Faithful

February 21st

After the Schilling acquisition, and during the A-Rod negotiations, I felt distinctly weird…out of kilter as a Red Sox fan. I started to think, “I’m going to come back to a team of superhero strangers wearing Red Sox uniforms. Who are these guys?” It was a dreamlike feeling, both pleasant and unpleasant…like getting gas at the dentist and knowing it’s going to hurt like almighty hell later on. Then the A-Rod deal fell through—the same old Red Sox problem: lots of cash, just not quite enough cash. And the Yankees got him. And the tabloids gloated. And even the New York Times, that supposedly staid gray lady, got in a crack; the Yankees, one of their columnists said, continued to show the Red Sox how to win, winter and summer. That was when the unpleasant dreamlike feeling burst, and I woke up to real life, smelling not the coffee but the peanuts and Cracker Jacks: Ah yes, screwed again. Hello, world, I’m a Red Sox fan. For better or worse, I’m a Red Sox fan, and I’ve just been screwed again. Same as it ever was. So bring on the Yankees, and may Alex Rodriguez bat .240.

We’re going to spring training, the whole family. It’s a surprise, my birthday present, a long weekend in Fort Myers. I’ve always wanted to go, ever since I was a kid in Pittsburgh listening to the Bucs warm up in sunny Bradenton. Trudy says she’s sick of listening to me yap about it, so here it is, a folder with the plane tickets, the hotel reservations, the rental-car agreement. We can’t afford it, but I can’t say that.

And there’s the envelope with the game tickets and the diagram of City of Palms Park. We’re going to see the Sox play their traditional game against Boston College on Friday, then the first game of the year against the Yankees Sunday and finally a Monday game against the Twins, who also train in Fort Myers. I forget about the money for a second and check out where we’re sitting.

I hit the Sox website to find out more about the training complex. I figure my son Steph and I can hang out and watch the players while Trudy and Caitlin beach it. I check the schedule, thinking the BC game is the very first of the spring.

It’s not. We’re playing the Twins at their place on Thursday. I go to their website and buy four tickets for it.

We’re also playing Northeastern at home on Friday night. I buy four more.

February 23rd

My brother John calls from Pittsburgh and asks me who he should draft from the Sox for his AL fantasy team. He’s a Pirates fan and doesn’t follow the junior circuit closely. Personally, I don’t like fantasy leagues, the way they make you root for individual players over team performance, but I do my best for him.

“Keith Foulke should get forty saves no matter how badly he pitches.”

“Last year you told me Mendoza.”

“Bronson Arroyo.”

“He’s no good. At least he wasn’t when he was with us. Who else?”

“Pokey Reese.”

“We had him. He’s always injured.”

I hang up feeling unhelpful, all of my arcane knowledge useless.

Second base is the one big question mark this season, besides not having a lefty starter. Pokey Reese has missed the better part of the last two seasons with leg and thumb injuries. He’s a little guy, a speedster who played option QB in high school, but suddenly he’s become delicate. He could be the Gold Glover he was a few years back and hit a respectable .260, or he could tank. Already the Sox are looking at Mark Bellhorn, Tony Womack and Terry Shumpert as insurance policies.

Nomar says he’s excited about playing beside such a slick fielder. Every spring it seems he says the same thing, because it’s been ten years since we’ve had the same Opening Day second baseman in consecutive seasons. We let playoff hero Todd Walker walk. Rey Sanchez got the boot after a decent year. Before that we had Jose Offerman, ex–general manager Dan Duquette’s laughable answer to losing Mo Vaughn.

Duquette, you’ll remember, is the genius who said Roger Clemens was “in the twilight of his career” and let him go off to Toronto, where he won back-to-back Cy Youngs. In the ’80s there was continuity at second. Jerry Remy, Marty Barrett and Jody Reed all enjoyed long stays, and were fan favorites (Jerry still is, doing color for NESN). Duquette, trading our top prospects yearly in his attempt to build an instant champion, stripped the farm system, and now our second baseman—like our closer—is a replacement player.

February 25th

I’m trying to get tix for Stewart (and Stewart’s wife Trudy) and me to the annual game pitting the Red Sox B-team (invitee Brian “Dauber” Daubach should be starting for the Sox) against the Boston College baseball team. Ordinarily these would be a slam dunk—prime real estate up in Owner’s Country at City of Palms Park, and maybe a couple of spots among the Escalades and Navigators in the players’ parking lot—but my main man, Kevin Shea, has moved on, and so it’s nervous-making time. How about the satellite connection? Can I get New England Sports Network (aka NESN, aka The Home of the Free and Land of the Eck) down here? Yes. Thank God. But my subscription from last year has lapsed. Oh shit. And how many spring training games will they carry, anyway? Oh shit, maybe Joe Castiglione can help me with tix to the Sox/BC game…but he wanted me to blurb his book, and it deserves a blurb, but I haven’t done it yet…

It’s nervous time.

Oh God, I wish Curt Schilling was only thirty-two.

February 27th

I’ve been trying to nail down tickets to the home opener for months now. It’s been sold out since five minutes after seats went on sale, but I’ve got an in. Last year I managed to score some last-minute seats—field boxes ten rows behind home plate. Took the kids out of school, only to sit in the freezing rain for three hours before the game was called. I figured we’d get the same seats, but when the replacements came they were grandstands. I sent them back, but the ticket office never got back to me. At the end of the season, I called and asked what the deal was, and Naomi there said they’d give me two field boxes for this year’s opener and a chance to buy two more.

But so far I’ve been having trouble getting through to Naomi. My great fear is that she’s changed jobs and we’ll be stuck watching the game on TV.

