Stephen King - Faithful

Closers blow saves; that’s just a fact of baseball. Yankee fans will say that Mariano Rivera doesn’t, but here’s proof—-again—that it doesn’t matter if you’re Mo or John “Way Back” Wasdin or the old Derek Lowe or Eric Gagne or Eck in his prime. Closers blow saves. You just hope they aren’t important ones. Like Game 7 of the World Series. Oh, sorry, Mo.

For our publicity mission to Yankee Stadium (where the only sellouts are the players), I wear my Bill Mazeroski jersey. On the train down, I sit beside an older Yankee fan wearing a Yogi Berra cap. As you’ll remember, Yogi was playing left that fateful October day in Forbes Field and watched the Yanks’ hopes fly over his head and over the wall. The guy next to me doesn’t recognize the jersey, and I think—perhaps uncharitably—that being oblivious of history is a luxury we, as Sox fans, can’t afford.

Later, at the Stadium, in response to the chant “Nineteen eighteen,” I turn around and bellow “Nineteen sixty.”

And—I swear to God—one kid says, “What happened in 1960?”

The first game of this series was a pulse-pounder which the Red Sox won in their last at-bat. In yesterday’s, played under swag-bellied gray skies and in a drizzle that had become a steady rain by the seventh, the Yankees really won it in the first, when they tacked a five-spot on the tragickal Mr. Lowe, to the joy of the not-quite-full Stadium. (Not to say the relief.) They added four more in the second and were off to the races. By then Mr. Lowe was gone, suffering from a tragickal blowe to the ankle, inflicted by ye olde horsehide sphere. It was, we are told, his earliest exit from a game in five years. I wasn’t terribly surprised at how poorly he performed. Mr. Lowe is simply having one of Those Years.

As for the Yankees…well, they seem to be making a kind of goal-line stand: This close and no closer, with the this close part being two games. At one point in yesterday’s game it was 13–0 bad guys, and the mostly unremarkable Yankee hurler Jon Lieber took a no-no deep into the game, before David “I Love It When You Call Me Big Papi” Ortiz hit a home run to break up that nonsense.

Worst of all, Scribner, who plans to publish this book, had set up an interview with Bob Minzesheimer of USA Today at the ballpark, along with a photographer who took pictures of Stewart and me until every Yankee fan in our immediate vicinity [57] That would be roughly seventy-five hundred, most of them equipped with Yankee hats, Derek Jeter T-shirts, and upturned middle fingers for people wearing Red Sox gear. had gotten a good gawk and a chance to boo. I have decided that hell is probably an endless photo op at an opposing team’s ballpark where your club is getting its fudge packed most righteously, to the great glee of the sellout crowd where you are not being allowed to hide like the microbe you would dearly love to be.

At last we were allowed to escape, and could I have written all that yesterday? Technically, yes. It was a Saturday-afternoon game, and I had plenty of time later on to jot these fan’s notes. Emotionally, no. I was too bummed out. And the bottom line? The ironic bottom line? After all the emotional highs and lows of the last two games, the Boston Red Sox are exactly where they were before coming to New York. Yes! We’re three and a half behind in the AL East, and thanks to an Angels loss to Texas yesterday, we are five and a half ahead in the wild card. So in the end, it’s just two more games off the ever-diminishing schedule.

Ah, but this afternoon comes the cherry on the banana split: Martinez versus Mussina. 1:05 P.M., at the Stadium. Wonder if I could scalp myself a little ticket to that game?

Hmmmm.

Later : I did, and Pedro was awful. The Red Sox were awful. The New York fans were loathsomely jubilant. I paid $350 for a box seat and watched the Yanks put an 11–1 pounding on my Sox. This afternoon, even the sunshine was awful. It was, in many ways, the apotheosis of the Dark Side Red Sox fan experience: the Red Sox fan not as Fearless Booster of the Underdog but as Beaten Loser, slinking from the park with his head down, eager to put the sound of those cheering fans behind him and clinging to the twin tenets of the Manny Ramirez Credo for comfort: Turn the page and We gotta jus’ keep goin’, man.

Tomorrow, Wakefield faces the Birds at Fenway Park. I hope, because I am faithful. I fear, because I know that when you’re going bad, you usually get more of the same.

The best news is quiet news from the West Coast: the Angels are also weekend losers, and we’re still five and a half games up in the wild-card race. On that side of the dance card, it’s just two more games off the schedule. But yes, I fear the Orioles, with whom we have gone 1-4 so far this season at Fenway, where we have won so many against other teams.

Today we get our asses kicked again, 11–1, with most of the damage done in an eight-run fifth, as the Yanks chase Pedro. It’s humiliating, the kind of loss your friends at school will taunt you about tomorrow.

It’s also strangely unreal. The Yankees aren’t this good (even with performance-enhancing drugs), and we’re not this bad, and I have a creeping suspicion that this is payback for Friday night. We—Sox fans, I mean—get the thrilling comeback win, and their fans get the revenge blowouts. Looking back at how Mo blew the save Friday night (walk, hit batsman, missed location (and Sheffield’s bad throw), bloop that Lofton for some reason pulls up on), I suspect (at the risk of being labeled paranoid) this is all being orchestrated to ramp up interest on both sides. When a team does nothing to win and still wins, you have to wonder. Of course, 1986’s Game 6 is a classic example of that: walk, hit batsman, muffed grounder.

Mo also blew the Tek–A-Rod game with a gopher ball to Bill Mueller after throwing one to Trot that he just missed.

And Mo blew Game 7 of the 2001 series. This fan’s got to wonder.

The goal would be the dullest but most important of goals—financial security. Obscene TV ratings lead to obscene TV contracts. And who could blame the league? TV money floats the whole show. Just look at the NHL (if you can find them) for the flip side.

Wake tonight against Baltimore, and there’s a sense of letdown, as if these games mean less. It’s not true, of course; it’s just a by-product of all the hype, and the fact that it’s Monday. (It’s no coincidence that of the six series we play against the Yanks, all but one straddle a weekend.)

Wake’s lost three straight and has looked awful. Tonight he’s sharp until the fourth, when he walks a batter, gives up a ground-ball single, hits a guy, walks a run in, then surrenders a grand slam to B. J. Surhoff. The O’s add three more in the fifth, walking and stealing bases, taking advantage of a passed ball and a blown rundown, and while we chip away late to make the final 8–6, this one was in reach only for one or two at-bats.

The Angels win so they’re four and a half back. Most of the Faithful think the wild card’s in the bag, but we have problems with the O’s, and face them seven times in our last thirteen games. Honestly, I’d rather play the Yankees.

SK:My son Joe says that Derek Lowe (and a number of other Red Sox) were out partying hearty on Friday night (and into the wee hours of Saturday morning) under the assumption that the Saturday game (i.e., our game) would be a rainout. Have you heard this? Is it a Sons of Sam Horn thing?