Cursed To First - Sox and Pats forever.

Make a joyful noise in this place

It felt last night like I was seeing Fenway through new eyes. Little has changed about the park itself, but this was my first game with my new camera, a Christmas present, in tow.

My previous camera was an Olympus advanced compact I bought in 2002. It was my first digital camera and first with any optical zoom to think of. It was top of the line in 2002, and lasted me a long time. But by 2008, it had gotten very old in more ways than one. Today's digicams can take up to 20 megapixel photos at the professional level; "prosumer" models usually run about 10 to 12. The Olympus took...drum roll...one megapixel shots. It had even gotten to the point where I had offers to buy photos for publication, which were rescinded when I revealed the shamefully low resolution.

That wasn't the only problem. By the end (and to be honest, by about week 2 of owning this camera), if you weren't me, you essentially couldn't operate it. It had nothing in the way of image stabilization, and in fact seemed to add blurriness to all but the rarest of shots. That meant this was a camera I couldn't just hand to someone and ask to take my picture in front of a landmark.

Over time, two problems got worse and worse: battery life and response time. It could take up to 10 minutes to format a memory card, could go through nine--count 'em, nine--double A batteries in the course of one baseball or football game, and times it responded when I asked it to during, say, a dramatic moment at a sporting event, were the exception rather than the rule.

So it wasn't just a new toy - it was a totally new experience. From 10x optical zoom to a six-inch, 300 millimeter telephoto lens, so powerful that it was actually too close to get the John Hancock tower and 111 Huntington Ave in the same frame from the third-base-side grandstand if I framed a shot in portrait. It was like a camera and binoculars in one - I got an up-close view of this thrilling game, and at my leisure, could lightly press a button and take three shots per second of whatever I saw.

***
I've been to a playoff-clinching game at Fenway. I've been to Yankees games, in April and July. I've been to comeback, walkoff wins. Maybe it was the camera, but this was one of my more intense Sox game experiences ever.

It started looking like the Sox were going to regress to the limp offense they'd exhibited on the West Coast swing earlier this month. I lost track of how many runners they stranded on base; it seemed to happen every inning.

I've been at Fenway Park when, for no discernible or rational reason, a comeback was palpable in the air before it ever happened. I've been at Fenway Park when that comeback seemed to have consciously been created from the hive-mind of the fans in attendance, times it seems the place decides collectively, you know what, actually, we're not leaving here without a win. This was not one of those times. In fact, by the time there were two outs in the bottom of the ninth, I was busier scrolling through the hundreds and hundreds of shots I'd taken on the new camera's viewing screen than watching the game.

Once again, a man stood in scoring position, and once again, the Red Sox seemed entirely prepared to strand him there. Kevin Youkilis had singled after David Ortiz struck out to open the inning; JD Drew had advanced him with a groundout. The Yankees led, 4-2. Jon Lester had been mostly solid, but struggled with walks, and Joba Chamberlain had been even better. Now Mariano Rivera was slowly squeezing the life out of the Sox; he'd come on in relief of Damaso Marte with one strike on Nick Green the previous inning and shut down a budding rally on a questionable called strike three to Dustin Pedroia.

It had not been Boston's night. Calls had been iffy, the offense had suffered from a power outage, and on top of it, their luck had sometimes been rotten. By no means was I expecting or even looking for a comeback.

An explosion of sound jolted me to look up, and when I did, there went the ball off the bat of Jason Bay, rocketing toward the Monster. "No way!" I cried into the thundering din around me. "No way!"

It was just barely over the edge of the Monster, just barely inside the yellow line. A two-run homer to blow the save for Rivera and tie the game.

Normally, there's an audible syllable to the Fenway crowd's yell, a "YAHHH" or "Awww...." this time, it was just a wordless, deafening blast of noise.

Maybe it was the seats I had - in the front row of the grandstand almost directly behind the plate, as opposed to the left-field family section, where I saw the playoff game against the Angels last year. But it was an uncharted level of volume for me.

I thought it had peaked with Bay's homer, but when Kevin Youkilis hit an absolute, Manny-vs.-K-Rod-in-the-2007-ALCS-style bomba gigante over the Green Monster and onto Lansdowne St, it intensified to a level that was bordering on painful.

I didn't even see most of Youkilis's post-homer trot. It was obscured behind hundreds of waving hands raised in the air. I jockeyed for position, and raised my camera again, just in time to see Youkilis diving into the welcoming arms of his teammates at home.

There's just nothing like it. Nothing in the world.