February 28th

I vet the depth chart on the website as if I’m Theo, trying to figure out who to keep, who to cut, who to ship to Pawtucket. We’ve brought the expanded forty-man roster to camp, along with twelve nonroster invitees. By Opening Day, management will whittle these fifty-two down to twenty-five, and of the twenty-five spots, twenty are already filled. Essentially, thirty-two players, most with big league experience, are fighting for five spots reserved for middle relievers and backup position players.

One guy who I hope makes it is Brian Daubach. Even though he’s a millionaire, fans still see him as a scrappy blue-collar player. He paid his dues in the minors with the Marlins and Devil Rays before getting his chance with the Sox, and played well as a platoon guy before getting demoted for Tony Clark (who he outplayed to win his job back), then dumped for the awful Jeremy Giambi. “We want Dauber!” we’d shout after Giambi struck out looking again.

Now he’s back, and his main competition is David McCarty, a good defensive first baseman we picked up from Oakland at the end of last season. As a lefty hitter with power, Dauber has the edge, but since David Ortiz already fills that bill, McCarty’s glove might be more valuable in the late innings. McCarty, weirdly, also plans on trying to pitch, and we’re so desperate for lefties that Francona’s going to let him.

February 29th

Reporters following Byung-Hyun Kim say he stays till 1 A.M. working out, but that he naps at all times. I wonder if BK’s regimen is like the Japanese, who throw two hundred pitches a day. He’s young and talented, with that weird submarine delivery, but he’s never thrown a full season as a starter. If he can give us two hundred innings and twenty quality starts, we should win the East. The worry is that he’s a head case. He gave Fenway the finger when we booed him during the introductions before the ALCS, and in the off-season he smashed a photographer’s camera. I guess he’s this year’s Oil Can Boyd or Cowboy Carl Everett.

March 1st

Steve calls as Trudy’s microwaving her lunch. I can barely hear him through the Geiger-like static. For the BC game, we’re parking in the players’ lot and sitting in the owner’s booth. As a bleacher rat, I’m a little nervous. What do you say to an owner—“Way to own”?

March 2nd

Oops—Yankees Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield received steroids from Barry Bonds’s trainer, according to the ongoing federal probe. Giambi showed up at camp looking shrunken. Sheffield says he’ll pee in a cup anytime anyplace, but when a reporter produces a cup, Sheff backs down. Makes me wonder if Steinbrenner went out and got A-Rod and Travis Lee in case the league suspends the BALCO Boys.

March 3rd

All day an unreal, nearly paralyzing feeling. It seems so impossible that we’re blowing off work and school that we have to keep repeating the news to each other like lottery winners: “We’re going to Florida!”

In the Charlotte airport, waiting for our connection to Fort Myers, I look around the gate for fellow pilgrims, but the one kid wearing a cap is a Brewers fan. It’s only when we’re on board that the hard core begin dribbling in—four single guys in their twenties, all big enough to be players, in various Sox hats.

We get in after midnight and the airport’s crazy. In the long line at the rental-car center, half the people are in Boston garb. Fort Myers is an endless grid of strip malls and stoplights, and everyone drives like they’re either having a heart attack or trying to find an emergency room for someone who is. We fly past Mattress World, Bath World, Rug World. It’s Hicksville, Long Island, with palm trees and pelicans.

Our hotel has personality—unfortunately it’s the personality of a lunch lady turned crack whore. Bikers and twentysomethings early for spring break wander the parking lot, knocking back Coronas and margaritas to the thumping of a ragged cover band. The hotel’s assurance on their website that they don’t rent to anyone under twenty-one seems less a defensive measure now than an admission of a long-standing problem. It’s one-thirty and the music is thundering up from the stage, one floor below our balcony. The song ends and the drunk girls scream. The drunk guys go “Wooooo!”

March 4th

I want to get up and be at the practice fields by nine. I expect it’ll be just me and Steph, but Trudy comes too, driving while I navigate. We peel off the Tamiami Trail and in a few blocks we see City of Palms Park. According to the website, the training complex is two and a half miles straight down Edison, but there’s no parking. You’re supposed to park here and ride a shuttle bus to the practice fields.

City of Palms Park is understated and classic from the outside, a plain white concrete facade three stories tall, with flags for all the AL teams flying atop the roof, and one window-sized Sox logo over the green main gates. There’s no one on the plaza in front, just the stalky palm trees. I don’t see anywhere to park, so I tell Trudy to go ahead and cruise the practice fields.

We get lucky—the lot for the practice facility is half-empty. The clear-coated monster trucks and chrome-wheeled Escalades are obviously the players’. We park in a far corner and head for the nearest gate. AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY, a sign says. As we walk through, I look for other fans, but only see a few people who might be players’ relatives.

There are five fields and, closest to us, a roofed arcade. Someone’s in there smacking balls, but it’s too dim to see who, and we’re trying to act cool. We head for a field where the players are stretching. No one challenges us. When we reach the team, we see why—it’s not the big club but the rookie and minor league invitees, guys with no shot this year, but who may develop and move up through the system.

The pitchers run bunt drills. The outfielders handle line-drive singles silently fired from a rubber-wheeled machine. Former players Luis Alicea and U L Washington coach the infielders, tossing short-hops the players have to backhand barehanded. The range of skill is evident. Some never miss while others are lucky to pick one cleanly.

Summers, we see a lot of the triple-A PawSox over in Pawtucket and the double-A Portland Sea Dogs when they visit New Britain, but the only player I recognize is Hanley Ramirez. He’s the number one prospect in our farm system, a shortstop with speed and power. He’s only twenty, and rumor is he might be promoted from single-A Augusta to Portland, with an eye towards taking Nomar’s place in 2005. One problem is he made 36 errors last year and hit only .275 after batting over .330 at lower levels. Another is that he’s a hothead, earning a ten-game suspension for making an obscene gesture to the crowd. Here, in practice, he moves like he’s already a superstar, cool and loose and slouchy.

