Stephen King - Faithful

Worse, it’s the dreaded Red Sox losing streak combined with the even more dreaded (and apparently endless) Yankee winning streak.

No Jayme Parker on NESN’s SportsDesk this morning to ease the pain; it’s Saturday and Mike Perlow is subbing. And although I tune in at 7:12 A.M., near the end of the show’s fifteen-minute loop and during a story about the Olympic Torch reaching Australia (huh?), I already know the worst. Perlow is one of those late-twenty- or early-thirty-somethings who look about fourteen, and this morning there is no sparkle in the Perlow eye, no lift in the Perlow shoulders. We lost. I’m sure we lost. But of course I hang in there to be sure and of course we did. The unsparkling eye does not lie.

Our pitching staff is having the week from hell. Derek Lowe lost to Baltimore in the Memorial Day makeup game; Bronson Arroyo and Pedro Martinez lost to the Angels; last night Tim Wakefield lost to the Kansas City Royals and Jimmy Gobble (a name at least as unfortunate as that of J. J. Putz). The Yankees again won by a single run—I don’t know how many one-run victories they’ve rung up so far this year, but it seems like a lot—and we once more got half-bucked to death as KC put up a run here and a run there until the game was out of reach. It’s the kind of slow bleed that drives managers crazy. Mark Bellhorn did not help the cause any by running into an out between third and home, killing a potential rally.

I think that for serious Sox fans, this sort of losing streak is exacerbated by the fact that the Yankees aren’t losing RIGHT NOW combined with the sinking feeling that they will NEVER LOSE AGAIN . For serious control-freak fans (sigh—that would be me), it’s exacerbated even more by the fact that I CAN’T DO A FUCKING THING ABOUT IT ; all I can do is stand by and watch. Oh, and two other things. One is to remind myself that we owned first place less than a week ago, and are now three games out of it. The other is to try and find that Stephen Crane poem where theguy says he likes what he’s eating because it’s bitter, and because it is his heart.

Stop that and stay upbeat, I tell myself. This is not impossible or even that hard to do on a beautiful June morning with the grandchildren on the way. It’s a long season, after all, and September is the only month where a losing streak can absolutely kill you, and only then if it’s combined with the wrong team’s winning streak.

Besides, I have to think of Stewart, who stayed up until maybe two in the morning to watch one of those awful games with the Angels where we blew the lead in the late innings. Man, I haven’t even dared e-mail him about that. As for tonight, I have my choice: the new Harry Potter movie, or the Red Sox. If my older son actually does make the scene with the grandkids, I think I’ll let him decide.

Who says I’m a control freak?

Later: The headline of this morning’s Sox story in the Lewiston Daily Sun reads: GOBBLE FEASTS ON SOX. Hours later, while Peggy Noonan is getting all misty about the passing of Ronald Reagan on CNBC, I think, GOBBLE FEASTS ON SOX, and I crack up all over again.

When you’re losing, you take your chuckles wherever you can get them.

As I’m cutting the grass, my next-door neighbor Dave waves me over to the fence. Dave’s a big Bruins and Sox fan, and we have the occasional bitchfest about the sorry state of the two teams. Dave says the thinness of the roster is starting to show—that we’ve gone too long playing second-stringers. I say we’ve got to find a way to protect Manny; Tek and Dauber have struggled, and Millar’s been nonexistent. “And where’s our friend Mr. Kim?” Dave asks. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him.” I wonder where Mystery Malaska is, whether he’s in Pawtucket or on the DL. In the end, I tell Dave that it’s early and that we’ll turn it around.

But really, do we need to turn it around? Are we really stumbling that badly? Even with this second streak, we’re still up there with the league’s elite. It’s a luxury, worrying about being three and a half back. A lot of clubs are already well out of it.

7:30 A.M.: The Red Sox won last night. Schilling (now 7-3, God bless him) stopped the bleeding at four games and the Yankees lost, so for the time being, all’s well as it can be. [19] It’s true that Smarty Jones lost the Belmont Stakes in the final hundred yards yesterday, but he can’t bat cleanup or go to his left on a ground ball hit deep in the hole, so fuck him. It’s funny, though, how being a fan takes over your life. Ronald Reagan died at 1 P.M. yesterday. At the time he left for that great Oval Office in the sky, he was ninety-three—the oldest living ex-president. And, I realize, he would have been seven the last time the Red Sox won the World Series. Hmmm, I think. That’s old enough to have a rooting interest. Wonder if The Gipper was a fan?

You know what Ole Case would have said, don’tcha? Right. You could look it up.

The latest Pedro worry is that he showed up at the clubhouse yesterday wearing a wrist brace on his pitching arm. When asked why he had it on, he told reporters, “Because it looks good.” Lately he hasn’t been able to throw his curveball, so this just sets off a wave of speculation that something’s physically wrong. We’ll find out Tuesday, when he’s scheduled to take on David Wells and the Padres.

Nomar should be back for that game. Last night in Toledo he went 2 for 4 with a homer and a two-run double. I expect to be on Lansdowne Street Tuesday afternoon, trying to catch one of his batting practice home runs.

5:30 P.M.: This was a good afternoon for we the faithful. First, the team Nomar Garciaparra is likely to rejoin on June 8th will be ten games over .500, thanks to today’s win. Second, Lowe went five respectable innings and then lucked into the win when his teammates scored five runs in the top of the sixth (the only inning in which they managed to score any runs). Third, and maybe most important, I finally saw signs that, yes, Derek Lowe cares. After giving up a two-run gopher ball to KC Royals batter Mike Sweeney in the first (“A ball that just screamed ‘hit me,’” commentator Sam Horn said in the postgame show), the camera caught a look of weary disgust on Lowe’s face that summed up all of his feelings about what must seem a nightmare season to a big-money player in his walk year. What have I got to do to get out of this? that look said. Or maybe What have I got to do to make it stop?

Work is the answer to both questions, of course, and following the Sweeney home run, Derek Lowe worked quite hard. He’s clearly got along way to go—and at 5-5, he’s not looking like the answer to any team’s 2005 prayers—but at least he now looks like he’s awake, and that’s an improvement.

Then there’s Mike Timlin, who’s old-time tough and has the looks to match, with his red socks pulled up almost to his knees and his no-nonsense low leg-kick and stride delivery. Timlin is, in my humble opinion, worth a Lowe and a half. He came on in relief of Derek, pitching a perfect three innings before turning the ball over to Keith Foulke. And if Mr. Mike wants to give all the credit to the Lord, more power to him.

Oh, and by the way—did I happen to mention that Kevin Youkilis was last week’s Pepsi Rookie of the Week? Yep. Yesterday he hit his second home run. Today the Greek God of Walks just…walked.