We cross the Monster for the big view. I’m surprised by how many tours are running at once, and how much activity there is. There are several school groups circling the top of the park the opposite way. Under the bleachers, a crew is setting up a catered job fair; in the right-field grandstand, workmen are replacing old wooden seats.

The last stop is the right-field roof tables, an anticlimax, and we walk back down the ramp to Gate D, looking down on the players’ lot. The guard there says BK should be in any minute.

* * *

Back home, the schedule makers sneak today’s game by me. It’s a 3:05 start, 1:05 mountain time, and when I tune in to NESN at nine o’clock they’re showing Canadian football, complete with the 55-yard line and Labatt’s ads painted on the astroturf. I check the website: 11–0 Sox. Lowe threw seven strong, getting 17 ground-ball outs. Ortiz put it out of reach in the sixth with a three-run shot. It figures—the one game I miss.

June 18th

ESPN notes that Lowe’s shutout was only the second of the Rockies at Coors in their last four hundred games. And the Yanks lost to the D-backs, so we gained ground.

Francona kept Wake out of the Colorado series, citing knuckleballers’ poor history there, so Wake opens against the Giants at Pac Bell (SBC, if you want to be a stickler). As in his start against the Dodgers last Saturday, he’s got nothing. The Giants run on him at will, and Marquis Grissom takes him deep twice for a 7–2 lead in the fourth.

I’m at the beach, watching with my nephew Charlie.

“Why don’t they take him out?” Charlie asks.

“Because we don’t have anyone else.” And there’s Malaska warming.

With the 10:05 start and all the offense, it’s late, and we don’t want to keep the rest of the cottage up.

My father-in-law, stumping to the bathroom in his skivvies, asks how we’re doing.

“Ah, we’re getting crushed,” I say.

June 19th

The local edition of the Providence Journal only stayed up as late as I did. They have the score 7–2 in the fifth—as if that helps anyone.

“They won,” Charlie says, shrugging. “The score was something like eleven to eight.”

No one can verify it, so I get on my father-in-law’s laptop and hit the website. 14-9 was the final. Ortiz and Manny went back-to-back and Millar had a pinch-hit three-run shot over Barry Bonds—all in the top of the fifth. Son of a bitch. All we had to do was stay up another ten minutes.

“Fair-weather fans,” Trudy says.

“No,” I say. “It’s the opposite. When I watch them, they lose. I turn it off and they win.”

June 20th

June 20th