“It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Yogi said that—not the one from Jelly-stone National Park, but the one who hung out in New York and swung a productive bat at many bad pitches back in the good old days when men were men and baseball players still smoked Camels.[69] Once more the Red Sox have entered postseason via the wild card. Once more they have faced the West Coast team and beaten them (this time quite a bit more tidily, ’tis true). Once more it was Mr. Lowe—magickal rather than tragickal—who was the Last Pitcher Standing, this time notching the win instead of the save. And once more the Yankees have beaten the Minnesota Twins after spotting them the opening victory. It is our ancient enemy—now routinely called the Evil Empire almost everywhere north of Hartford—that we will have to face, and vanquish, if we are to go to the World Series.

I spent most of the weekend in Boston, although this book did not precisely demand it; the Boston-Anaheim series was over, and the Boston–New York series wouldn’t start for another four days. Mostly what I wanted was to sample the atmosphere, and what I found myself breathing in was disturbing, bad for sleep.[70] I would describe it as a kind of nervy bravado—think of all the old gangster movies you’ve seen where the bad-guy hero is driven into a final blind alley, draws both automatics from the waistband of his gabardine pants, and then screams, “Come and get me coppers! But I’m gonna take a buncha youse wit’ me!”

Doormen, taxi drivers, a guy from Boston Public Works, a driver on the Boston Duck Tour, a clerk at Brentano’s, two homeys at the mall with their hats turned around backwards (Homey A in a METALLICA RULES T-shirt, Homey B wearing one showing Albert Einstein in the audience at a Ramones concert), a woman on the Boston Common walking her little white furball, even a grizzled old two-tooth toll-taker on New Hampshire’s Spaulding Turnpike—all these hailed me with variations on the same theme: “Yo, Stevie! We got just who we wanted, right?”

I’m back with a sick smile and a little wave, like Whatever, dude. Because I’m thinking of that old saying, the one that goes Be careful what you wish for. And when you get right down to where the rubber hits the road, does it even matter? When you get right down to where the rubber meets the road, the Yankees just seem to be our fate, our ka, our name written on the bottom of the stone.