9:50 P.M.: Once upon a time (and it doesn’t seem so long ago), there were no Eastern, Western, and Central Divisions; there was just the American League and the National League, with eight or nine teams each. The bottom four or five of these were known as the second division, and the bottom couple of teams were the cellar-dwellers. (Red Sox fans from the late fifties and early sixties came to know these terms well.) Last night and tonight, the Red Sox and the Blue Jays have played like second-division teams from 1959—Boston and Washington, let’s say, battling it out for a sloppy nine in front of a few thousand dozy afternoon fans (many of them more interested in their newspapers than the game unfolding in front of them) while the Yankees cruised the stratosphere twenty or so games above them both in the standings.

Tonight the Red Sox are leading 9–3 as we go to the bottom of the ninth, but Derek Lowe was once more miles from sharp (it’s Alan Embree’s game to win, he of the bright blue eyes, scruffy beard, and amazing cheekful o’ chaw), and the Sox scored most of their runs in one inning during which the hapless Jays chucked the pill everywhere, including into the stands.

The best things you can say about tonight’s performance are that we’ll keep pace with the Yankees, who are also winning, and that better days are coming, both defensively and on the mound. Meantime, at least it’s a win at SkyDome.

May 15th

It’s eighty-nine degrees, a record, and my old car, which I just got back from the shop, breaks down on the commercial strip in town—maybe vapor lock? While I’m outside Party City waiting for the wrecker, a guy pulls up with the game on and waits while his wife runs inside.

“Who’s winning?”

“I just turned it on,” he says. “I know McCarty has an RBI.”

He sees my Fenway 1912 shirt, I see his—from last year’s ALCS—and he gets out to talk. In February he went down to the Civic Center to see the Sox Winter Caravan and got autographs from Kevin Millar and Bill Mueller. “I was worried it would be weird, you know, the big-kid thing, but once I got up to the table, I got this smile on my face, and the guys were cool.”

We weigh our chances for the season.

“Now there’s a rumor Nomar might have a tear,” he says, “not just a strain like they’ve been saying.”

He also wonders why Trot’s taking so long to come back from a hamstring, and we bat around the possibility of him being on steroids (or off them now).

His wife returns, and they’ve got to run. “Go Sox!” she calls, and they’re gone.