The winter of Pedroia

Dustin Pedroia -BP-, originally uploaded by wheelo50411.

First he won the Gold Glove. Then he won the Silver Slugger award. THEN he won the MVP.

As if all that wasn't enough, today, the Sox dumped a four year contract worth $60 million on top of the pile.

Is it just me, or has it been all Pedroia this offseason, all the time?

I can think of worse things.

And wherever he is, I hope he's picking up dinner.

Reasons to love Matt Light, Ch. 1352

Matt Light wrestles a morning show host. Hilarity ensues. The super-slow mo at about 3:06 is the high point.

League further acknowledges Dustin Pedroia's superiority

Dustin Pedroia:

2007 AL Rookie of the Year
2007 World Series Champion
2008 Silver Slugger Award
2008 AL 2B Gold Glove

And now...your 2008 AL MVP!!

There hasn't been a young player like this for the Red Sox since the rookie and sophomore campaigns of Nomar Garciaparra. Pedroia is arguably even better; while Nomar finished high in MVP voting his second year, he did not capture the award.

In honor of Pedey, then, a 2007-2008 digital scrapbook below the fold.

D to the P

Dustin Pedroia, originally uploaded by NGottwald.

Your 2008 AL 2B Gold Glove winner!

MLB.com: For all the attention that little Dustin Pedroia gets for his big bat, his emergence into an elite second baseman has too often been lost in the shuffle.

I'd argue that both things have been lost in the shuffle about his height (note the "little" in the above sentence). I hope this and the ROY last year are the beginning of an end to all that. Dustin Pedroia is, quite simply, an awesome player. Full stop.

Comeback

Until the seventh inning tonight, the consensus was that Sox Nation is dead. TBS can't shut up about how quiet Fenway's been, Tom Verducci has decided we've all lost our edge, and according to some, we have the worst bandwagon in the history of ever.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Fenway crowd has been quiet, but has also remained mostly intact these past few nights, even with deficits up to 10 runs for the home team.

In the seventh inning, with a seven-run deficit, there were admittedly some empty seats. But there were more full ones.

And tonight, starting with that seventh inning, they did not remain quiet.

It began to get loud in there before the scoring even began. With a single run on the board in the seventh, the crowd was completely back into the contest, chanting "Pa-pi! Pa-pi! Pa-p!". Papi's answering blast into the right-field corner was greeted with full-throated jubilation.

In the eighth inning, still with a three-run deficit, two of which had been given up by the closer already, the crowd was nonetheless on its feet for Papelbon. They cheered a strikeout. Then they cheered each individual strike. Let's go, Red Sox! ... Let's go, Red Sox!

He struck out two for a shutdown inning, and was followed up by a lights-out Justin Masterson. When the Sox offense tied up the game against a visibly rattled Tampa Bay bullpen, the crowd, smelling blood in the water, heckled and chanted the shaky relievers, and greeted the tying run with a reaction even TBS had no choice but to describe as "bedlam in Beantown."

Bandwagoners? Fairweather fans?

***

I've seen this kind of thing happen before--I've been at the park at times when the fans have collectively decided, the heck with this, we're coming back. It doesn't happen every time, but when it does, it's like there's a hive-mind coming to life, and a nearly palpable electricity begins to fill the place up.

The players respond to this. I've seen it. I've seen them start to mill about more busily in the dugout as the crowd grows louder. I've seen them stride to the plate with more purpose with the roar at their backs.

But I don't think I've seen it happen quite this way before.

It's the consensus around here that Tito manages differently--more to the point, more ruthlessly--come October. During the regular season, he shows player loyalty to a fault. In the postseason? Ellsbury benched. Timlin cut from the DS roster. Tito ain't playin'.

And so 99.9% of his move to bring in Papelbon two innings earlier than he normally appears comes from that same cold focus on the numbers, using his bullpen ace in the truest Jamesian sense, to quash the Rays during the most crucial part of the game and give the team a chance to come back.

But let's also not ignore a great side effect of summoning "Wild Thing" from the 'pen--giving the crowd a chance to light up like they always do when Papelbon comes in, regardless of the score. Giving them a chance to sing along to "Shipping up to Boston." Boston adores him, he electrifies the ballpark, and none of that could've hurt, either.

It's true that Paps tacked on two more runs before buckling down (on runners belonging to Manny Delcarmen)--and that homer from Papi was what brought the electricity to its full proportion. But as Tito put it, during that seventh inning, Fenway "came unglued". Some kind of metaphysical logjam broke. The tide turned. The complexion changed. Physically and emotionally, Papelbon's appearance was the initial catalyst--and literally and figuratively, that move by Tito was the first key.

