Stephen King - Faithful

I poach the corner seat at the end of the camera pit—a great spot for foul balls—and am immediately rewarded by David Ortiz, tossing me a warm-up ball. I get the boot early, and go over and join Steve and Owen. Bronson Arroyo’s pitched way better than his 2-6 record, but today he’s consistently behind hitters. Youk misses a foul pop by the visitors’ on-deck circle, then can’t handle a throw by Johnny; he chases it down, only to gun it too high for Tek to put a tag on the runner. Jim Thome hits a monster opposite-field shot. Arroyo muffs an easy grounder. Later in the same inning Millar kicks a double-play ball into right field. The Phils score five runs, making it 7–1, and the Phillies fans chant. The Sox are putting the leadoff man on nearly every inning, then stranding him. Late in the game, the stands are half-empty.

“It’s not just that they’re bad,” Owen says. “They’re boring.”

So I cued up some good CDs and made the three-and-a-half-hour run from our little town in western Maine to Boston, pumping up for the drive into the city by playing Elvis’s “Baby, Let’s Play House” and “Mystery Train” at top volume about nine times, and do I succeed in spraying my fresh can of Whip-Ass on the Red Sox? I do. Sort of. We lose the middle game, 9–2 (the Sox commit a numbing four errors), but Pedro wins on Friday night and Schilling wins on Sunday when the Red Sox bounce back from a 3–0 deficit. Pedro’s eighth win; Curt’s tenth. The former was a totally righteous 12–1 drubbing shortened by thunder and lightning in the eighth inning.

The best thing about the weekend is that my youngest son came up from New York to share the Sox with me. These were his first Red Sox games of 2004, his first regular-season games in two years. It was great to be with him, swapping the scorebook back and forth just like old times, catching up on what we’ve been doing. Stewart O’Nan joined us on Saturday and that was good, too—it made an essentially boring game fun—but there was something especially magical about just the two of us. One of the things baseball is made for, I think, is catching up with the people you used to see all the time, the ones you love and now don’t see quite enough. In our family, baseball and swapping scorecards—sometimes bought from a vendor outside the park, sometimes from one in the concourse, sometimes a homemade job scrawled on a legal pad—have always been a constant. I’ve got a drawer with almost thirty years’ worth of those things saved up, and I could tell you what they mean, but if you’ve got kids, you probably know what I’m talking about. When it comes to family, not all the bases you touch are on the field.

The Yankees, thrifty baseball housekeepers for sure, are busily sweeping up the Mets in a Sunday day-night doubleheader, which means we’ll go into our final series of the month with the Bombers five and a half games back. Not an enviable position, but one we’ve been in before.

A gorgeous Sunday afternoon. It’s Visor Day, and they’re giving out posters with Tek and Wally promoting reading. Pokey takes BP, a reason for optimism. I’m in my favorite spot for BP, hauling in balls, when Placido Polanco rips a hooking liner our way. “Heads UP!” I bellow, because it’s going to be a few rows into the crowd behind me. I expect it to bang into a plastic seatback, like most screamers, but this one hits skin—and not the fat smack of a thigh or biceps, but a spongy, fungolike sound, unmistakable: it nailed somebody in the head. The ball ricochets at a right angle another ten rows into the stands, and a bald guy in his late fifties who was coming down the aisle reels sideways into the seats, still holding his two beers.

He wobbles like a fighter trying to stay upright until people take him under the arms and sit him down. He looks dazed, mumbling that he’s all right. I’m already waving to security to get a trainer out here, medical staff, somebody.

Former Sox pitching coach Joe Kerrigan has been pacing the wall all BP, warning kids to keep their eyes on the batters. He gets a ball for the guy, and is standing there talking to me about how dangerous this place is—how Yankee Stadium’s the same way down third—when Polanco stings one right at us. It skips once on the track, Joe backs off a step, and I glove it.

When BP ends, I check on the bald guy. He’s sitting down, surrounded by security and a couple first-aid guys. On the side of his dome he’s got a purplish knot the size of a fried egg. I think he should go to a hospital—at the very least he’s got a concussion—but he’s talking with them, giving them his information. He wants to stay for the game.

Trudy’s over at Steve’s seats. She saw all the hubbub; people around her thought it might be a heart attack.

She shows me that the souvenir-cup makers have fixed the SHILLING. “He must have a good agent,” she says.

The pregame ceremonies pay tribute to all the middle-aged guys who took part in the Sox’s pricey fantasy camp. They fill the baselines, stepping forward and doffing their caps as Carl Beane announces their names. No one except their families is paying attention until two guys on the third-base line unfurl a messily spray-painted bedsheet that says YANKEES SUCK. It gets a big hand, but, in typical Fenway fashion, when the guys walk by us on their way off, someone behind me hollers, “Is that the best you could do with the sign?”

Both the Sox and Yanks wanted Freddy Garcia, but the White Sox got him, for a second-string catcher and a pair of prospects. Like the A’s, even if they don’t take their division, they’ll be in the wild-card hunt, and they’ve made themselves stronger. Theo’s got another month to cut a deal. One more solid starter would solve a lot of problems. Jeff Suppan, who we let walk after last year, is 6-5 with a 3.75 ERA for the first-place Cards. (And Tony Womack, one of our spring-training invitees, is hitting .300 for them and running all over the place.)

Tomorrow we start a three-game set with the Yankees in the Bronx. Short of a sweep by either team (unlikely), it won’t change the standings much, but it could set the tone of the All-Star break. Looking back at the first half of the season, I’d say we’ve played well with a banged-up club. Ten games over .500 isn’t great but it isn’t bad either, given the team we’re putting out there. And yet they do seem like the same old Sox: a couple of great hitters surrounded by mediocre guys, zero defense, inconsistent pitching, and the usual June swoon. It could be 1987 or 1996 or 2001.

Both Lowe and Vazquez have thrown well lately, so the opener’s an even matchup. To show how big of a game it is, Vice President Dick Cheney’s crawled out of his hidey-hole and is sitting in the front row.

Johnny D sets the tone, leading off with a home run. The Ghost of Tony Clark gets it back in the second with a two-out RBI single. To prove it wasn’t a fluke, Johnny hits another out in the third, and we’re up 2–1.

In the bottom, Lofton leads off with a ground ball to Millar’s right. He drops it, and by the time he recovers, Kenny’s beaten Lowe to the bag. Jeter singles, and Lofton scoots to third. On the first pitch, Sheffield flies deep enough to left-center to tie the game. Jeter steals second easily. A-Rod singles off the third-base bag, the ball popping straight up so that Bellhorn has to wait for it, and Jeter holds at second. With Matsui up, Jeter and A-Rod pull the double steal on 2-2—unforgiveable, with a lefty batting. On a full count, Matsui knocks a curveball that’s down and in (terrible pitch selection to any lefty, but especially this guy, who cut his teeth on breaking stuff in Japan) into right. It’s 4–2, and the rare weeknight sellout crowd is on its feet.