Stephen King - Faithful

Duquette, you’ll remember, is the genius who said Roger Clemens was “in the twilight of his career” and let him go off to Toronto, where he won back-to-back Cy Youngs. In the ’80s there was continuity at second. Jerry Remy, Marty Barrett and Jody Reed all enjoyed long stays, and were fan favorites (Jerry still is, doing color for NESN). Duquette, trading our top prospects yearly in his attempt to build an instant champion, stripped the farm system, and now our second baseman—like our closer—is a replacement player.

I’m trying to get tix for Stewart (and Stewart’s wife Trudy) and me to the annual game pitting the Red Sox B-team (invitee Brian “Dauber” Daubach should be starting for the Sox) against the Boston College baseball team. Ordinarily these would be a slam dunk—prime real estate up in Owner’s Country at City of Palms Park, and maybe a couple of spots among the Escalades and Navigators in the players’ parking lot—but my main man, Kevin Shea, has moved on, and so it’s nervous-making time. How about the satellite connection? Can I get New England Sports Network (aka NESN, aka The Home of the Free and Land of the Eck) down here? Yes. Thank God. But my subscription from last year has lapsed. Oh shit. And how many spring training games will they carry, anyway? Oh shit, maybe Joe Castiglione can help me with tix to the Sox/BC game…but he wanted me to blurb his book, and it deserves a blurb, but I haven’t done it yet…

It’s nervous time.

Oh God, I wish Curt Schilling was only thirty-two.

I’ve been trying to nail down tickets to the home opener for months now. It’s been sold out since five minutes after seats went on sale, but I’ve got an in. Last year I managed to score some last-minute seats—field boxes ten rows behind home plate. Took the kids out of school, only to sit in the freezing rain for three hours before the game was called. I figured we’d get the same seats, but when the replacements came they were grandstands. I sent them back, but the ticket office never got back to me. At the end of the season, I called and asked what the deal was, and Naomi there said they’d give me two field boxes for this year’s opener and a chance to buy two more.

But so far I’ve been having trouble getting through to Naomi. My great fear is that she’s changed jobs and we’ll be stuck watching the game on TV.

I vet the depth chart on the website as if I’m Theo, trying to figure out who to keep, who to cut, who to ship to Pawtucket. We’ve brought the expanded forty-man roster to camp, along with twelve nonroster invitees. By Opening Day, management will whittle these fifty-two down to twenty-five, and of the twenty-five spots, twenty are already filled. Essentially, thirty-two players, most with big league experience, are fighting for five spots reserved for middle relievers and backup position players.

One guy who I hope makes it is Brian Daubach. Even though he’s a millionaire, fans still see him as a scrappy blue-collar player. He paid his dues in the minors with the Marlins and Devil Rays before getting his chance with the Sox, and played well as a platoon guy before getting demoted for Tony Clark (who he outplayed to win his job back), then dumped for the awful Jeremy Giambi. “We want Dauber!” we’d shout after Giambi struck out looking again.

Now he’s back, and his main competition is David McCarty, a good defensive first baseman we picked up from Oakland at the end of last season. As a lefty hitter with power, Dauber has the edge, but since David Ortiz already fills that bill, McCarty’s glove might be more valuable in the late innings. McCarty, weirdly, also plans on trying to pitch, and we’re so desperate for lefties that Francona’s going to let him.

SK:Dauber was a real old-time Red Sox player. Like he was born to play for the Red Sox. Millar is that way; and Varitek, of course. And you know, Pedro Martinez wasn’t born a Red Sox guy, but has become one. He finished his becoming in the seventh game of the ALCS last year, don’t you think? Came out covered in mud and blood and shit, soul brother to Pumpsie Green. Man, I root for the Dauber… but I don’t give him a dog’s chance. Sure wish I had my DAUBACH IS MY DADDY shirt. I’d wear it to the Sox/BC game. God, no one ever tried harder in the clutch.

SO:And, like Fisk, he always took it out on his old clubs. He wore out Tampa Bay, and last year when he beat us he was smiling for Tom Caron [NESN’s roving on-field reporter] like a new dad. No doubt Pedro’s paid his dues. Manny, well, it’s close. Johnny D’s still too new, and Bill Mueller (pronounced Miller), and David Ortiz. The Sox need more Sox!

SK:Some of what happens to Daubach is down to pure luck—who gets hurt and who stays healthy. But you know he’s on the edge of being back in civvies. Or a minor league uni. Hope he made some good investments over the years.

Reporters following Byung-Hyun Kim say he stays till 1 A.M. working out, but that he naps at all times. I wonder if BK’s regimen is like the Japanese, who throw two hundred pitches a day. He’s young and talented, with that weird submarine delivery, but he’s never thrown a full season as a starter. If he can give us two hundred innings and twenty quality starts, we should win the East. The worry is that he’s a head case. He gave Fenway the finger when we booed him during the introductions before the ALCS, and in the off-season he smashed a photographer’s camera. I guess he’s this year’s Oil Can Boyd or Cowboy Carl Everett.

Steve calls as Trudy’s microwaving her lunch. I can barely hear him through the Geiger-like static. For the BC game, we’re parking in the players’ lot and sitting in the owner’s booth. As a bleacher rat, I’m a little nervous. What do you say to an owner—“Way to own”?

Oops—Yankees Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield received steroids from Barry Bonds’s trainer, according to the ongoing federal probe. Giambi showed up at camp looking shrunken. Sheffield says he’ll pee in a cup anytime anyplace, but when a reporter produces a cup, Sheff backs down. Makes me wonder if Steinbrenner went out and got A-Rod and Travis Lee in case the league suspends the BALCO Boys.

All day an unreal, nearly paralyzing feeling. It seems so impossible that we’re blowing off work and school that we have to keep repeating the news to each other like lottery winners: “We’re going to Florida!”

In the Charlotte airport, waiting for our connection to Fort Myers, I look around the gate for fellow pilgrims, but the one kid wearing a cap is a Brewers fan. It’s only when we’re on board that the hard core begin dribbling in—four single guys in their twenties, all big enough to be players, in various Sox hats.

We get in after midnight and the airport’s crazy. In the long line at the rental-car center, half the people are in Boston garb. Fort Myers is an endless grid of strip malls and stoplights, and everyone drives like they’re either having a heart attack or trying to find an emergency room for someone who is. We fly past Mattress World, Bath World, Rug World. It’s Hicksville, Long Island, with palm trees and pelicans.

Our hotel has personality—unfortunately it’s the personality of a lunch lady turned crack whore. Bikers and twentysomethings early for spring break wander the parking lot, knocking back Coronas and margaritas to the thumping of a ragged cover band. The hotel’s assurance on their website that they don’t rent to anyone under twenty-one seems less a defensive measure now than an admission of a long-standing problem. It’s one-thirty and the music is thundering up from the stage, one floor below our balcony. The song ends and the drunk girls scream. The drunk guys go “Wooooo!”