There are three seniors watching with us, a woman and two men, one of whom is wearing a Springfield Elks cap. The woman has a camera, a couple signed balls and a handful of minor league cards. She wants to get Jamie Brown to sign his. She knows all the players taking batting practice. This is what they do, she says. They’re mad at the Sox for forcing them to buy ticket packages that include three crummy games to get the one good one against the Yanks, so now they just come to the complex and watch the kids.

BP wraps, so we ramble along the road beyond the last field. It’s hot, and Steph’s cheeks are red. We’ve circled the entire complex, and walk through the lot just as two women in a ’69 Firebird convertible pull up. They’re older than any of the guys here, but beach-tanned and gym-tight. I don’t think Steph’s seen Bull Durham or knows what a Baseball Annie is, but he probably wouldn’t be interested anyway.

We come back in the players’ entrance, which has a Boston Globe honor box beside it. The batting alleys are full of guys getting extra swings in. By the backstop, the old lady is getting Jamie Brown to sign. We’ve only been here a few hours, but it’s enough. It’s only our first day and we’re already wilting.

After putting in some beach time, we get caught in traffic and are nearly late for the night game. Hammond Stadium holds only 7,500, but it seems they’ve all brought their cars. The Twins have elected to park the overflow on the outfields of their practice facility. We just shrug and follow the soft ruts in front of us and nose it in against the 330 sign by the foul pole.

“The temperature at game time here in Fort Myers is seventy-nine degrees,” the PA announcer informs us, to applause. “In Minneapolis, it’s thirty-four with a mix of rain and snow.”

Besides the ailing Johnny Damon and Trot Nixon sitting out, the starting lineup is most decidedly the A-team. Gabe Kapler, a solid backup outfielder, leads off, followed by last year’s surprise batting champ Bill Mueller, Manny, Nomar, David Ortiz, Kevin Millar, Jason Varitek, PawSock Adam Hyzdu subbing in right for Trot, and in the nine-spot, Pokey Reese.

The Twins roll out their postseason lineup, including outfielders Shannon Stewart and Torii Hunter, and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz, as well as phenom Joe Mauer at catcher.

It’s the first inning of the first exhibition game, but when Bill Mueller launches one to deep center, Torii Hunter gets on his horse and runs it down, diving at full extension like it’s the playoffs.

The intensity only lasts a couple of innings. By the fourth the substitutions are wholesale and the game takes on a double-A flavor. The Sox win on a broken-bat bleeder by prospect Jeremy Owens, and we leave happy, picking up our free grapefruit, two each in a yellow mesh bag. In the lot I spy an old orange VW bus with RED SOX NATION handpainted in red across the back window. Three guys in their early twenties are piling in the side door, and for a second I envy them the trip. Then I remember that I’m on it too.

March 5th

It’s sunny and eighty-four in Fort Myers, the sort of faux summer day that fills Florida’s west coast with tourists in the month of March and makes driving a pain in the ass—often a dangerous pain in the ass, as many of the people with whom one is sharing the road are old, bewildered, and heavily medicated. All the same, I’m in a chipper mood as I stash my car among the Hummers and Escalades in the players’ parking lot (I have a special dispensation from Kerri Moore, the new Public Relations gal). It’s a perfect day for my first game of the year.

Well, okay, so it’s not really a game; more of a seven-inning scrimmage against the Boston College baseball team, which is down to take its annual pasting from the experienced teams along the Sun Coast and Alligator Alley (Florida college teams get to play and practice year-round, which hardly seems fair) before swinging north to play under usually cloudy skies and in cutting winds that make fifty degrees feel like thirty. But they are naturally juiced to be playing against the big boys, and in front of an audience that numbers in the thousands instead of the hundreds or—sometimes, early on—the mere dozens.

City of Palms Park in Fort Myers is Fenway’s sunnier-tempered little brother. The aisles are wider, the concession lines are shorter, the prices are saner, the pace is slower, and the mood is laid-back. One hears the occasional cry of You suck!—these are Boston fans after all—but they are isolated, and often draw disapproving looks. This is a mellow crowd, and hey, why not? We’re still in first place—along with the Yankees, and the Orioles, and even the Devil Rays, who dwell in their somehow dingy dome up the road in Tampa—and all things are possible. Curse? What curse? As if to underline this, a grinning bald guy holds up a sign for Pokey Reese. OKEY DOKEY, POKEY, it reads.

It’s an afternoon for saying hello to old friends from previous springs going back—can it be?—six years, now; everyone from the parking-lot attendant and the elderly security guard outside the elevator going up to the offices and the press boxes to a laid-back Larry Lucchino, who wants to know if I’m over my bout of pneumonia. And Stewart O’Nan is here, looking exactly as he did last October during the American League Championship Series against the Yankees. Maybe a little more gray in the goatee—being a Red Sox fan will do that to you—but otherwise helooks like the same old Stew. He could even be munching from the same bag of peanuts. The wonderful Kerri Moore (who I still haven’t met, although I did leave her a signed copy of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon as a thank-you) has gotten us seats directly behind the screen, and the grass is so green it almost looks painted on.

Tim Wakefield starts for Boston and gets a solid round of applause: these people remember the games he won in postseason, not the catastrophic season-ending home run he gave up to Aaron Boone. He throws more hard stuff than I’m used to seeing, but Wake’s bread-and-butter pitch is the knuckleball, and to him the really hard stuff is a heater that clocks in at 81 miles an hour (the scoreboard down here gives no radar-gun readout, so we just have to guess). The top of the BC lineup hits him pretty well, and after half an inning they’ve put up a two-spot on four hits. This is a pretty typical early-spring outing for Wakefield, who just throws the one inning. At thirty-seven he’s not only the dean of the Red Sox pitching staff, but the player who’s been with the club longest.

