Schilling’s pitching, and I’m shocked when leadoff batter Sean Burroughs doubles and scores in the first. Ismael Valdez (a seaworthy name if I ever heard one) throws blanks till he meets Pokey Reese in the bottom of the third. In BP, Pokey has to work to reach the wall, but Valdez finds the perfect spot up and in and Pokey loops it into the first row of M7. The next inning, Valdez hangs a curve to Manny with David on first, and Manny goes over everything and into the parking lot.

Meanwhile, Schilling’s throwing 94 with authority, striking out a bunch. In the fifth, Youk’s RBI double off the scoreboard chases Valdez.

CUT TO: crazy handheld zooms of heavyset goateed man in familiar Western shirt gorging on bucket of KFC to raucous music. It’s Millar, in the same shirt he wore to the movie premiere. EXTREME CLOSE-UP of bucket with SFX of chicken pieces disappearing one by one. “Going, going…” Millar says.

When we return, reliever Brandon Puffer intentionally walks Manny to load the bases. Nomar steps in to a standing O and knocks one off the Monster for a 6–1 lead. Millar follows with a double to the left-center gap—“Chickenman!” me and Steph yell.

It’s 8–1, and the rest of the way’s uneventful, save a woman being ejected below Don and Jerry. While the camera’s not allowed to watch her, the crowd is. She must flash them, because there’s a roar, and for the next three minutes Don and Jerry can’t stop laughing. “I wonder how that looked on high-definition,” Jerry says.

In the ninth, a momentary scare when Nomar bangs his bad foot off second base as he comes across to make a play, but he seems fine. McCarty lets us forget it by making a brilliant diving stop on a hopper down the line, reaching high to snag a bounce that should get over him. Lenny DiNardo’s frozen on the mound, so the runner’s safe, but it’s the kind of play (after Andy Dominique last night) that makes me want to see McCarty play more.

June 11th

In his first two games back, “Nomah” is batting in the five-hole. In last night’s game, the Padres elected to intentionally walk Manny Ramirez with one out in order to face Garciaparra with the bases loaded and the force-at-any-base situation in effect. #5 rewarded this strategy (which, the Padres’ manager would probably argue this morning, made sense at the time, with Garciaparra having been on the DL for the entire first third of the season) with a double rocketed off the left-field wall. That baseball-battered Monster giveth and taketh away, as Fenway fans well know. Last night it tooketh from Nomar Garciaparra: in parks with lower walls, that ball surely would have carried out for a grand slam. Oh well, we beat the Pods, 9–3.