***

Between the triple in Game 4 and the homer in Game 5, the Large Father may in fact be back, in which case, let us rejoice.Mightily, even. But also not to be overlooked is Dustin Pedroia, who has continued to hit defiantly throughout this series, and with two outs in that seventh inning, singled home the game's first run.

One of my lasting memories of this postseason no matter what happens will be the sight of Dustin Pedroia on the top step of the dugout during the rally, all but glowing with energy, hungry to get back in the box and prove to the pitcher that he ain't shit.

***

Am I cocky heading in to a Game 6 at the Trop with a diminished Josh Beckett taking the hill after being shelled his last two times out? No, no I am not.

But one of the biggest single-game comebacks in postseason history can't help but put a little spring back in your step. And I can't help but remember that famous line of Kevin Millar's: "Don't let us win tonight."

Good times never seemed so good...

"...So good! So good! So good!"

The crowd boomed out the words in the middle of the eighth inning, but truth be told, times were not feeling especially good just then. The Sox had led 2-0 until that point, thanks to an utterly beastly Lester, but his failure to reappear for the eighth had my section of the grandstand -- and I'm sure many others -- warming up the fires for some Tito barbecue. Tito said later that Lester had seemed to "let down" emotionally after getting through the seventh, and that it was this rather than his pitch count that kept Lester on the bench in the next frame.

What happened next only stoked the coals. Okajima got two 4-3 groundouts, and then walked Mark Teixeira. Tito brought his quick hook out again and sent for Justin Masterson, who walked Vladi Guerrero, then crossed up Varitek and threw to the backstop as a result. The Angels runners advanced to second and third. Masterson got to two strikes on Torii Hunter, as he had with Guerrero, and the crowd was on its feet, as it had been on every two-out, two-strike count of the game for Red Sox pitching. Parts of the crowd even started to chant "Tooorriiiiiiii...Toooorrriiiii..." before the at bat was over, for which I cursed them roundly, before and after Hunter responded by stroking a bases-clearing single to right field. The game was tied at two -- cue "Sweet Caroline."

Scott Shields sat 'em down in the bottom of the eighth, deepening the silence around Fenway. Justin Masterson's first act of the ninth inning was to give up a sharp double to Kendry Morales, who was run for by Reggie Willits.

The Angels began closing their small-ball vice grip around the Red Sox, sacrificing Willits over to third. One out. Go-ahead run 90 feet away. Papelbon nowhere in sight.

And to think this series had started out feeling so pressure-free. To be honest, I went in to this postseason expecting the reverse of what actually happened in this series. But by this point--after that two-run lead and the desperate tension of that last inning and a third, it had become The Principle of the Thing. It was Apocalyptic Baseball - live and in person.

The Angels went in for the kill (or were trying to) with a squeeze play, and I swear people were yelling "SQUEEZE!" before Willits took his second step toward home. But the play was botched, and Varitek had the ball in hand; he charged down the third base line after Willits and finally caught him, but dropped the ball.

There was some argument afterwards from Mike Scioscia while Willits awaited the final decision on third base. Finally, Tek was ruled to have successfully tagged Willits before the ball dropped, and Scioscia and Willits trudged back to their dugout.

In the meantime, a sound rose around me I've never heard before. I've always heard about how Fenway sounds in the playoffs, and I now agree with everyone who's said you just have to be there to gauge the rise in decibel levels -- especially when you think they've already reached a peak and the sound just gets louder. It was deafening as Varitek ran down Willits, and felt like it was probably registering on the Richter scale after the umpire made his ruling.

It was about to get still louder.

The bottom of the ninth began with everyone on their feet, already on fire with the luck of the previous inning. It wasn't cockiness or assurance - nobody was high-fiving each other as the first Sox hitter strode to the plate. It was a maniacal focus on the field. It was urging, cheering, cajoling. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.

JD Drew deflated things somewhat by starting off the ninth with a K. But Bay followed him with a ground-rule double that set the place rocking again. Mark Kotsay hit a screaming liner down the first base line, and Teixeira gloved it handily.

"DAMMIT!" my dad yelled. It was not for the first time tonight. Keep in mind that this is the man who grumbled about everyone standing up for strike two with two outs, who even grumbled about the bullpen band. He is not the most demonstrative of live game attendees. But this game had him yelling.

