“The Red Sox of Japan!”

“That’s right—and I was there in ’85, the first year we won it.”

“That must have been pretty wild.”

“Oh yeah,” he says, and stops writing, as if he hasn’t thought of that time in a while, and his expression is both ecstatic and guilty, as if he’s recalling infinite, ultimate pleasures.

I have him add HANSHIN TIGERS 85–86 and leave him with a loud “Ganbatte!”

Over at the seats, Steve’s reading a suspense novel. Our neighbor Mason delivers the bad news: Bill Mueller’s having arthroscopic knee surgery and will be out at least six weeks. It’s another blow, but Youkilis has done such a good job offensively that there’s no panic. If Nomar gets back soon, we can put Pokey at second, as planned, slide Bellhorn over to third, and still have a solid backup.

Again, we’re all thinking of that magical day when Trot and Nomar come back, when right now we’re playing fine without them.

“Temperature at game time,” Carl Beane announces, “forty-eight degrees.” It makes me think of spring training, and how happy those Minnesotans were to escape their weather. Here we’re proud of it. Forty-eight? It’ll get down to forty-two by game’s end. Tack on the windchill and we’re talking mid-thirties.

It’s overcast and very chilly tonight—shit, call a spade a spade, it’s cold. My colleague Stewart O’Nan is undaunted. He shows up apple-cheeked and grinning, toting a bag of scuffed balls he shagged in BP. (Proudest acquisition: a David Ortiz swat.)

The Weston High School Chorus—all nine thousand of them, apparently—line the first- and third-base lines to sing the national anthem, and the sound, which comes bouncing back from the Green Monster in perfect echoes that double each line, is spooky and wonderful. Stewart, meanwhile, is off trying to give Gabe Kapler a photo of Kapler holding Stew’s custom fly-shagging net… which, some wits might argue, Kapler could put to good use during his tours of duty in right field.

The Red Sox (who will go on to romp in this one) put up just a single run in the bottom of the first—not much, considering that they once again send seven men to the plate. The Sox stats this year with bases loaded and two out are pretty paralyzing: just 12 for 54, only two of those for extra bases (both doubles), all the rest mere singles. This time Kevin “Cowboy Up” Millar is the goat, grounding weakly to first. He leaves two more on base in the third, and leaves ’em loaded again in the fourth. The Sox score three that frame, but Millar has stranded eight men all by himself, and the game isn’t half over. I bet his agent won’t be bringing that stat up at contract time.