One Day at Fenway by Steve Kettmann

Author:Steve Kettmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2004-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

BOTTOM OF THE SECOND

It was funny. The way Joe Torre saw it, any time you fell behind 3–0 to Pedro Martinez, you had an enormous problem on your hands. It took a lot of work and skill and luck to dig out from a two-run deficit against someone as good and as fiery as Martinez. Giving him a three-run lead to work with made coming back borderline unthinkable. But it was almost as if the Red Sox had scored too quickly. You went into the game saying, “We have to stay close with Pedro, we have to stay close with Pedro.” All of a sudden you looked up and saw you were already three runs down. But you still had eight innings to go. That was a lot of time. You were not about to start telling yourself you could not find a way to win. Torre just had to make sure all his players stayed in the game and did not let the Pedro Martinez mystique go to their heads.

If Andy Pettitte could settle down long enough to let the offense narrow the gap, they could at least try to make the game interesting. It helped having Manny Ramirez out of the lineup with that throat thing. Torre did not know where Ramirez was. He could be sitting in the clubhouse, watching the game on TV and waiting to come out and pinch-hit. Torre had no idea. But he hoped he would have to worry about Ramirez. That would mean it had become a closer game.

Lou Merloni came out to start off the Boston half of the inning, and tried to control his emotions. He was sorry that his grandmother was not there in the stands, but it brought back great memories of other days at Fenway knowing his parents and his sisters Lisa and Jill and Jill’s husband, Matt, and the three kids were all there, along with old friends he had not even had a chance to talk to in the blur of recent days. His phone would be ringing for days to come with people wanting to celebrate his return to New England.

Merloni was glad he was leading off the inning, so he could stand there with a great view of Pettitte’s warmup tosses to Posada. That gave Merloni a chance to go through his visualization exercises again, as calmly as possible, the way he had that morning in the shower. Finally it was time to step in against Pettitte, and Merloni watched a fastball land just outside.

Senator Mitchell clapped once, glad to see the local kid getting ahead in the count, and then leaned back and took a good-natured crack at putting baseball into a larger context.

“What are the things that are most important in life? What are the things that people feel passionately about?” he wondered aloud. “Religion. Nation. Family. Two of the three represent a human need for causes of some kind.”

Mitchell paused to wait for another loud round of Loooo! Two more Pettitte fastballs had also missed outside, and then Merloni fouled off two outside pitches.

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