"That was the hit!" he told me. "That was it!"

Oh, but he was wrong. Turns out Jed Lowrie was the one with the hit, and he sent it to nearly the same place, down the first base and right-field line, while Bay tore around third for home.

I wish I could say I saw the throw to the plate and the safe slide by Bay, but by then all around me was such bedlam I lost sight of a good chunk of the field. I only knew that the sound around me was like its own great tidal wave crashing overhead, and I could see thousands of arms raised in triumph, and then the field came back into view again and the Sox were mobbing Lowrie at first base. And that's when "Dirty Water" started playing.

Sunday. 7:17 pm.

Say you're the Anaheim Angels. You've just dropped your first two playoff games of the season at home -- your 10th and 11th straight postseason Ls of the last decade -- and now you have to make a cross-country trip with maximum jet lag to a lyrical little bandbox of a ballpark where all 35,000-plus will be screaming bloody murder at you for nine solid, regardless of score, with pauses only for swigs of beer. This also happens to be the site of all your recent playoff series losses - and you must now win three here, against the team that's handed you defeat in every postseason meeting you've had since the 1980's.

And oh, by the way! One more thing!

This will be Boston's starting pitcher for the evening.

beckett, originally uploaded by erik.swenson.

Step into his office, fellas, and don't be shy.

I don't know about you, fellow Sox fans, but the idea of Josh as our No. 3 starter is one I've warmed to considerably since  it seemed due to worrisome injury. Hearing the reports coming out of his side sessions, it's now starting to seem like strategy.

Sunday. 7:17 pm. The Halos enter Beckett's house. Time to stock up on beef jerky and beer, bust out the boxset for replays of Game 5, and, if you're me, blast this playlist of Beckett songs*:

*Don't ask me how half of these things became Beckett songs. They just are.

At the rate I'm going, by this time tomorrow, I'll be head-butting complete strangers while hollering incoherently about Commander Kickass? You may have heard of him? Of the Fuck Yeah Brigade?

Game 1

At the end of this game, with the Sox up 4-1, the camera showed Boston fans at the park gesturing incredulously at Angels fans who were leaving with baseball still left to be played.

I understood watching this why some people think Sox fans are assholes. It did seem like they were taunting frustrated Angels fans and rubbing it in as they throw in the towel.

But by the same token--why WERE those fans leaving? Not just then, but when it was 2-1 as well?

It was still a save situation - and Jonathan Papelbon has not been quite so infallible this year. They were only down three runs. It's only game 1. I don't understand it either. And I wonder if at least some of the Sox fans' incredulity was genuine.

 
In some ways this dynamic was reflected on the field - the Red Sox seemed almost defiant, at times pulling defensive plays literally out of nowhere. By the time the Sox had gone ahead, even Angels players looked vaguely sick. By the time Big Papi's single made it 4-1, they were shaking their heads in consternation in the dugout. While Jonathan Papelbon did give up a hit in the 9th, it was clear the life had gone out of Anaheim for the night.

Even Vladi Guerrerro looked peevish, especially after he tried to advance two bases instead of one in the bottom of the eighth and was thrown out. By the ninth inning, the Angels were visibly cooked.

Meanwhile, as has been said around here for the last few days, the Sox are "playing with house money." The pressure's on Anaheim to overcome its years of history against the Red Sox. If the Red Sox are beaten, Anaheim has clearly been the better team all along. Mentally, at least, the Red Sox have almost nothing to lose - and they were playing like it.

A great example of this was Lowrie's error that kept the third inning going and let the Angels take a 1-0 lead. After it happened, neither Lowrie or his teammates skipped a beat. I can recall previous years where this kind of thing has not been so simple. I can recall previous years where the weight of the uniform suddenly became leaden after such an event - where that sick look would appear on the faces of Sox players and fans. That look that says, here we go again. Being on the other side of that equation now is by turns strange and liberating.

Guerrerro's putout at third was another good example of an instance where I thought the Red Sox had that mental advantage. Guerrerro was, in part, thrown out because it was a bad idea to try to take third and because he seems to be hobbled and not running well. But it was also because Kevin Youkilis, having dropped Torii Hunter's popup in shallow right and fallen all over himself in the attempt, hesitated for nary a second before picking up the ball and rifling it over to third base, where it beat Guerrerro by 15 feet.

