Stephen King - Faithful

Last night’s game against the Yankees was a good-news/bad-news kind of thing. You know, like in all the jokes you’ve heard. Doctor comes bopping into his patient’s examination room and says, “Mr. Shlub, I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news. Which do you want first?”

“Gimme the bad news first,” Mr. Shlub says. “Save the good news.”

“The bad news is that you’re going to die of a horribly painful disease in six weeks or so, your blood’s going to boil and your skin’s going to creep right off your body, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it,” the doctor says. “Now do you want the good news?”

Mr. Shlub starts to blubber. “What good news can there be after something like that?” he asks the doctor, when he can speak coherently.

“Well,” the doctor says in a confidential tone of voice, “I’m dating a nurse from Pediatrics, and she is so hot!”

The worst news to come out of last night’s ALCS Game 1 is, of course, that we lost it. The good news is that the Red Sox made a game of it after being no-hit by Mike Mussina into the seventh. Starting with Mark Bellhorn’s one-out double in the top of that inning, Boston smacked a total of 10 hits and scored 7 runs, coming back from what was an 8–0 deficit (with the tying run on third in the eighth, the camera caught father-son Yankee fans exchanging caps in some arcane but endearing good-luck ritual). The Sox gave the Yankees a scare; the Sox silenced the Yankee fans; the Sox even gave their own fans something to go to bed at quarter to midnight feeling good about.

The good news about Curt Schilling’s head is that it’s on straight. Father Curt says he doesn’t believe in the so-called Curse of the Bambino. “I’m a Christian,” he says fearlessly. The bad news about Father Curt’s ankle is that it’s not on straight. He couldn’t push off on his right foot last night, threw only two fastballs at speeds greater than 90 mph, and the Yankees made him pay, pounding out 6 hits and 6 runs over three innings. [71] It needs to be pointed out that, due to Boston’s ferocious late-inning assault, not even those 6 runs were enough to assure the Yankees of the win. Due to the baseball scoring system—and we could argue about whether or not it’s fair to Father Curt in this case; there are points to be made either way—Schilling takes the loss, but the runs which really sank us were the two driven in by Bernie Williams, against Mike Timlin, with two out in the bottom of the eighth.

The bad news is that this ankle injury happened at a cursedly bad time. The good news is that Father Curt—who doesn’t believe in that publicity-stunt curse, anyway—threw only 58 pitches in last night’s mortar attack, and if the ankle gets better, he should be more than ready for Game 5, always assuming there is one.

The bad news is that the Yankees scored 6 of their 10 runs after two were out. The good news is that the Red Sox scored all 7 of their runs after two were out, and stranded only two runners all night.

The bad news is that the Red Sox don’t win when Johnny Damon doesn’t hit—2004 baseball history pretty well proves this—and last night Johnny wore that fabled golden sombrero, striking out four times and looking more lost each time. The good news is that Jason Varitek socked a two-run dinger over the center-field wall, ending a personal 0-for-36 drought at Yankee Stadium, and followed the dinger with a single against Mariano Rivera to open the ninth when the Red Sox once again—splendidly, against all probability—brought the tying run to the plate. Before the game, Curt Schilling said he couldn’t think of anything better than “making fifty thousand or so Yankee fans shut up.” He wasn’t able to do that, but in the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings last night, Boston batters were.

The bad news is that if this series goes more than four games, Moose Mussina will be back. The good news is that the Boston batters who brought the late-inning thunder last night will also be back, and in each and every remaining game.

The bad news is that Boston is a game in the hole. The good news is that at this point in the season they don’t make you turn in your uniform and condemn you to spend the winter playing golf unless you lose three more.

And finally, there’s the most fascinating bad-news/good-news matchup of them all, and the best reason I know to tune in to baseball rather than to the third presidential debate tonight: Pedro will be starting for the Red Sox. The Yankees have hammered him this year, and Pedro has publicly proclaimed them his Daddy. That’s the bad news.

But no one has more heart than Pedro Martinez, and no one will try any harder to send the Red Sox back to Fenway Park with a split. That’s the good news.

Let’s see what news they lead with on the sports page tomorrow.

SO:What a horribly convoluted endgame to get Rivera a save and exorcise the Ghost of Billy Mueller. At 8–0 there’s no reason for him to come in, so in the seventh Matsui has two balls go off his glove, Bernie commits the worst error on a ground-ball single I’ve ever seen, and Tek hits a homer, something he hasn’t done in the Stadium in years. In the ninth, down three, I knew we couldn’t go in order so I wasn’t surprised that we got the two guys on to reach Mueller. And wasn’t surprised by the double-play ending. The only consolation is that the powers that be have to give us a win to make up for this train wreck.

You’ll notice, though, that in all the hubbub they made sure Moose kept his win.

SK:Hey, I thought Moose deserved that win. And when the hurly-burly’s done, when the game is lost and won, who gets the blame? Wakefield, for serving up a pair? Timlin, for serving it up to Bernie? Meanwhile, I think Father Curt’s done for the year. Maybe there really is a curse. Looks like the tragickal Mr. Lowe in Game 5 (if there is a Game 5; I presume there will be, and the way the weather looks, it’ll be about October 25th). Meanwhile, who’s your Daddy? Jon Lieber or Pedro Martinez? Or is it…Hideous Hideki? Is he your Daddy?

Go Sox!

Wear that hair!

SO:No blame, just an ugly game. But look at it this way: we’ve already got half of the split (just the wrong half—a-huh a-huh). Let’s see what the tiki gods decree tonite. Pedro’s got to have it, and we’ve got to hit early.

Jon Lieber: Pittsburgh Pirate. Bronson Arroyo: Pittsburgh Pirate.

Yeah, the weather’s going to test us—scattered showers all weekend, and we’re talking three night games, with the temp down around forty-five. Add a little wind and wetness and we’ll be sitting in deck chairs on the SS Fenway .

I could continue with the good-news/bad-news thing, there’s plenty of material for it, [72] The good news: by the bottom of the fourth inning, all but the most abysmally drunk Yankee fans—the twenty-year-old naked-to-the-waist males with large blue-black entwined NYs painted on their chests, in other words—had given up on the mocking “Who’s your Daddy?” chant. The bad news: Pedro was behind 1–0 from the first inning (Derek Jeter, the first batter he faced, scored), left trailing 3–0, and eventually took the loss, 3–1. but with the Sox headed back to Boston down two games to none, I don’t have the heart for it. It’s been thirteen years since a team has climbed out of an 0-2 hole in an LCS, and the Red Sox have never done so.