8: SUDDEN STAR

STEVIE WASN’T SURE HOW LONG he spent staring at the players in the batting cage without actually seeing them before someone put a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Peter Gammons standing there.

“Steve, I’m Peter Gammons, have you got a minute?” he said.

“Sure,” Stevie said, wondering why in the world Gammons would want to talk to him. No one needed to confirm the Doyle story anymore, so what could he possibly want?

“I was just talking to Bobby,” he said. “He was teasing me about the crawl this afternoon, saying I couldn’t confirm your story. I just wanted you to know I feel badly about the way it was worded and the fact that my network didn’t even give the Herald credit for the story.”

Stevie was surprised. He had always been a fan of Gammons’s, but Kelleher had convinced him that just about everyone in TV was evil. Gammons was a print guy who had become a TV guy. Maybe that was different?

“Don’t worry, Mr. Gammons-”

“Peter,” Gammons interrupted.

“Peter,” Stevie continued. “I never thought you wrote the crawl.”

“I didn’t, but I still feel badly.” He put out his hand. “No hard feelings, I hope.”

“Of course not,” Stevie said. “I know how these things work.”

Gammons clapped him on the back. “You know a lot of things, apparently,” he said. He walked in the direction of the batting cage, where Terry Francona, the Red Sox manager, was standing, calling his name. Being Peter Gammons, Stevie decided, was a pretty cool thing.

Alone again, he tried to act as if he was intently watching Dustin Pedroia, who had stepped into the cage. But his mind was still on his conversation with Susan Carol. What secret could David Doyle have told her that she couldn’t share with him? Why had David told her? Actually, that wasn’t too hard to guess. If Stevie were a fourteen-year-old boy with a secret to share, he’d certainly want to share it with Susan Carol. Well, he was a fourteen-year-old boy. He just didn’t have a secret.

Mearns walked back over to him, her TV interview concluded. “You look like you just got terrible news,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said. “No bad news. I’m just a little bit tired.” The truth was he had no news at all. And in this case, no news felt like bad news.

The night was about as perfect as one could hope for in late October in Boston. Even though the game didn’t start until 8:35, it was still sixty-two degrees when Daisuke Matsuzaka threw the first pitch. As he had done during game one, Stevie sat in the auxiliary press box, which was located way out in right field, with Susan Carol on his left and George Solomon, the Sunday columnist emeritus for the Washington Post, on his right.

Solomon was short and had thick glasses. Tamara had explained to Stevie that he had been the Post’s sports editor for twenty-eight years and had retired to write a Sunday column. Now he had been brought back from complete retirement for the World Series. He had been friendly on the first night but kept making football references throughout the game.

“Fourth and ten for the Nats,” he had said when the Red Sox opened up their early lead. He had suggested late in the game that the Nats “drop back ten and punt” and, when the Nats put a couple of men on base in the eighth inning, had commented that they were “trying to score a consolation touchdown.”

“I guess you’re more of a football guy,” Stevie had said after the last football reference.

“Love baseball,” Solomon said. Even so, he had spent chunks of the game asking Barry Svrluga, another Post reporter who normally covered the Redskins, what he thought about that Sunday’s game in Green Bay.

“Congratulations,” Solomon said as Stevie sat down for the start of game two. “Good story on Doyle this afternoon. There was some good spadework there.”

Stevie had now been around reporters enough to know that spadework was a term that meant someone had done a lot of digging to get a story. The truth was the story had landed in his lap while he was eating breakfast. But he just said, “Thanks. Sometimes you get lucky.”

“Based on past history,” Solomon said, “you and the young lady are more than lucky.”

Susan Carol was, at that moment, engaged in conversation with Mark Maske, another Post football writer who had been assigned to the World Series. Mearns had mentioned earlier that the Post had a total of twenty-two people in Boston -fifteen sportswriters, two editors, three photographers, a writer from the Style section, and a writer from the Metro section who was assigned to write one of those awful stories on fans. The Herald “only” had sixteen people in town-including its own Metro reporter, who was doing what Stevie assumed would be an equally awful story on fans.

He was extremely grateful that he didn’t have to wander the streets or the ballpark looking for people who had painted their faces Nats red and blue. Look at the glass as half full, he told himself, even though it felt quite empty at that moment.

The Nats managed to score a run in the top of the first off Matsuzaka when leadoff hitter Austin Kearns singled, took second on a wild pitch, moved to third on a groundout, and then scored on another groundout by Ryan Zimmerman.

“Guess the Red Sox figure they’re going to score off Doyle, so they can play the infield back,” Stevie said to Susan Carol, figuring he’d be safe keeping the conversation on baseball.

“You never play the infield in this early in the game, no matter who’s pitching,” she snapped. “You should know that.”

So much, Stevie thought, for casual baseball talk.

Doyle trotted to the mound to some applause-Stevie guessed it was from the Nats fans scattered throughout the crowd-and a low murmur. Most of the Red Sox fans had apparently not been paying attention when the line-ups were announced, and when they saw an unfamiliar number-56-trot to the mound, they wondered who in the world it was.

Doyle was clearly nervous at the start. He walked Kevin Youkilis on four pitches to start the game and then hit Dustin Pedroia with a pitch. Whatever Stevie’s thoughts were on David Doyle and Susan Carol, he didn’t want to see Norbert Doyle humiliated in front of millions of people. As David Ortiz stepped into the batter’s box and Jason Bay stood on deck, Stevie did a little math: two men on, no one out, postseason baseball’s best clutch hitter up, with another one-hundred-plus RBI man to follow. Stevie wondered if Doyle would survive the first inning.

Everyone in the ballpark was on their feet as Ortiz stared in at Doyle. He was now thirty-four, and starting to slow a little bit: he had “only” hit twenty-nine home runs during the regular season. In postseason-Big Papi time, as it was called in Boston -he already had five home runs and fifteen RBIs.

“This could get ugly in a hurry,” Stevie said.

Susan Carol said nothing. Stevie was having about as good a night so far as Norbert Doyle.

Doyle threw three straight pitches that were way out of the strike zone. They almost reminded Stevie of the scene in Major League when Charlie Sheen’s character, Wild Thing, comes into his first game and immediately throws a pitch that goes straight to the backstop, causing Bob Uecker, playing the radio announcer, to say, “Just a bit outside.”

These pitches were nearly as far outside.

Ortiz dug in, knowing that Doyle had to try to throw a strike rather than face loading the bases for Bay.

“I’ll bet he’s got the hit sign,” George Solomon said. “Might as well go for the long pass right here.”

Stevie figured that was a lock. On 3-0, Doyle was likely to groove a fastball, and Ortiz might hit it nine miles.

Sure enough, Ortiz was swinging on 3-0. Doyle’s fastball looked right down the middle to Stevie, but instead of hitting it nine miles, Ortiz hit a wicked grounder right down the third-base line. For a moment Stevie thought it was going into the corner for a double. But Zimmerman, who hadn’t overshifted because of the runner on second, somehow stabbed it on his backhand side and in one motion stepped on third base and flicked a throw to second. Ronnie Belliard, the Nats’ second baseman, grabbed the throw and then turned and fired to first. The stunned-not to mention painfully slow-Ortiz was still two steps from the bag when the throw hit the first baseman’s glove.