Stephen King - Faithful

One may even hope the hapless Devil Rays will beat the Yankees tonight, and we will retain our half-game hold on the top spot a little longer.

Waiting at home in the mail is the Nomar ball from the Nomar Bowl, a nice souvenir of his lost season. My e-mail in-box is sluggish, filled with pictures of Lisa at the Town Lanes with Nomar, with Dauber, with David Ortiz, with Mike Timlin, with Alan Embree, even with Danny Ainge. Everyone’s smiling, though I don’t see any players actually bowling.

The Yanks beat the Rays 5–3, so they’re in first place. I smother my sorrows in a bowl of Reverse the Curse and read the sports page. My Pirates, amazingly, are at .500, thanks to a pair of walk-off homers to take a twin bill from the Cubs. And it says Nomar’s scheduled to start his rehab stint at Pawtucket tomorrow—the best news I could hope for.

9:50 P.M.: I take my wife to the crazy-weather movie, which we both enjoy. I walk the dog as soon as we get back, then hit the TV remote and click on Headline News. Weekends, the ticker at the bottom of the screen runs continuous sports scores, and ohhhh, shit, the Yankees won again . They’ve regained the top spot in the AL East, one they’ve held for almost five consecutive seasons, leaving me to wonder how in the name of Cobb and Williams you pound a stake through this team’s heart and make them lie still. Or if it’s even possible.

We’ve got Monster seats and get going early. I’m taking the kids while Trudy’s bringing her parents from the shore. The weather’s clear, traffic’s light on I-84, and a cop stops me for speeding. So the morning, which started so promising, turns bitter even before we hit the Mass Pike. I worry that the feeling will linger and ruin the whole day, but there are enough miles to put it behind us.

We hit Lansdowne Street, where the sausage vendors are open early for the family crowd. A woman Trudy’s mother’s age has a sweatshirt that says FOULKE THE YANKEES.

I’m sure that Stew was at the ballpark today for what turned out to be an extraordinary game, and probably in the prime real estate of my second-row seats next to the Red Sox dugout, but I enjoyed it fine at home in my living room with my wife close by, propped up on the couch with the computer on her lap and the dog by her side. I’ve come down with a fairly heavy cold as a result of my week of chilly carousal at Fenway, and there is something especially satisfying—akin to the pleasures of self-pity, I suppose—about watching a baseball game with the box of Kleenex near one hand and the box of Sucrets near the other, coughing and sneezing your way through the innings as the shadows on both the infield and your living room carpet gradually creep longer.

This game had a little bit of everything. Curt Schilling flirted with perfection into the sixth; Keith Foulke blew his first save of the season (his first blown save in his last twenty-four attempts, it turns out) when Raul Ibanez hit a dramatic three-run home run, putting the Mariners up 7–5 in the eighth inning; the Red Sox came right back to tie it in the bottom of the eighth. Then, in the bottom of the twelfth, Sox sub David McCarty crushed a 3-0 fastball to what is the deepest part of the park to give the Red Sox the win.

And at the risk of sounding like Angry Bill in Still, We Believe, I called the shot. Yeah! Me! I’d claim my wife as a witness to this feat of prediction, except she was pretty heavy into the computer solitaire by then and I doubt like hell that she was listening. The Mariners’ fourth pitcher of the afternoon, a young man with the unfortunate name of J. J. Putz, entered the game with a reputation for wildness, but was into his third inning of exceptional relief work (he struck out both David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez in the eleventh) when the roof fell in. After getting the first out in the twelfth, he hit Jason Varitek with a soft breaking pitch. [17] 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. Enter McCarty, inserted into the lineup mostly as a defensive replacement. The count ran to 3-0. Most batters are taking all the way on such a count, but Terry Francona gives most of his guys the automatic green light on 3-0. (I like this strategy as much as I loathe his refusal to bunt runners along in key situations.) I said—mostly to the dog, since my wife was paying elzilcho attention, “Watch this. Putz is gonna throw it down the middle and McCarty is gonna send everyone home in time for supper.” Which is just what happened, and thank God the camera did not linger long on the head-hanging misery of young Mr. J. J. Putz as McCarty went into his home run trot. These are the kind of games you either win or feel really bad about losing, especially at home. I feel badly for Putz (pronounced Pootz, thank you very much), but the bottom line? We won it. And the bonus? The Yankees lost to Tampa Bay (who just barely held on), which means we’re back in first place.

There are three major milestones in a baseball season: Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day. The first of these milestones in the 2004 season comes tomorrow, when we play a makeup game with Baltimore, and for a team with so many quality players on the disabled list, we’re doing pretty damned well going into the first turn. Especially when we can look forward to two of those—Nomar Garciaparra and Trot Nixon—coming back between Memorial Day and the Fourth. A third, Bill Mueller, may return to the club between the Fourth and Labor Day.

That brings us back to Kevin Youkilis, Mueller’s replacement, who has now begun to attract so much notice that Terry Francona has had to publicly state that no, Youkilis will not be keeping the job at third once Mueller’s fit and ready to play no matter how well the GGOW [18] Greek God of Walks… but you knew that. does between now and the happy day of Mueller’s return.

A piece in the Portland Sunday Telegram today by Kevin Thomas (who knows Youkilis from Youkilis’s days with the Portland Sea Dogs, the BoSox double-A affiliate) points out that Youkilis’s locker is on the far wall of the clubhouse, the traditional place for players who are just up for a cup of coffee in the bigs…as is undoubtedly the case with Andy Dominique, who delivered today’s game-tying hit in the bottom of the eighth. Thomas also points to previous Red Sox minor leaguers such as Wilton Veras, who came up to play third with high hopes, only to fade into obscurity.

Obscurity would not seem to be in young Mr. Youkilis’s future, however. “I know I’m going to be playing,” he told Kevin Thomas in today’s interview, speaking with quiet certainty, and with every passing game his on-base percentage seems simultaneously harder to believe for a rookie and less like a fluke. Moved up to the two-hole today, all Youkilis did was gothree for five, with three runs scored. His batting average is .317, and his OBP is hovering right around .425. The fans know that Bill Mueller may have to battle for his old spot back, no matter what Terry Francona has to say on the subject.

It sounds like they’re booing the kid when he walks to the plate, but the grin on Youkilis’s face says he knows better; that sound sweeping around the ballpark like a soft wind is the first syllable of his last name: Youk…Youk…Youk…