A lot of the guys who see action in the Sox-BC scrimmage (which the Sox eventually win, 9–3, big surprise there) are a lot less familiar. There’s Jesus Medrano, for instance, and career minor leaguer Andy Dominique; there’s Tony Schrager, who is wearing the highest number I’ve ever seen: 95. Holy shit, I think, that could almost be his temperature. These guys and plenty of others will undoubtedly be on their way back to the Pawtucket Red Sox, the Portland Sea Dogs, and the Lowell Spinners (where the team mascot, Stew informs me, is the world-famous Canalligator) when the forty-man roster starts to shrink. For others, so-called invitees like Terry Shumpert, Tony Womack, and the world-famous Dauber, things are more serious. If it doesn’t work here for them, it may not work anywhere. The career of a pro baseball player is longer than that of the average pro basketball or football player, but it is still short compared to that of your average account executive or ad salesman, and although the pay is better, the end can come with shocking suddenness.

But no one worries too much about stuff like that on a day like this. It’s only the second game-day of the short spring season, the weather’s beautiful, and everyone’s loose. Around the fourth inning, Red Sox radio broadcaster Joe Castiglione comes down and sits with Stewart and me for a little while. Like the players, Joe looks trim, tanned and relaxed. He has his own book coming out in a month or so, a wonderful, anecdote-crammed tripdown memory lane called Broadcast Rites and Sites, subtitled I Saw It on the Radio with the Boston Red Sox. (One of the best is about the grand slam Boston catcher Rich Gedman hit off Detroit screwballer Willie Hernandez back in ’86.) He tells us more stories as he sits on the step at the end of the aisle, watching Boston College bat in the top of the fifth. Baseball is a leisurely game, and those of us who love it fill its pauses with stories of other games and other years. When I mention how hard I’m pulling for Brian Daubach to find a home with the ’04 Red Sox, Joe tells us how he set Dauber up with the woman who became his wife. “She said she didn’t like ballplayers because they were always hitting on her,” Joe says, smiling in the warm afternoon sun. “I told her she ought to meet this guy. I told her he was really different. Really nice.” Joe’s smile widens into a grin. “Then I sent Dauber in to get his hair cut,” he finishes. “Case closed.”

Stew and I look at each other and say the same thing at exactly the same moment: What hair? The Dauber’s got a quarter of an inch, at most. And we all laugh. It’s good to be laughing at a baseball game again. God knows the laughs were hard to come by last October.

I ask Joe if the college kids get excited about these games with the pros (I’m thinking of the BC pitcher who struck out big David Ortiz in the third, and wondering if he’ll still be telling people about it when he’s forty-five and paunchy). “Oh, like you wouldn’t believe,” Joe says, and then goes on to tell us the Red Sox player the college kids liked the most was the much maligned Carl Everett, who was dubbed Jurassic Carl by Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy (for his temper as much as his fundamentalist Christian beliefs), and who has since been traded to the Montreal Expos. “He was great to the [college players],” Joe says. “He’d spend lots of time talking to them and give them all kinds of equipment.” He pauses, then adds, “I bet he prospers in Montreal, because there’s no media coverage. People won’t be watching him so closely.”

By now it’s the bottom of the sixth, and Joe excuses himself. He and his broadcast partner, Jerry Trupiano (“Troop”), are doing the evening game (another slo-mo scrimmage, this time against Northeastern, with a fellow named Schilling starting for the Sox), and he has to prepare. But, like everything else that happens this day, the preparations will be leisurely, more pleasure than business. Joe knows a lot of people back home in New England will be listening, but not exactly paying attention—it’s the Soxversus Northeastern, after all…but it’s also baseball, Schilling on the mound, Garciaparra at short, and Varitek behind the plate (at least for a while, then maybe Kelly Shoppach, another guy with a high number). It’s the fact of it that matters, like that first robin you see on your still-snowy front lawn.

It’s too early to play really hard, and too early to wax really lyrical, either (God knows there’s too much labored lyricism in baseball writing these days; it’s even crept into the newspapers, which used to be bastions of statistics and hard-nosed reality—what sports reporters used to call “the agate”). But it can’t hurt to say that being here—especially after a serious bout of pneumonia—feels pretty goddamn wonderful. It’s like putting your hand out and touching a live thing—another season when great things may happen. Miracles, even. And if that isn’t touching grace, it’s pretty close.

Oh, shit, that’s too close to lyrical for comfort, but it’s been a good day. There was baseball. So let it stand.

March 6th

After a sloppy loss at the Twins’ place, we run into Dauber by the players’ lot. Everyone pushes toward him; it’s not a surge, more of a controlled approach, lots of jockeying. There’s a space of two feet around him that we seem to agree is forbidden. You can reach a ball or a card into it, but anything more would be a violation. No one tries to shake his hand or put an arm around him for a picture, as if that would be too personal.

I’m lucky enough to be in the front, in the middle.

“Welcome back,” I tell him.

“Thank you.” He’s surprisingly soft-spoken, you might even say shy.

“Have you noticed everyone’s been cheering the loudest for you, even here on the road.”

“It means a lot.”

I back off after he signs my ball, and see a Navigator with Illinois plates rolling up. I know Dauber’s the pride of Belleville, Illinois (along with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy), so I call, “Your ride’s here.”

“Thanks,” he says, and he’s off.

When we get back to the hotel, I’m unwinding on the balcony when I see a woman on the beach in an old Lou Merloni shirt. “Loooooooo ooooooooouuuuuu!” I hoot, and she turns around but doesn’t see me.