The Angels have been formidable this year, and things are so far from over, it's not even funny. By no means do I think the Sox will sweep them again. The Angels do have the tools to beat the Sox - they proved it over and over again this season. But the Red Sox have come in with the strongest attitude possible, one that says, you can beat us, but you're going to have to beat our best. You're going to have to beat us with our players showing the same clawing, dogged mentality they've learned in their last two pennant series. You're going to have to match and exceed that willingness to grind.

***

And then there was Jon Lester.

Specifically, there was Jon Lester's sixth inning.

Bay's two-run homer had given him a lead in the top of that frame, and this seemed to push Lester up another notch in ferocity as he took the hill (a phenomenon I've observed with Josh as well). The Angels hitters fouled off one devastating cutter after another - to a man, they looked unbalanced against that pitch, and frozen by Lester's curveball.

Some of the at-bats ran long because of those foul balls, but Lester faced the minimum in the inning, and all went down by way of the K--two swinging, and the last, Gary Matthews Jr., looking at an 89-mph cutter, on the outside corner, at the knees.

"Right on the black," was the announcer's call. "Right at the knees. No chance."

The only thing more breathtaking than the pitch was Lester's demeanor as he strode off the field following this effort. He bounded a few quick steps off the mound, then slowed to a swagger as he crossed the baseline. Every muscle seemed to stand out, in his shoulders, in his forearms, in his jaw. Just before the warning track, he pounded his pitching hand into his glove once. His eyes were alight.

It was a look I recognized - a smoldering, predatory gleam. This is how I described it once before:

As Pedro struggled and was replaced after the third, Beckett sat glaring in the dugout, warmup jacket over one shoulder, his intensity establishing an invisible field of solitude around him on the bench. The transfer of power was nearly visible; whatever transcendental id possesses the gifted pitcher had left Pedro and begun to look out of Beckett's eyes.

[...]

Seven and two-thirds innings deep in the game, with four hits, two runs, seven strikeouts, one walk, having hit 96 and 97 on the gun consistently the whole night, Beckett walked off the mound to an ovation that rivaled, if it didn't equal, the ones that Pedro had received. When he doffed his cap, the roar swelled even louder. Pedro can have all the charisma he wants, but it's that id we follow--that swing-and-a-miss magic.

Like any of the cycles of baseball, this one is inexorable and seemingly eternal. We were reminded in the pre-game show of another landmark matchup in which a torch was passed in Boston, the famous first Pedro-Roger faceoff in Game 3 of the 1999 ALCS. We were reminded that that game, too, had not been the duel everyone had hoped for (though it was to be the only win for the Sox in that series). It's happened before. It will happen again. Someday Josh Beckett will watch as a younger man walks off the field with his glory. And that, too, will be bittersweet.

It's a little different this time - less like the passing of a torch and more like the sharing of it, since I don't believe for a second Josh has finished unleashing his asskickery on the world. But it was a similar feeling--that same transcendental id I saw, shining out of Lester's eyes last night.

...then spring became the summer...

Bleacher seats, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

There are times you think you've seen every face and frock Fenway Park has to put on, times you think you've seen the place under every shade of cloud. These are usually the times, it later seems, that it suddenly finds a way to overwhelm you all over again.

Last night's nightcap, which was supposed to have been the third-to-last game of the year, wound up being the final game of the regular season, with first pitch at 7:35 pm Sunday night. From the beginning, this being a rainy school night, it was an uncharacteristically empty ballpark. I had seats in a place I'm familiar with, but hadn't been to in a while: the upper bleachers.

So there it was: a different face.

At the same time, it was a face I recognized. "Empty Fenway," I said to K. "Fenway like when I was a kid." The seats were even in a place I remember sitting as a kid, in the upper bleachers.

We were almost directly under the Jumbo-Tron for this game, which gave our seats a sweeping view of the ballpark from the right-field corner all the way over to the Monster. The Jumbo-Tron cast a red glow over us; the lights were gauzy in the damp night. Behind us sat a family chatting happily in Canadian French; around us people settled quietly into their seats. All had a tranquil, dreamlike feeling.

Normally the bleachers are their own, raucous world; like the bullpen, they are marooned a seeming ocean of grass away from the action and give rise to their own island subculture. In some places, this night was no different, but I went in expecting to comprehend maybe 30% of a lazy outing, distracted by sloshing beer and inflatable objects as I had been during other bleacher visits -- and as it turned out, wound up taking in a genuine barn-burner. 

***

The first few innings, however, passed with little fanfare. The teams squeezed across one groundout RBI apiece through 8 and two-thirds. The difference between this and most Sox-Yanks contests over the last few years is that it wasn't a grinding, zillion-pitch affair. Instead everyone gamely swung from the heels, no doubt all of them anxious to go home.

