Stephen King - Faithful

Neither starter has anything. The Sox chase Washburn in the fourth with six straight hits, scoring five. We’d have more, but Ramon Ortiz comes on and gets Millar to bounce into an easy 6-4-3 DP. Still, we’ve come back to take a 7–4 lead on the road, and I’m happy I stayed up to watch this one.

In the bottom of the inning, Guerrero hits a sac fly to score Bengie Molina, making it 7–5. Vladi has all five of their RBIs.

It’s midnight, past the Sox’s bedtime, and their bats go the way of Cinderella’s coach. The rest of the game, they manage just one two-out single.

Pedro’s done after David Eckstein’s fourth single of the night (the former Sox prospect will go 5 for 5, the Angels’ first three batters a preposterous 12 for 13) and a four-pitch walk to Chone (pronounced Shawn) Figgins. I’m glassy, a little pissed off but dull and punchy, fatalistic. Timlin comes on to face Guerrero and ends up facing the left-field fence, watching a three-run shot knock around the rocks out there. It’s 8–7 and Guerrero has all eight RBIs. He pops out of the dugout for a well-earned tip of the cap.

The Angels add two more in the seventh, when Foulke, coming in early in hopes of keeping it close, lets two of Timlin’s runners score. Guerrero’s in the middle of the rally again, knocking in his ninth run of the night.

Sitting there by myself in the dark house, facing the screen, I have nothing to distract myself from the terrible baseball I’m seeing. There’s no one to commiserate with or to help absorb the loss; it’s all mine. We’ve hit the ball well enough, and while our outfield isn’t close to their cannon-armed trio of Jose Guillen, Raul Mondesi and Vladi Guerrero, we’ve fielded decently, but our pitching has been horrendous. All three pitchers we ran out there tonight got their butts whipped. By the ninth inning, as Francisco “K-Rod” Rodriguez strikes out David Ortiz and then Manny, I’m in a sour mood, blaming the Sox for my own impatience and irritability. The final’s 10–7, the third time in a week we’ve given up double digits—and we came in with the league’s best ERA. It’s one o’clock, only a three-hour game, though with all the scoring it feels like four, four and a half. I feel crappy and blue. I feel like I’ve earned the day off tomorrow.

Boston’s on the West Coast, and I hate it. We always seem to do poorly out there during the regular season, and the pennant hopes of more than oneRed Sox team have been buried in places like Anaheim and Oakland. This year is looking like no exception. The Angels have now beaten us twice in a row, and in both cases we’ve come from behind only to blow the lead again. Youch.

And when they go out there, I always feel as if the Olde Town Team (Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy’s term) has voyaged over the curve of the earth and clean out of sight. News travels faster than it used to, granted—I can get game highlights on NESN instead of just a bare-ass score on the morning radio—but details are still pretty thin unless you actually stay up and watch the game, as O’Nan was threatening to do last night (and gosh, he must have gone to bed grumpy in the wee hours, if he did). What I want most of all is a box score, dammit, and there won’t be one until tomorrow, by which time last night’s game will already be old and cold.

Or maybe Boston’s West Coast swing and current three-game losing streak are only cover stories for a deeper malaise. Later, in August and September, I’ll dumbly drop my neck and accept the yoke of fan-citizenship in Red Sox Nation, but in June and July I resist a rather distasteful truth: as summer deepens, I find that instead of me gripping the baseball—apologies to Jim Bouton—the baseball is gripping me. This morning is a perfect case in point. The alarm is set for 7:30 A.M., because I don’t really have to get up until quarter of eight. But I find myself wide-awake at 6:15, staring at the ceiling and wondering if the Red Sox managed to come back from a 4–2 deficit, which was where I left them. I’m also wondering if the Yankees, who were playing Baltimore at home, managed to win yet again. I’m thinking that the Orioles, with good hitting and fair pitching, must have managed to beat the Yanks at least once . I’m also wondering what Nomar Garciaparra’s status is, and if there’s any update on Trot Nixon.

By 6:30 I can stand it no longer. I get out of bed (still cursing my own obsessive nature) and switch off the alarm. It will not be needed today. I go to the TV and have only to punch the ON button; it’s already on NESN, NESN is right where I left off seven hours ago, NESN is where the electronic Cyclops in my study is gonna be for most of the summer. Just like last summer. (And the summer before.) A moment later I’m sitting there on the rug in my ratty Red Sox workout shorts, hair standing up all over my head (“Your hair is excited,” my wife says when it’s this way in the morning), looking at Jayme Parker, who is for some incomprehensible reason doing the sports today on location from Foxwoods Casino, and although she’s as good-looking as ever (in her pink suit Jayme looks as cool as peppermint ice cream), all the news is butt-ugly: the Sox blew their lead and lost, the Yankees came from behind and won. The Evil Empire now leads the AL East by two games. Even Roger Clemens, the pitcher then-Sox general manager Dan Duquette proclaimed all but washed-up and then traded away, won last night; he’s 8-0 for the Astros.

The Red Sox continue their West Coast swing tomorrow night. It’s way too early to liken this particular tour of duty to the Bataan Death March (although that simile has done more than cross my mind in other years, on other nightmare visits to Anaheim, Oakland, Seattle, and yes, even Kansas City, where we go next), but not too early to restate my original scripture: on the whole, I’d rather be at Foxwoods.

Francona’s talking like Nomar will be back on Tuesday and that he’ll be used as a DH for a while, letting Pokey, Marky Mark and Youk stay on the field and in the lineup. Ultimately though, he’ll have to sit someone. Pokey’s the glove and the glue, Bellhorn’s the table-setter, but it’s hard to pull Youk after how well he’s played. For his .318 average and .446 OBP, he’s been named May’s AL Rookie of the Month.

A stray stat in the paper: since 2001, the Yankees are 44-17 against the O’s.

Make that 45-17, as the O’s succumb once again. They’re under .500 now. The problem, I think, is that the O’s are basically a cheaper version of the Yanks—so-so pitching backed by lots of free-agent bats. Like the Yanks, they’re designed to overwhelm mediocre clubs, a wise enough strategy in this post-expansion era (the same strategy the Yanks used in the ’50s, when their ace was the lackluster Whitey Ford and they feasted on the second division), but no guarantee of success in the playoffs. As the D-Backs, Angels and Marlins (and 1960 Pirates) have proven, to beat a club that grossly outspends you, you have to bring a whole different style of ball. There’s no way the O’s can match George’s payroll, so they’ll always be a few bats short.

We’re two and a half back for the first time all year. It’s not a hole, but it will take a streak to get us back even.

At the high school senior awards assembly, Caitlin’s friend Ryan, who we’ve been giving grief about his Yankees since April, says, “Have you seen the standings?”

“Hey,” I say, “you guys’ll do fine if you only have to play the O’s.”

It’s time to admit it: this is the dreaded Red Sox losing streak.