For years Lou Merloni—the Pride of Framingham, Massachusetts—was our regular schlub and native son. He could play anywhere in the infield or outfield, and was a reliable pinch hitter. Someone would get hurt, and he’d end up starting, hit .330, and then sit when the guy came back. He was Nomar’s best friend, yet Sox management seemed to delight in shipping him down to Pawtucket and calling him back up, a crazy yo-yo motion. Two years ago we shipped him to San Diego, only to get him back in midseason.

Lou’s gone, off to Cleveland. Lou, who last year Ben Affleck (post-Dogma, pre-Gigli) called a joke during a visit to the Sox broadcast booth. Dauber’s our Lou now.

March 7th

There’s no point trying to beat the crowd today. People will be camping out for this one. Scalpers line Edison like hitchhikers, holding up signs: I NEED TICKETS.

The lot’s almost full two hours before game time. People are tailgating, barbecuing on hibachis. A few rows closer to the park, four cotton-headed grandmothers in full Yankee regalia have their lawn chairs arranged under a shade tree.

Inside, it’s a mini-invasion. The Yanks have brought their A-team: Jeter’s at short and A-Rod, weirdly, is at third. It seems crazy to pay a guy that kind of money to play a corner. It must be ego: A-Rod’s got better range, a better glove, a better arm. Jeter seems to have lost his concentration the last few years.

A-Rod lets a grounder skip under his glove into left, and the crowd cheers.

I notice the Yanks have a #22—Clemens’s old number. After all Roger’s talk of wanting to go into the Hall wearing a Yankee cap, it seems a calculated insult. While the Sox haven’t officially retired his 21, it’s one of the few numbers that hasn’t been assigned.

I don’t see Giambi or Sheffield, and wonder if the Yankees are protecting them from us. Our seats are down the right-field line, and I’d been looking forward to listening to the fans peppering Sheffield and waving signs like JUICIN’ JASON.

There’s a commotion down by the Sox dugout, and a cheer. Nomar’s come out to shake hands with A-Rod. I only see their heads for an instant before the photographers swamp them. A few minutes later the scene repeats when Nomar greets Jeter.

The Yanks finish hitting—unimpressive except for this huge lefty I don’t recognize. No Giambi or Sheffield. Maybe they’re replacing their blood somewhere like Keith Richards did. And no sign of former Sox closer Tom Gordon, who would be sure to elicit a mixed reaction. I’ve got to ask Steve: Does that girl still love him?

Our lineup’s disappointing: Nomar’s sitting, so are Johnny D, Yankee killer David Ortiz and Dauber, and Trot’s still out. Bronson Arroyo, who threw a perfect game for Pawtucket, is our starter. He may not be Pedro or Schilling but he looks good in the first, getting Kenny Lofton, Jeter and A-Rod in order.

Kapler leads off with an easy grounder to Jeter, who throws it away.

“A-Rod’s smiling,” a guy behind me says.

Kapler steals on Contreras and scores on a single by Bill Mueller. Contreras slows the pace down to Cuban National Team speed, hoping to take away our momentum, but Ellis Burks smacks a single, Kevin Millar whomps a double and we’re up 3–0.

There’s a lot of taunting in the stands, and a Yankee fan snaps back, “Yeah, you guys are great in March.”

“What do Yankee fans use for birth control?” one guy asks, then answers, “Their personalities.”

In the bottom of the second, Pokey Reese, subbing for Nomar, takes Contreras deep. The Yanks bring in Rivera to stop the bleeding, as if this is Game 7.

The Sox counter with minor leaguer Jason Shiell, who melts down. Francona makes no concessions to the rivalry, or even the game. This is spring training, and he leaves Shiell in to see if he can fight his way out.

The big lefty who was blasting them in batting practice turns out to be veteran Tony Clark, who golfs a three-run shot.

“Let’s go Mets!” someone yells.

“Let’s go Tigers!”

“Let’s go Sox!”

The Yankees are still worried, it seems, because they bring in Felix Heredia to pitch the seventh and eighth. McCarty, who’s played the whole game, hits into a 4-6-3 double play in the eighth, making him 0 for 4. In the top of the ninth he blocks a hot smash at first, then kicks the ball away.

“How’s the weather in Pawtucket?” someone yells.

Hyzdu strikes out to end it. The final’s 11–7. Unsatisfying, but we did win the A game, knocking Contreras around, and Arroyo looked good.

Outside, we walk by the players’ lot, ogling a classic tomato-red GTO convertible. Someone says it’s Nomar’s, except he’s already left with Mia Hamm in her car.

A Jeep Cherokee with BK in it flies by us.

“You’re making friends,” someone shouts after him.

Several people confirm a new trade rumor: BK and Trot for Randy Johnson.

Most of the big names are long gone, but first-base coach Lynn Jones rolls down his window and signs, as does Cesar Crespo, driving a pimped-out Integra with Konig rims. Terry Francona doesn’t stop—“Another bad decision!”

A young guy pulls up in a Taurus. No one can place him. He stops and rolls down his window, but no one approaches.

“I’m only a rookie,” he says. “You probably wouldn’t want my autograph.”

He’s right, but we can’t say that to his face.

“Sure we do.” A couple of parents push their kids forward.

It’s Josh Stevens, a pitcher for the PawSox.

There are only four people left when we take off. It’s almost five.

Driving back to the hotel, I say, “I wonder if the Twins are playing tonight.”

“You want a divorce?” Trudy asks.

March 9th

We’re home, it’s snowing, and summer seems a long way off. Maybe it’s the weather, but that connection to the Sox that felt so strong just yesterday feels tenuous. I tell Steve it’s like getting a taste of high summer and then having it snatched away. By season’s end, I imagine it will seem Edenic, all possibility and perfect weather.

