Stephen King - Faithful

7:45 A.M.: Today’s game against the San Francisco Giants will mark the end of interleague play for the nonce, and I’m glad. I don’t like it because I think it’s a marketing stunt, but that’s secondary. A New England team has no business on the West Coast, that’s what I really think.

Still, it should be an interesting contest—the rubber game in a three-game series the Red Sox would dearly love to win. For one thing, it would send them home with a .500 record for the trip. For another, they’d go back to Boston four and a half behind the Yankees, only three and a half if the Dodgers can beat the Yankees again today. And Sox pitching has pretty well muzzled Barry Bonds, who strikes me—admittedly an outsider, but sometimes outsiders see with clearer eyes—as one of the game’s more arrogant and conceited players. His fans in left field hang rubber chickens when Bonds is intentionally walked, but they haven’t hung many in this series.

Oh, and by the Ray—the Devil Ray, that is—those Tampa Bay bad boys have now won a franchise-best ten straight . And you know what that makes them, don’t you? Right.

Hapless no more.

SO:So where was Foulke yesterday when Alfonzo came to the plate? I know our pen threw five Friday night (tanks, Wake), and that Williamson just got off the DL, but Francona’s use of the bullpen’s been a real mess lately. We’ve been behind a fair amount this road trip (just like the last two), but D-Lowe’s 11–0 laugher should have given us a breather. Does Theo need to go and get a middle guy to replace Mendoza and Arroyo, or are Mendoza and Kim actually going to come back and contribute? The All-Star break’s three weeks away, and all we’ve gotten out of those two is a single quality start from BK.

Meanwhile, Dauber languishes in Pawtucket, the forgotten Sock. Yesterday he jacked a foul ball out of McCoy Stadium into the middle of the football field next door—thing must have gone 475 feet.

SK:Where’s Francona been lately? He could have cost us the game on Friday night, playing Bellhorn at third. Wuz just luck it worked out.

The rubbah game today should be good. Did you see the Harvard-prof piece in the NY Times about how teams that pitch to Bonds instead of walking him (tentionally or un) do better than those who don’t? The Giants score .9 runs an inning when he’s walked with none on and no outs, and .6 an inning when he’s pitched to in that situation. We pitched to him yesterday, and altho I didn’t see the whole game, I think he went 0-fer.

Oh, and by the way—how ’bout those THIRD PLACE Devil Rays?

SO:That just ties in with the Bill James/Moneyball OBP philosophy. Get men on and you get men in. And yeah, Barry was 0-for yesterday and looked asleep out in left.

10 in a row for the D-Rays—Lou must be pumped. And the O’s fans must be pissed.

4:00 P.M.: It’s Father’s Day, and I’m right where I belong, with a blue western-Maine lake just to my left and the Red Sox ready to start on TV in front of me. I’ve got my book—a really excellent novel by Greg Bear called Dead Lines —to read between innings, and all is okey-fine by me. It’s Jason Schmidt against Bronson Arroyo, a mismatch on paper, but as pointed out both on ESPN and in these pages, baseball games aren’t played on paper but inside TV sets. So we’ll see. One of these things we’ll see is whether or not Schmidt can strike out ten or more (he struck out twelve Blue Jays in his last start), and whether or not Arroyo (currently 2-5) can keep the ball around the plate.

4:30 P.M.: Bronson Arroyo (whose goatee unfortunately does make him look a bit goatlike) finds his way out of a bases-loaded jam in the first, partly by inducing Barry Bonds to pop up. Bonds continues to be an offensive zero-factor in the series. By the way, you have to give it to the people who designed SBC Park; the only ugly thing about it is the name. [23] And maybe that giant skeletal Coke bottle in left field.

5:00 P.M.: Arroyo settles down, but the Red Sox still don’t have a hit. Kevin Millar took Schmidt deep, but Bonds snared that one, flipping it backhand into the crowd in almost the same motion. The gesture is graceful and arrogant at the same time. Watching Barry Bonds play makes me remember the late Billy Martin muttering about some rookie, “I’ll take the steam out of that hot dog.” Bonds is no rookie, but I think the principle is the same.

5:30 P.M.: Kevin Youkilis breaks up Jason Schmidt’s no-hit bid with a hard double. Arroyo fails to bunt him over, but then Giants catcher A. J. Pierzynski drops strike three. It’s just a little dribbler, but Pierzynski forgets to throw down to first . A couple of batters later, the Sox find themselves with runners at the corners, two out, and Ortiz at the plate. Big Papi, who leads the AL in runs batted in, stings the ball, but first baseman Damon Minor (who’s even bigger than Ortiz) makes a run-saving stab, and Ortiz is out to end the inning.

6:20 P.M.: After a disputed call at third base that goes against the Sox (and gets Terry Francona thrown out for the first time this year), the Giants win the game, 4–0. Edgardo Alfonzo won it yesterday with a two-run shot off Alan Embree; today he gets the grand salami off Mike Timlin. On the whole, I sort of wish Signor Alfonzo had stayed with the Mets. Them we don’t play this year. In any case, Bronson Arroyo’s best performance of the season was wasted and the Red Sox can finally go home after a disappointing 2-4 road trip.

But hey—it’s Father’s Day, the first day of summer, and I’m by the lake with my family. Also, there was baseball. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.

I only have to see three at-bats of this one. Caitlin’s birthday dinner eats up the first six innings; it’s the bottom of the seventh when I tune in. We’re up 3–1, so Schilling must have thrown well. Johnny’s on second, Bellhorn’s on first, one out, with David Ortiz at the plate. He lines a double off the center-field wall even Torii Hunter can’t get to, scoring Johnny. With first open, Ron Gardenhire goes by the book, intentionally walking Manny, except now the number five guy isn’t Tek or Dauber or Millar, it’s Nomar. Reliever Joe Roa dawdles on the mound, and Nomar steps out. He steps back in. Roa delivers, and Nomar blasts one to center that bounces off the roof of the camera platform and ricochets into Section 34. 8–1 Sox, and Nomar’s got his first homer of the season and only our second granny. 9–2’s the final, with Foulke leaving them loaded.

And Theo finally picks up some middle relief help, former Royal Curtis Leskanic, a thirty-six-year-old righty with arm problems. He was 0-3 with an 8.04 ERA this year before KC cut him. Okay, now tell me the good news.

The Sox, clearly happy to be back from the West Coast, put a hurtin’ on the Minnesota Twins last night. The newly returned Nomar Garciaparra hit a grand salami of his own to dead center field. And NESN, in slavish imitation of its bigger brother, Fox Sports (even the name of the feature’s the same—Sounds of the Game), decided to mike a player and pick up some ambient audio. The player they picked was the also newly returned Trot Nixon, a wise choice, since Trot, like Mike Timlin, is long on Praise Jesus and short on Y’oughta knock ’is fucking head off for that . It was a noble experiment, but a failure, I think. When Nomar’s home run brought the capacity Fenway crowd to its feet, cheering at the top of its lungs, the TV audience was treated to the sound of a laconic Trot Nixon: “Go, ball. Go on, now. ’At’s right.” And, greeting #5 as he crossed the plate, these immortal words: “Good job, Nomie.”