Stephen King - Faithful

Of course, there’s nowhere to put all these guys. The roster, like the dugout, is overflowing. Youk hasn’t seen action in weeks, or McCarty, or Ricky Gutierrez.

No one’s going to rock the boat, though. The team’s doing too well. Tonight Johnny celebrates being back in action by leading off the game with a home run. It’s Derek Lowe’s first appearance in Oakland since his alleged crotch-tugging in the direction of the A’s bench after clinching last year’s divisional playoffs, and the crowd lets him know it. He scuffles early (as usual), but Gabe Kapler clocks a two-run shot for a 3–0 cushion, Billy Mueller makes three highlight-reel stops at third, and once again we bulldoze their number four starter Mark Redman for a 7–1 win, making us 7-1 in our gut-check stretch against Anaheim, Texas and Oakland.

I’m primed to stay up late and watch the Pedro–Tim Hudson series finale, hoping for the sweep, but Hudson can’t find the plate, and after three it’s 7–0 Sox and he’s gone, and we haven’t really even hit the ball yet. What do you do when the one strength of your club fails you? You lose. We sweep the A’s at home after sweeping them in Fenway in July.

Even better, the Angels lose, so we’re five up in the wild card. And the rain left over from Hurricane Frances—in a fitting revenge—wipes out the Yanks-D-Rays doubleheader, so we’re only two back in the East, and with the makeups, their rotation’s a mess.

The Red Sox offense didn’t beat Tim Hudson last night, and Pedro Martinez can’t exactly take credit, either. After walking the first three batters of the game (four in the first inning) and giving up a double to David Ortiz and a single to Jason Varitek, Hudson pretty much did the job on himself.

Meanwhile, the Yankees’ current series with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, [51] The once more hapless Devil Rays, and please God may they (or the troublesome El Birdos) not poke a stick in our spokes as we race down this season’s home stretch. a seemingly endless exercise in baseball existentialism during which the D-Rays never win and the Yankees never seem to gain ground in the standings, is continuing this afternoon, with the New Yorkers leading in the first game of a doubleheader by a score of quite a bunch to one. I could check and get an exact score, but it hardly seems worth it. Based on my last peek I can tell you that a.) there’s hardly anyone in the stands at the Stadium, and b.) Rocco Baldelli looks like he wishes he were playing for the Tokyo Sunflowers, assuming there is such a team. After last night’s rainout and the Red Sox win in Oakland, the gap in the AL East shrank to a mere two games for the first time since early June, and reading the sports pages of the New York tabs has become a wonderfully cheering pastime for Red Sox fans; the Post and Daily News baseball columnists, used to a steady diet of Yankee triumphs down the stretch, have started to sound like holy-rolling revival-show ministers, warning that the Horsemen of the Apocalypse are on the horizon: Behold, I saw a pale horse, and on him was Manny, and he spake, saying, “Hey man, we gotta jus’ keep goin’.”

Meanwhile, on other fronts:

The hapless Devil Rays will be more hapless still if Ivan, third and worst hurricane to menace Florida in the last thirty days, blows away their JuiceDome down there in Tampa; like a certain unlucky Jew, they may be doomed to simply wander, dragging their dusty equipment bags behind them, playing everywhere and always batting in the top of the first. “We once had a home,” they’ll tell those who will listen. “It wasn’t very full, and most of the folks who showed up were old, many equipped with shunts and pee bags, but by God it was ours.”

In Foxboro, the New England Patriots, proud winner of exactly one preseason game, prepare to defend their Super Bowl title.

And on I-95, just north of Augusta, Maine, at a little past noon and in a driving downpour (the remains of Hurricane Frances, or so the radio assured me), I saw an oak tree blazing with orange leaves.

Football, autumn colors, hurricanes: omens of the end. Hurry up and finish your four games with Seattle, Red Sox. Hurry up and come home. It’s almost time to deal with the Yankees.

SO:Maybe because all this is happening late at night way out West there isn’t the crazy celebrating like last week, but it almost seems too easy, too calm. It’s quiet…too quiet.

SK:It’s like people are getting used to it. If so, bad people. Badpeople. Ungrateful, BADpeople. Or maybe, who knows, they’re just not as crazy as we are. Also, they ARE away. And some people DO have to get up and go to work. Not us, I mean, but SOME people.

Tonight in the top-left corner of the country, Seattle throws a rookie lefty I’ve never heard of—Bobby Madritsch, whose route to the bigs included time in the independent leagues, the outlaws of the minors—while Tim Wakefield takes the hill for us. Wake came out flat in his last start (our last loss), so he’s due for a solid game. Wrong. The Mariners score early and often, and when a fly to the track goes off Manny’s glove in the fifth for a two-run error, this one’s done. We lose 7–1 while the Yanks sweep a doubleheader from the D-Rays, the first game of which has an officially reported attendance of zero. Zero, as in no one. Zero, as in one less than the guy sitting at his desk writing this. If the Yankees win and no one sees it, does it still count?

SO:I’m definitely making the Tuesday game next week versus Tampa, and if you’re not using the tix, I could see myself there Wednesday and Thursday too. There just aren’t that many games left. Here on Monday I went to the Rock Cats’ last game of the year; after they won, the players tossed their hats and batting gloves and all the balls in the dugout and even the leftover bubble gum to the crowd, and I realized that once the season’s over, that’s it, it’s fall and then winter. I didn’t like the feeling one bit, and I guess I’m doing what I can to stave it off.

SK:You’re so right. Winter’s coming. I felt a change in the weather the day after Labor Day.

Losing two straight to the last-place M’s, with Schilling going, isn’t likely, and I’m uncharacteristically certain of this one from the start. Seattle keeps it close till the fifth, when David Ortiz sneaks a line-drive homer over the wall, and then, after an error by backup second baseman Jose Lopez, with two outs, Bill Mueller singles, Dave Roberts doubles, Johnny Damon triples and Mark Bellhorn singles. The next inning, Manny, who started our scoring with a solo shot, piles it on with his 17th career grand slam, and Schilling cruises to become the majors’ first 19-game-winner.

Meanwhile in Baltimore, Javier Vazquez melts down, walking and hitting batters with the bases loaded, and the Yanks go down hard, so we’re two and a half back. Anaheim wins and the A’s lose again, so the Angels are a mere game off the pace in the West. With the unbalanced schedule, the Angels have six games remaining against the A’s and a chance to make them our wild-card rivals.

Manny Ramirez hit home runs 39 and 40 last night to amble past Boston’s Dwight Evans on the all-time list and further enhance his MVP chances (although for that to happen Boston will almost certainly have towin the American League flag). Boston didn’t look particularly good against Seattle’s collection of battered veterans and freshly called-up farmhands in the first of the teams’ four-game series and Tim Wakefield suffered for it, but the whole team appeared to be ambling in that game, probably a natural enough result of having just finished an 8-1 tour of duty against Oakland, Texas, and Anaheim. Father Curt took matters in hand last night, thank God (he “righted the ship,” as the Sports Cannibals like to say), and bagged his 19th win in the process.