That night while we’re watching TV, Dunkin’ Donuts runs a commercial starring Curt Schilling. Schilling sits by his locker, eating a breakfast sandwich and listening to a language tape teaching him Bostonspeak. “Wicked hahd,” he repeats between bites. “Pahk. Play wicked hahd when I go to the pahk.” For several years now the spokesperson for Dunkin’ Donuts has been Nomar. Another sign he’s leaving?

March 12th

I catch an interview with PawSock third baseman Kevin Youkilis at the practice fields. In Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, A’s general manager Billy Beane champions Youkilis as “The Greek God of Walks.” He’s the kind of player Beane loves: average glove, so-so wheels, but a great eye, quick bat and astonishing on-base percentage. Likewise, Bill James, the Sox’s statistical guru, is high on the guy’s numbers. The interviewer is optimistic about Youkilis’s chances of making the team, which I think is crazy. He’s fourth on the depth chart behind Shump, and Shump’s probably not going to make it.

Youkilis is positive but realistic. “Hopefully I’ll make it up to Fenway this year”—meaning a cup of coffee in September when they expand the roster. Clips roll of the Monster seats and Pedro going up the ladder on a flailing Devil Ray, and again I’m ready for the season to start.

March 13th

Mr. Kim has a sore shoulder. I’m not surprised, with that goofy motion. Bronson Arroyo may take his slot, though the Courant says that during the first few weeks of the season the schedule’s spread out enough that we can go with a four-man rotation.

Steve’s not upset. He says Kim looked lost out there in the playoffs, as if he didn’t know where the ball was going.

“He’s only twenty-five,” I say, “and he’s already pitched in a lot of big games.”

“That’s part of his problem.” Stat maven Bill James found that the more innings pitchers threw before the age of twenty-three, the more problems they had later in their careers.

“What about Clemens?”

“James doesn’t count college. Clemens is actually one of the guys he uses to make his case. And Clemens is an exception, he’s a workhorse. Dan Duquette found that out when he looked at his stats and said his career was over.”

I don’t see how James can have it both ways—an example and an exception—and it seems notable that the only championship Clemens ever really led his team to was the College World Series, but even the devil can quote Scripture for his purposes.

In bed, in the dark, I match last year’s rotation to this year’s. Schilling’s a major upgrade from John Burkett, but who is Kim—now Arroyo—replacing? It takes me a minute to recall Casey Fossum—or Blade, as we called him, since he weighed about 140 pounds, his front literally concave. He was the guy we wouldn’t trade last spring to get Bartolo Colon, hoping he’d develop into a steady lefty starter. He was in and out all year with injuries and never got it going. Kim is an improvement on him, but Arroyo is in pretty much the same place Blade was two years ago, a triple-A player trying to earn that number five slot. We’ll be stronger, but there’ll still be a weak spot other managers can attack, stealing series by feeding their weaker pitchers to our aces, matching their ace against Lowe and then throwing their number two and three guys against Wake and Arroyo.

Should I be worrying about this now?

Terry Francona better be.

March 14th

In the Sunday sports section are two pictures of Jason Giambi, a before and after comparison that makes me go, “Whoa.” In the one from last year he’s pudgy-cheeked, a pad of fat under his chin, his biceps filling his sleeves. The one from a couple weeks ago shows a drawn, scrawny guy, rock-star thin, as if he’s been hit by some wasting disease. My immediate reaction isn’t partisan but humane: God, I hope he’s okay.

I don’t catch the final of today’s game until the late news. Pedro had control problems and walked in a run, but Johnny D homered and we beat the O’s 5–2. I’m glad we won, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m more concerned with Pedro’s walk total from last year, and the trouble he had finding the plate in the playoffs. It’s been three years since he’s been consistently dominant, and I wonder if he’ll ever get back to that level.

Because back then, there was no doubt. In 2001, we went to a game he was supposed to throw against Seattle, when Seattle was the hottest team in the majors. The game was delayed by rain about two hours, and we were worried that Pedro wouldn’t start because of the cold. He came out in the first and got Ichiro on three pitches, then John Olerud on three pitches, and then Edgar Martinez on three pitches. Nine pitches, nine strikes. I looked at Steph like, what did we just see?

It was a strange realization, witnessing him strike out seventeen or spin a one-hitter. Then, when you were watching Pedro, you knew you were watching the best pitcher—out of the millions of people to pick up a baseball and try to throw it past a batter—in the entire world. But that was three years ago.

March 17th

Tonight the high school dedicates Caitlin’s choral concert to a beloved custodian who died suddenly of a heart attack. The teacher reading a speech about him confesses that they bonded as Sox fans, and that “the morning after the Sox had blown another sure thing, we knew not to talk about the game until we’d had our coffees.”

An easel at the front of the auditorium holds a picture of him. He couldn’t be more than fifty-five, and I think how unfair it is that he never got to experience the Sox winning it all—like Trudy’s uncle Vernon, who died last year in his sixties. Whenever I saw him, we talked Sox. It was our one point of connection, a joshing, bitching camaraderie shared over beers. This summer’s going to be different without him, emptier. I think of the millions of Sox fans who rooted their entire lives and never felt that giddy vindication the Pats have given us twice now. There has to be a tremendous psychic charge built up from those faithful generations. This year, if we do it, we’ll be doing it for them too.

I don’t want to spend a long time maundering over mortality, but you know, when I was eighteen and Lonnie was pitching for the Sox, I knew I’d be around to see them win the Series. You know how it is when you’re eighteen and bulletproof. Now, holy shit, I’m fifty-seven, I’ve been hit by a car, I had a lung practically go up in smoke this winter, and I realize maybe it really won’t happen. And still I look at our team and sometimes wonder…Who are these guys? Oh well. I used to joke, you know, about having a tombstone that read: STEPHEN KING with the dates, and then, below that, a single sock, and below that: NOT IN MY LIFETIME. And below that: NOT IN YOURS, EITHER. Not a bad tagline, huh?

