Stephen King - Faithful

SO:Thanks for the use of the seats. Let me just warn you: when the sun goes down, it’s fall. Couldn’t have been more than fifty degrees out there. I had to buy a pricey sweatshirt to keep from shivering. The offense didn’t create much heat either. Mason says it’s the return of the pre–July 31st Sox. I think it’s the usual we-don’t-have-to-hit-for-Pedro virus. Funny how that works. We didn’t hit for Clemens either; he was always leaving in the seventh tied 2–2.

SK:1) It is a return to the July Sox.

2) It is the Curse of Sports Illustrated at work.

3) It was Cabrera (not Nomah) who ended the game first-pitch swinging in the bottom of the ninth.

Sign me,

Toldja-So Boy

SO:Hey, if we’re expecting to win that game down three with two gone in the ninth, we truly are some cockeyed optimists. Ain’t no curse when you lose and deserve to, and we did. The only reliever who stopped the bleeding was Leskanic, and by then it was too late. It’s not just saves we’re missing, it’s HOLDS. Our middle guys, like the Yanks’ the last three years, are our biggest weakness, and have been since spring training.

SK:Not WIN it, TIE it.

SO:True: play for the tie at home. Still, we were losing from the very first batter.

Tim Wakefield has struggled—to be generous—in his last few starts. Tonight he gives up a run right out of the gate. Mark Bellhorn’s two-run shot off D-Rays starter Dewon Brazelton in the bottom of the first gives us the lead, only to have Wake give it back. In the fourth we scrap for two more, but Wake immediately surrenders a pair. It’s not that they’re shelling him, it’s just the usual fallout from the knuckler: some walks, a wild pitch, five stolen bases. That’s it: when Kevin Millar’s two-run Monster shot gives us a 6–4 lead in the fifth, Francona turns to Curtis Leskanic (he threw okay last night, right?). Three batters later, Tampa triple-A call-up Jorge Cantu ties the game with a blast high off the Sports Authority sign. Not to be outdone, in the bottom of the inning Lou Piniella counters by using four pitchers to worm out of a bases-loaded no-out jam. It almost works—all we get is one on a Manny sac fly. We tack on another in the seventh when Trot’s grounder goes through shortstop Julio Lugo’s legs and pinch runner Dave Roberts motors around. We’re leaving men on all over the place, but Timlin sets up and Foulke closes neatly, and we bag a long, ugly 8–6 win. Since the streak we’ve been playing terrible ball, splitting the last six with cellar dwellers, and yet, with the Angels and A’s losing once again, we’re now five and a half up in the wild card, our biggest lead yet, with only eighteen games to go. In other words: we’re closer to the postseason than we’ve been all year.

SK:They’re talking about taking Tim out of the postseason rotation. That’s okay. If we keep playing this way, postseason won’t be a problem. I have never— NEVER —gone to bed feeling so depressed after a win. They hit everything we threw at them. And they ran our Sox off. Blah.

SO:Maybe this’ll cheer you up: before this year, Tim-may was 5-2 lifetime in the Metrodome, 5-2 at the Coliseum, and 5-3 with a 3.32 ERA at Angel Stadium. I wouldn’t pull him just yet. You know how streaky he can be. If he gets unhittable after October 1, we could be wearing some big rings. Have hope.

Tonight’s the kind of game we’ve overlooked in the past: the last home game with a patsy before heading down to the Stadium. Before the advent of Curt Schilling, we’d be scrambling to get our rotation in order for the Yanks, try to throw a number four or five guy and get burned. With Schilling going tonight, we’re confident of a quality start and can rest assured that Petey will be going Sunday.

So this one’s the mismatch we want (the one we’ve paid for). We jump on D-Rays starter Mark Hendrickson for three quick runs. Lou’s going to play us tough though: with one down in the first he’s got a guy warming. It’s pointless; Schill wants his 20th. His splitter’s nasty and his location is spot-on. We’re up 6–0 when Kevin Millar hits a Monster shot to spark a five-run seventh, and we’re set for the big (but probably hurricane-rainy) weekend in the Bronx.

Two more games off the schedule. Boston’s three-game series with the hapless Devil Rays—the last time the Red Sox will see them at home this year—is concluded. The Sox won games two and three. Father Curt stood up to the Curse of Sports Illustrated last night by remaining in the game until the eighth (with a three-hit shutout until a Rocco Baldelli home run in the sixth) and becoming the first pitcher in the majors this year to win twenty games. The man is a horse, no doubt about it, but he’s also had the kind of run support he almost never saw in his Diamondback days, and there’s no doubt about that, either. His teammates, who have provided him with a staggering number of runs per start, [54] Nine is the number that comes to mind, but you know what Ole Case said: “You could look it up.” last night staked him to three in the first and eight more by the time he left to a standing O.

Wakefield’s start two nights ago was a smellier kettle of fish. I purposely stayed away from this manuscript when it was over, because any words I wrote would have begun harshly: “This team is almost ready for postseason, where they will become some better club’s stepping-stone.” Tim Wakefield did not figure in the decision, and looked terrible for the third outing in a row. The talking heads have begun to speculate that Terry Francona may go to a four-man rotation in postseason, and that if he does, Wake will be the odd man out.

This may or may not happen, but the simple fact of Boston’s 8–6 win over Tampa Bay on the evening of September 15th was that almost every pitcher Francona sent to the mound in Wakefield’s wake (with the sole exception of Keith Foulke, who pitched a one-two-three ninth) looked terrible. There may not be a Curse of Sports Illustrated (I’ll wait and see on that one), but there certainly is a Curse of Middle Relief in the big leagues, and once you get past Mike Timlin (and— maybe —Alan Embree), the Red Sox also suffer from the disease.

I’ve rarely gone to bed after a win feeling as unhappy and unsettled as I did after that game on the fifteenth. Usually when I can’t sleep, what I see are key plays that went against my team (Jorge Posada’s flare of a single against Pedro in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, for instance). What I kept seeing after that second game against Tampa Bay—a game we probably deserved to lose—was Curtis “The Mechanic” Leskanic shaking his head after giving up the two-run dinger that allowed the hapless D-Rays to pull even, 6–6, late in the game. Why are you shaking your head? I wanted to scream at him. This is a team filled with weak hitters, Punch and Judy hitters, but they’re still major league hitters, my friend, and if you hang one, it’s going out of the yard. What’s so hard to figure out about that?

Never mind, I tell myself; that night’s ugly piece of work and Father Curt’s thing of beauty last night are both going to look the same in the win column at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, we’re just three and a half games out of first, and tonight it’s Yankees–Red Sox.

I really don’t expect to get this one in, with the train of Hurricane Ivan due, but there’s been such hype (and that rarity—an actual capacity crowd at the Stadium, not just a paper sellout, thanks to us) that George will do whatever it takes to play it. In the third there’s a rain delay. From their cozy NESN studios, Tom Caron and Eck gush over highlights from the last Yankee series in Fenway. Here’s the Tek–A-Rod tiff, and Bill Mueller’s walk-off shot against Mo—tape we’ve seen hundreds of times already.