays (the previously lowly D-Rays) are at .500, and the previously lowly Baltimore Orioles are in first place. Those things will very likely change, but I think it’s likely that the Blue Jays, also improved, won’t finish thirty games below .500, as they would if they continued along at their current pace.

What all this means to the Sox/Yanks rivalry is that one team is apt to be called when the postseason bell rings, but probably not both. And that makes the knees of every Red Sox fan tremble, no matter what they may tell you, no matter what sentiments they wear on their T-shirts, no matter what vile canards they may call down upon Yankee outfielders from the Monster seats high above.

There is no calculus here; the math is simple. We all hate what we fear, and sensible Red Sox fans fear the Yankees. Now, on the eighteenth of April, the Red Sox lead the nineteen-game regular-season series two games to one. A great many other games will be played with a great many other clubs before the dust settles and the 2004 season is in the record books…but in my heart, I believe the American League East will come down to Them, or to Us. And because we fear what we hate, in my heart I always dread it when they come to us. The only thing I dread more is when we must go to them. I suppose it would be different if I could play, but of course I can’t; I’m helpless, doomed to only watch. To believe in the Curse of the Bambino even though I don’t believe in it. And to think of the late Stephen Jay Gould, who somehow rooted for both teams (maybe in the end that was what killed him, not the cancer), and who once said, “The deepest possible anguish…[is] running a long hard course again and again to the very end, and then self-destructing one inch from the finish line.”

This is Patriots’ Day, which is a holiday only in Maine, where it chiefly means no mail delivery, and Massachusetts, where it means the Boston Marathon and an 11 A.M. Red Sox game at Fenway. Today the Red Sox spotted the Yankees leads of 3–0 and 4–1, but “Bronson Arroyo settled down and pitched a good game,” in ESPN SportsCenter argot, and the Red Sox won it by a final score of 5–4. [11] 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. I’m happy to report that A-Rod’s woes continue; he went 1 for 17 in the four-game series (hee-hee), the one hit was a meaningless single, and he made a throwing error in today’s tilt that basically cost the Yankees the game. So now we’re 3-1 with the Yanks, and can get back to the more normal business of playing baseball.

Whew.

I read in the paper that in his first home game Dauber hit two homers, leading the PawSox to a 3–2 victory over Rochester. And to replace Frank Castillo, the Red Sox have activated lefty Lenny DiNardo, giving us four lefties in the pen for the first time I can remember. Must be setting up for this weekend’s series in the Bronx, that short porch in right. I hope these PawSox can get it done. I’d start resting Embree now.

The crowd in the Skydome tonight is around 6,000, despite the Pedro-Halladay rematch. The Maple Leafs are playing the Ottawa Senators in Game 7 of their playoff series, and at one point Eric Frede, NESN’s new man-in-the-stands, says there are more people in the concourse watching hockey than there are in the seats. Oh, Canada.