March 18th

I’m shocked to read in the paper that Nomar is 0 for spring—0 for 8, really—and has missed four straight games with that bruised heel. Cesar Crespo’s seizing the opportunity, hitting .435. Maybe he can take that extra roster spot.

March 19th

Trot flies out to L.A. to get checked by a specialist and looks doubtful for Opening Day. Kapler, who took a pay cut to stay with the Sox, must be cursing his agent.

Nomar shows up at the clubhouse with a boot on his foot. The trainer’s diagnosed him with Achilles tendinitis, but an MRI shows no structural damage. And Manny, I discover, is hitting .172. Now I’m glad we’ve got a few weeks to get things together.

The lottery for Green Monster seats begins, one entry per e-mail address. After getting aced out of regular tickets, I’m resigned, punching in our two entries.

Then I get an idea. I have dozens of friends who have no interest in Monster seats. I can use their names, and if by some chance they win, I can pay them face value for the tickets. I imagine scalpers are using dozens, even hundreds, of e-mail addresses.

The comparison’s unavoidable. Now I’m like them, bending the rules in my greed for the seats. It feels decidedly squirmy, and yet for the next few hours I span the continent, tapping Oklahoma and the Rockies and San Francisco and Edmonton for names, addresses, phone numbers and birthdays donated by pitying friends.

March 20th

The team dwindles as Theo assigns seven players to the minors, including optioning Kevin Youkilis to Pawtucket.

Steve’s worried about Trot, and brings up Tim Naehring, our ill-fated third baseman of the nineties. Naehring was that agonizing player who’s vastly talented but always hurt. At 6′2″, 205, he wasn’t delicate, but he broke his wrist, he broke his ankle, he had a bad back. He was on the DL so much that he came to seem like a platoon player. When he finally retired at age thirty, it seemed possible that he was just hurt again. That’s not how Trot wants to go out.

March 21st

This morning Philadelphia blew up the Vet. While Phillies fans remembered their one World Series win, Eagles fans hoped it would change their luck. Back when our old owners were planning to build a new Fenway, I heard the same kind of superstitious talk out of stalwarts like Ted Williams (who always hated the Monster’s effect on Sox pitchers). So, if we win, do we have to keep it as a good-luck charm? The Vet, like Three Rivers Stadium or the Kingdome, bit the dust not because it was unlucky or falling down, but because it just wasn’t a fun place to watch a ball game. That’s not true of Fenway, unless you’re stuck behind a pole or in line for the bathroom. The true test of a ballpark, and maybe a ball club, is percent capacity—how many butts versus how many seats—and Fenway’s aced that test every year since 1967.

Steve couldn’t even scrounge a ticket to the Sox-Jays game yesterday—at their place.

I call up the website and find we’ve shipped Tony Womack to the Cards. With Womack gone, we don’t have a designated late-inning base-stealer, unless Shump is showing flashes of his old speed. I feel bad for Womack, his salary and Lamborghini notwithstanding. He bunted and ran better than anyone on the team this spring, but not being able to play the field, he never had a chance.

Shump takes advantage of this break by straining a hamstring in the night game. So after finally outlasting Womack, he essentially hands McCarty the twenty-fifth spot.

March 24th

The drawing for Monster seats was yesterday. All morning I avoid opening my e-mail, not wanting to jinx our shot. It’s noon when I finally check, expecting dozens of forwards from my co-conspirators. There’s a piece of spam from priceline.com, that’s it.

At five there’s still nothing, good or bad.

The Sox are playing the Yanks on NESN. Trudy says I can watch it, but there’s an interesting documentary on, and I say, “That’s okay. It’s just pre-season.”

The documentary’s short, and we catch up to the game late. We’re behind 8–5, but when we rally in the bottom of the ninth, there aren’t enough Yankee fans left to overcome a hearty “Let’s go, Red Sox!” chant. It’s a classic Red Sox moment, that refusal to give in, even with Lowell Spinner Iggy Suarez stepping to the plate as our last hope. Iggy, feeling it, singles. With two on and two out, Dauber hits a flare to left, and it’s 8–6 with men on second and third and Hyzdu coming up. The chanting grows frantic, like we might actually pull it out. Hyzdu’s batting .173. He shows us why, taking three late, waving swings, and for the second time this spring we lose to the Yankees.

I turn the channel. I know it’s only exhibition, and that it’s classier not to chase after meaningless wins, but it’s irritating.

By midnight I still haven’t gotten any e-mail about Monster tickets. I think that can’t be good, but, like losing to the Yanks, there’s nothing I can do but eat it.

March 25th

I’m hoping/expecting to shove all the work off my desk and get down to City of Palms to see the Sox on Saturday. I’ve got an invite to watch the game with Dan “Curse of the Bambino” Shaughnessy, the writer most New England fans (at least those who read the Boston Globe) most readily associate with the Olde Towne Team. And this Curse thing has really entered the New England stream of consciousness, as I’m sure you know—it’s right up there with the Salem witch trials and Maine lobstah, up there to the point where some wit with a spray can (or tortured sports fan/artist, take your choice) has turned a traffic sign reading REVERSE CURVE on Storrow Drive into one reading REVERSE THE CURSE. Ofcourse you and I know the so-called Curse of the Bambino is about as real as the so-called Books of Mormon, supposedly discovered in a cave and read with the help of “magic peekin’ stones” (true!), but like all those Mormons, I kind of believe in spite of the thing’s patent absurdity.

March 27th

At three the remaining Green Monster seats go on sale. Considering we went 0 for 34 during the online lottery, I can’t imagine there are any left, but at 2:57 I’m watching the seconds tick off on the Weather Channel. I’ve enlisted Trudy, against her will, to take the other phone, and at exactly three we bombard the old info line.