As those one-two-three middle innings piled up, the bleacher-world took over. First the bullpen band struck up, beating a tribal rhythm on the roof of the dugout. Regulars to the bleachers picked up a clapping counterbeat that we all followed, until a full third of the ballpark was a coordinated percussion section. It sounded like some of the players were beating on the roof of the dugout with a blunt instrument to make a low-pitched baseline, which others accompanied by calling and answering the audience's claps with elaborate solos on higher-pitched, smaller sticks.

Someone inflated a huge beach ball that looked like a baseball with the Red Sox logo on it, and even took the time to write YANKEES SUCK on the side in red marker before sending it off to be batted around the stands.

Two factions began battling for the beach ball - groups of Yankees fans at the top and bottom of the section vs. everyone else. The Yankees fans were trying to get the beach ball into the bullpen or over the wall behind the Dunkin' Dugout. The contest went on for an impressively long time, and there were several close calls that made hundreds of people ooh and ahh out of sync with whatever was going on between the lines.

That's when it hit me again, a bittersweetness so sharp it was almost painful. There will be more baseball here this season, but I'm not sure if there will be for me, playoff tickets being both hard to come by and subject to the whims of postseason fate. There will be Josh Beckett's injury (!!) to worry about and bullpen arguments to have, and much fearing of Vladi Guerrerro to do.

Like Amy said, I am a calm fan this season. I understand where the flaws lie; I know full well what the odds are. When a postgame interviewer asks Big Papi if he feels the team's balanced and he goes on a cranky tirade about the injuries in the lineup and even throws in a jab about trading Manny, it's hard to feel all that cocky about how things look.

Because of that, for those middle innings, I just wanted to hang on to what was happening for as long as possible--the end of another season coming, with or without a trophy, but coming for certain either way.

***

Then Sean Casey got our attention again with a two-run single with four Boston outs left in regulation, and with the Sox ahead in the top of the ninth, I made the mistake of looking up at the clock and thinking to myself, we actually might be out of here by 9:30.

That, of course, is when all hell broke loose, brought on by David Aardsma, who gave up the tying runs to bring up the Sox in the bottom of the inning.

And so even in a game with no standings at stake between the teams' B squads in late September, the Sox and Yankees seemed to be falling into a familiar pattern of deadlocked struggle, the kind that always makes me picture a cartoon I once saw of a frog strangling a pelican who's trying to swallow him. Of course it pales in comparison to the howling Shakespearean drama that the two teams have been known to deliver, especially in the postseason, but the fundamental character was still there.

Among the fans, whether with beach balls or trash talk, irksomeness also flared up regularly. Outside the park after the game, I saw a beer-bellied Boston fan toe-to-toe on Lansdowne Street with his Yanks-fan counterpart. As we walked by, I heard the Boston fan say, "Yah, have fun playin' golf this Octobah."

Even this comparatively sleepy affair did not pass without some rancor between Sox fans and Yankees players, this in the form of Melky Cabrera, who I have to say brought things on himself with his behavior after catching a flyout in right one inning. It was the bottom of either the fourth or fifth (both saw right-field flyouts for out no. 2 and this was during Beach Ball Battle Royale).

The reason that's important is that I realize Melky couldn't pull a Trot Nixon and toss the ball into the stands. But that's not necessarily a reason to wave it in the faces of some kids in the right field corner who were clamoring for it (their knowledge of outs and such not well-honed), before throwing it back in.

Everybody from the right-field grandstand over to where I was at the top of the bleachers booed. Some even pointed. And in the eighth inning, once Sean Casey's single had bounded past him in right center and he'd picked himself up from his futile dive after it, everybody from the right-field grandstand over to where I was at the top of the bleachers chanted, "Meeellllll-kyyyyyyyyy...Meeellllll-kyyyyyyyyy..." for quite a long time.

***

And then, unbelievably, the game went into extra innings. You could almost feel the players themselves saying it: Come on.

But the season would have an encore, an extra inning slipped in for good measure before the curtain went down. Another bases-loaded situation with two outs in the bottom of the tenth, Fenway on its feet, all 7000 of us that remained making as much noise as we could.

Another walkoff hitter stepping up into the spotlight, another ball bouncing just beyond the reach of second base. Another echo of that old, savage sound: YAHHHHH!

Another charge of the mob from the dugout, another jumble of red jackets and countless white legs, jumping up and down on the grass.

One more time. Just in case.