Stephen King - Faithful

Never mind Red Ryder; when ya comin’ back, Trotter? We may need you to pull our irons out of the fire yet.

The key to every sport—to every endeavor in life, maybe—is consistency, and nowhere is that more apparent than in team defense. Football, soccer, baseball, hockey, basketball—all team defense is based on the premise that each player knows where his or her fellow players are, and can rely on teammates to cover either territory or opposing players he or she can’t. In the major leagues this assumes that each player knows his teammates’ capabilities and habits, a familiarity that can only come from playing side by side game after game until this knowledge becomes second nature and can be acted on with the speed of reflex.

Example: pop fly down the right-field line. First baseman fades straight back, second baseman angles in from the left, right fielder comes on hard. If the ball’s high and deep enough, it’s the right fielder’s, since the play’s in front of him. If it’s low and shallow, the first baseman has to make an over-the-shoulder catch running away from the plate. If it’s medium, in no-man’s-land, usually the second baseman, having the most speed and the best glove (as well as quarterbacking the in-between play), has to flash across and get it.

Ideally, each fielder has played with the other two enough to know both what they’re capable of and what they’ll do. One right fielder may have difficulty getting in on a ball (Millar, the injured Trot) that another (Kapler, Roberts) should catch easily. Likewise, one second baseman may have no problem making a play in foul ground (Pokey) that another has no shot at (Mark Bellhorn, Bill Mueller), while yet another has maybe a 50% chance (Ricky Gutierrez). Some first basemen don’t go back well (Ortiz, Millar) and some do (Mientkiewicz, McCarty); with Andy Dominique, it’s hard to say, since he’s only played a handful of innings at first, the same way Dauber only played a couple games at first or in the outfield, or Cesar Crespo at second and short, or in right, center, or left. And beyond simple ability, there’s the confusing factor of personality. Some fielders are aggressive and dash after every in-between ball whether they can make the play or not (Manny, weirdly), while others hang back till the last second, letting others take charge (Kapler, sadly). Does Doug Mientkiewicz have a good feel for the combination of Bill Mueller and Gabe Kapler as they converge on a dying quail with men on late in a close game? For Ricky Gutierrez and David McCarty? Ricky Gutierrez and Dave Roberts? Bill Mueller and Kevin Millar? Bill Mueller and Dave Roberts?

Impossible, considering how little they’ve played together. Mientkiewicz is still feeling his way into the defense, the same way Bill Mueller’s doing his best to acclimate at second base. At best it’s guesswork.

Multiply that uncertainty by the number of odd and new combinations in the field (McCarty in left, Youkilis at third and Orlando Cabrera at short all vying for a ball down the line in Fenway where the stands jut out; or Cabrera and Bill Mueller going back on a flare with Roberts, Johnny or Kapler racing in from center) and add in the memory of the seldom-used Damian Jackson ranging back farther than last year’s regular second baseman Todd Walker ever could and knocking Johnny out, and you’ve got a patchwork defense that lets balls drop.

Part of the problem is injuries, obviously, and part is the pre- and mid-season missteps by upper management (never getting a serious replacement for Trot, loading up on platoon first basemen and shortstops to no apparent purpose), but Francona has to take all of that into account and at least try to put a defense out on the field that can work towards becoming comfortable with each other. Until he does, we’ll continue to be inconsistent, and to hurt pitchers like Wake and Lowe, who have to rely on competent glovework behind them to win.

The Red Sox and the Devil Rays have split in Boston’s first two games back at Fenway, and we’re now 5-3 in the twelve-game stretch I’ve elected to put under the microscope—the twelve games leading up to the stretch drive. Boston hasn’t made it easy on itself, losing the first game of the final road series against Detroit and the first game of the home stand against Tampa Bay, but the Sox have managed to win their last two series, and they won again last night.

Bronson Arroyo looks more and more comfortable in his role as a starter (and thank Christ he finally shaved off that horrible sand-colored thing on his chin). Tampa Bay’s Toby Hall beat Arroyo with an improbable grand slam in his last start, but in last night’s game Arroyo mixed his pitches better and got more ground balls. Also, Terry Francona, who is right every once in a while, [37] A trait he shares with stopped clocks. lifted him while he was merely toasty instead of completely baked. There is a difference.

Today there’s a three-way tie for the wild card (Texas, Anaheim, Boston), and tonight the tragickal Mr. Lowe will lug his top-heavy 5.50 ERA to the mound against Tampa Bay’s Dewon Brazelton, with a tidy little ERA of 2.56. This may be one of those gut-check games that seem to mean hardly anything at the time and actually mean more when you look for the point where a team either started to kick it into gear…or didn’t.

Boston kicked it into gear, all right. Especially Kevin Millar. Millar seems to have decided that if the Red Sox need identity, he’ll supply it. In last night’s game against the Devil Rays, he went 4 for 4, with two singles, a double, and a three-run shot into the Monster seats, setting the pace as Boston pounded out 15 hits and routed Tampa Bay 14–4. The man who gave the 2003 Red Sox their late-season slogan—“Cowboy up”—is battingsomething ridiculous like .470 for the month of August—31 for his last 66. With numbers like that, he can perhaps be excused for bitching about having to ride “the old benchola.”

We have one more game against the tasty Devil Rays—today at one o’clock—before tougher meat comes to town: the Chicago White Sox, currently a game above .500. Boston stands at 6-3 in the current twelve-game stretch, and if we could beat Tampa Bay behind Pedro this afternoon, we’d only have to top the ChiSox once to finish 8-4, as I had hoped we would. Meantime, in the wild-card race…chillun, we have sole possession. For today, at least.

Later: After writing that, I shut down the computer and head for southern New Hampshire to visit old friends (he’s the physician’s assistant who has helped me with medical stuff in a dozen books, most notably The Stand and Pet Sematary, she’s a retired nurse who has reached a hard-won truce in her war with cancer). We have lunch on the patio, a lot of good food and good talk (maybe only horror writers and medical people can reminisce fondly about heart attack patients they have known). We promise we’ll stay in closer touch, and maybe we even will.

Starting the 140-mile drive back to western Maine, I remember that the Sox are playing the rare weekday afternoon game. I can’t find it on the FM; nothing there but rock music and what a friend of mine calls “macrobiotic talk shows.” On the AM, however, I find it crackling through the static on WEEI, the self-proclaimed Red Sox flagship station, and am delighted to discover that Boston is winning handily. My man Kevin Youkilis kicked off the day’s festivities, swatting one over everything and into the Manny Zone, aka Lansdowne Street. At the one end of the East Coast, Tampa–St. Pete is girding its loins for the arrival of tropical storm Bonnie and the more dangerous Hurricane Charlie. At this end, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have run into Hurricane Pedro. He almost always pitches well against the D-Rays, but he hasn’t thrown this well in…what? Three years? Four?