Stephen King - Faithful

Angry Bill is a piece of work: overweight, hypertensive (he suffers persistent nosebleeds during the ’03 postseason), full of nervous energy, bursting with cynical pronouncements that barely cover his bruised baseball fan’s heart. This guy has lived and died with the Sox for so long (mostly the latter), that he sums up an entire New England mind-set when hestates, in effect, that the Sox are always gonna lose, he knows they’re gonna pull an el foldo in August just as sure as he knows the sun’s gonna come up over Boston Haaabaaa in the east, and if they don’t pull an el foldo in August they’ll pull a tank job in September, just as sure as the sun’s gonna go down over Attleboro in the west.

And yet, with Boston ahead during the early going of that climactic Game 7 in October of 2003, Angry Bill briefly allows himself to become Hopeful Bill… because the Red Sox do this to us, too: every year at some point they turn into Lucy holding the football, and against all our best intentions (and our knowing that those who do not learn from history are condemned—fucking CONDEMNED! —to repeat it) we turn into Charlie Brown running once more to kick it, only to have it snatched away again at the last moment so we land flat on our backs, screaming “AUGGGH!” at the top of our lungs.

And when, after Grady Little leaves Pedro in long after even the most casual baseball fan knows he is toasty—fried, broiled, baked, cooked to a turn, stick a fork in ’im, he’s done—when the coup de grâce is delivered by Aaron Boone long after Pedro has trudged to the shower, Angry Bill stares with a kind of wondering disbelief into the documentarian’s camera (at us in the audience, seven months later, seven weeks into a new season later, us with our tickets to tonight’s shellacking by the Oakland A’s in our pockets) and delivers what is for me the absolute capper, the jilted Red Sox fan’s Final Word: “Don’t let your kids grow up to be sports fans,” Angry Bill advises, and at this point the movie leaves him—mercifully—to contemplate the Patriots, who will undoubtedly improve matters for his battered psyche by winning the Super Bowl…but I’m sure Angry Bill would admit (if not right out loud then in his heart) that winning the Super Bowl isn’t the same as winning the World Series. Not even in the same universe as winning the World Series.

Meanwhile, the Yankees—the Evil Empire, our old nemesis—have come from behind to beat Baltimore once again, and our lead in the AL East is down to a mere half game. I’m off to bed knowing that the boogeyman has inched a little bit closer to the closet door.

It’s the big holiday weekend. Once the kids get home from school, we’ve got to drive down to the Rhode Island shore and help my in-laws open up the beach house, so after lunch I run around town trying to fit in my last errands. I’m at the Stop ’n Shop when I remember the new Reverse the Curse ice cream, and there it is in the freezer section. The carton is boring and generic. I’d hoped for more interesting packaging, maybe a nod to the Monster that I could use for a penny bank. Still, the ice cream should be good.

We poke along I-95 with all the other Memorial Day traffic. Trudy and her parents have been lifting and cleaning all day, and don’t feel like cooking, so we go out for dinner. By the time we make it back, the Sox are down 4–1 to Seattle in the fifth. Ichiro’s just driven in a run, and steals third on Pedro, who has that dull, long-suffering look he gets when things aren’t going right. There’s only one out, and Edgar Martinez is up. Pedro gets him swinging, then gets the next guy to pop up.

In our fifth, Millar and Youkilis tag Joel (pronounced Joe-El, as if he’s from Krypton) Pineiro for back-to-back doubles, making it 4–2. See, all the Sox needed was us watching. Pokey Ks, but with two gone Pineiro walks Johnny and Mark Bellhorn to load them for Big David. On the first pitch, Ortiz lofts a long fly to right. Ichiro goes back sideways, and keeps going, all the way to the wall, where he leaps. He hangs there, folded over the low wall, only his legs showing. We can’t see the ball, but the fans behind the bullpen fence are jumping up and down—it’s gone, a grand slam, and we’re up 6–4.

In St. Pete, the Yanks have beaten the D-Rays, so we need to hold on to stay in first. Pedro settles down. In the eighth he gives way to Embree, who throws a scoreless inning. J. J. Putz comes on for the M’s and gives up a smoked single through the middle to Manny (it makes Putz riverdance) and then, after a long at-bat, a double to Dauber off the bullpen wall. Bob Melvin decides to walk Tek to set up the double play, which Kapler foils by popping up. Putz goes 2-0 on Youkilis and has to come in with a strike; Youkilis slaps it down the right-field line for a double and two more insurance runs, and the PA plays the corny old Hartford Whalers theme, “Brass Bonanza.”

Foulke closes, but it’s a battle. He throws 30 pitches and leaves runners on second and third for an 8–4 final. A tougher game than expected from the last-place M’s, but El Jefe (Big Papi, D.O., David as Goliath) brought us back.

It’s Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, but I’ve had all of Boston and Fenway Park I can take for a while—seven games in eight days is plenty, especially given the uniformly shitty quality of the weather. [16] The start of last night’s game was held up for an hour and a half in anticipation of rain showers that never came. And that’s not all. Hotel living gets creepy after a while, even when you can afford room service (maybe especially if you can afford room service). Also, my wife headed back to Maine after the PEN dinner on Wednesday, and I miss her. But as I run north under sunshiny, breezy skies, I keep an eye on the dashboard clock, and when 1 P.M. rolls around, I hit the radio’s SEEK button until I find the voices of Joe Castiglione and Jerry Trupiano, comfort food for the ear.

Listening to a baseball game on the radio may be outmoded in this age of computers and satellite television, but it hath its own particular pleasures; with each inning you build your own Fenway of the mind from scrap-heap memories and pure imagination. Today the wind is playing tricks, Wakefield’s knuckleball is staying up in the zone, and the usually lackluster Mariner hitters pounce on it right from the git. In the second inning a Seattle batter hits a towering fly foul of first, but the wind pushes it back into fair territory. Mark Bellhorn, today playing second, tries to stay with it, can’t. The ball bonks him on the wrist and falls for a double. I see all this quite vividly (along with Manny Ramirez’s homer to left, hit so hard it leaves a vapor trail, Troop assures me) as I drive north between Yarmouth and Freeport with that same wind pushing my own car. Since I can’t read a page of my current book between innings (the galley of Chuck Hogan’s Prince of Thieves is now tucked away in my green 1999 All-Star Game souvenir carry-bag), I punch the CD button after each third out and listen to two minutes—timed on my wristwatch—of Larry McMurtry’s The Wandering Hill, volume two of the Berrybender Narratives. I have found that two minutes gets me back to the game just in time for the first pitch of the next inning.

In this fashion, the 240-mile trip to Bangor passes agreeably enough. One wishes the Red Sox could have won, but it’s hard to root against Freddy Garcia, a great pitcher who is this year laboring for a bad ball clubin the Mariners. And the worst the Sox can do on the current home stand is 6-4; one may reasonably hope for 8-2.