Forty minutes into it, Trudy breaks through and hands over the phone. “I did my duty.”

I wait through “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” and Boz Scaggs’s “It’s Over,” and “(Na Na Hey Hey) Kiss Him Good-bye.” When I finally get a human, he says there are actual seats left, which I think is wrong.

“Anything for the Yankees?”

“I can get you second row for April eighteenth.”

“I’ll take ’em,” I say, thinking I’m getting away with something.

March 28th

Now they’re saying Nomar probably won’t make the opener. Francona, trying to play it down, says Nomar would be starting if it were September—as if he doesn’t know all the games count the same.

March 30th

The Yomiuri (Tokyo) Giants, who Matsui played for, are Japan’s answer to the Yankees—based in the largest city, with dozens of championships. My friend Phil in Tokyo has told me the Hanshin Tigers from Osaka-Kyoto are their Sox, a hard-luck club with fans who are devoted beyond all reason. Last year they won the Central League, beating the Giants, then lost a heartbreaker of a Series to the Daiei Hawks. For a couple weeks, people all over Japan were wearing their Hanshin Tigers gear, even in Tokyo.

It makes sense—Osaka-Kyoto is like Boston, a proud, much smaller city in the shadow of a megalopolis, and like the Yankees, the Giants have the most money and generate the most media coverage.

Yesterday the Hanshin Tigers pounded Donovan Osborne and the Yanks, 11–7. Their first baseman, with the un-Japanese-sounding name of Arias, has a sweet line in the box score: 4 2 3 5. Go Tigers!

Today the Yanks open the regular season there—in fact, with the time difference, they’re losing to Lou Piniella’s Devil Rays as I read the morning paper.

March 31st

Before I’ve eaten breakfast, the Yanks have crushed the D-Rays 12–1, and the division’s knotted at .500 again. We play the Twins at Hammond tomorrow, then head to Atlanta for two against the Braves before opening in Baltimore.

By Sunday, the club has to make eleven more cuts to get down to the final twenty-five-man roster. On the bubble: Dauber, McCarty, Crespo, Hyzdu and Shump. Three of the bubble guys and one lucky pitcher (maybe a second lefty to go with Embree) should make the team, at least for the next month. The trouble is, we’re short on outfielders. Theo and Francona may have to keep Hyzdu, who’s had the worst spring of any Red Sock, and send down Shump and Crespo, who’s had the best.

April 1st

On the very last day he could, Shump exercises an out clause in his contract and is free to sign with another club (eventually the Pirates), meaning Cesar Crespo, hitting .361, has earned a spot on the roster.

Met vet Bobby Jones and Tim Hamulack will fight for the final bullpen spot. They’ll both travel to Atlanta—as will Adam Hyzdu, who’s already been told by Francona he’ll start the year in Pawtucket. He’s the twenty-sixth man, the last one cut, and knows he could have made the team if he’d only hit the ball. With Trot out and Kapler starting, our backup outfielders are the thirty-eight-year-old, leg-injury-prone Ellis Burks, first baseman/aspiring pitcher David McCarty and fullbacks Brian Daubach and Kevin Millar.

The roster’s set, if not the lineup. The bench may not be as deep as the Yankees’, but it’s a good club, a 95–100 win club. My only worry now is health, with Nomar, Trot and BK already out. If we lose anyone else important, this could quickly turn into a lost season, like the Angels’ last year.

April 2nd

I drive to Boston to meet my friend Lowry’s lit class at Simmons College, right down Brookline Ave from Fenway. All the way up, I wrestle with the question of whether to drop in on Naomi. I don’t want to freak her out, but she hasn’t returned my calls, and we’re a week away from the home opener.

I’m early, there’s a parking spot, and I can’t resist. From the sidewalk, the office looks dark, but that’s just the tinted windows. The big tally board with all the games broken down by sections is covered with X’s. Everything’s sold-out except some August games against Tampa Bay and Toronto.

A young guy at a desk is on the phone with someone who got aced out of the Monster seats. “I’m sorry, sir,” the guy says, “but it did say first-come first-serve.”

I’m loitering, and he looks up from the phone in mid-conversation.

“Is Naomi expecting you?”

He calls her, then explains that she’s all the way on the other side of the park (there is no other side of the park—that would be where the batting cages are, under the center-field bleachers). She says not to worry, it’s going to happen. It’s going to be a day-of-game thing, I’ll have to pick them up at the Will Call window.

Outside, a crew is fixing pennants over Gate A. The one they’re working on as I pass says 1918 WORLD CHAMPIONS.

I go down Lansdowne and look up at the Monster seats. Green metal stools perch upside-down on the counters, like a bar after closing. I try to imagine sitting up there, but the wind’s so cold it’s hard to believe the season’s only two days away.

It’s after dinner when I finally catch up to yesterday’s game. We beat the Twins 4–3, taking three out of five from them to win Fort Myers’s Mayor’s Cup. The hero, ironically, was Adam Hyzdu, who homered to break the tie in the ninth. Too little, too late.

April 3rd

Last night we beat the Braves 7–3. Exhibition results mean even less the day before the opener, but I’m glad to see Manny pick up his first homer of the spring.

Today the Braves shut us out, 5–0, with Foulke giving up two runs in a third of an inning. I tell myself it means nothing, but neither does our 17-12 Grapefruit League record (a half game, I’m sorry to report, behind the Yanks).

In the last meaningful action of the spring, lefty Bobby Jones’s slider and 1.74 ERA win him the final roster spot over the less experienced Tim Hamulack.

The Weather Channel’s predicting snow here tomorrow night. In Baltimore, for the first pitch, it’s supposed to be thirty-nine degrees.