SK: Poor Father Curt. Go you Lowe!

SO: Down 2–0 to our evil nemesis, with our best arms gone, I feel like we’re Batman and Robin stuck in that giant snow cone, with the Joker (George) and his dumb-as-mud henchmen in their striped shirts (Yankee fans) laughing their asses off and then leaving us for dead. But you know what happens then…that’s right, Batman goes to his super-utility belt. It’s time for us to pull something out.

October 15th/ALCS Game 3

Stewart and I meet for dinner before the game, and although he agrees to split a BLT pizza on honey wheat crust, he expresses strong doubts about a pizza that comes with a topping of mayonnaise-dressed lettuce. Still, he eats his share. I guess that after some fifty games at Fenway between us, we’ve had our fill of hot dogs. As we munch, we talk about—what else?—baseball. Of that we have not had our fill. Specifically we discuss which team will be most apt to benefit from a rainout, which seems likely; the Massachusetts weather on this October evening is pretty awful.

We agree, reluctantly, that the Yankees would probably be better served by an extra day of rest, because they could bring Mussina back sooner. The stars seem to be aligning themselves, and the horoscope doesn’t look favorable if you happen to be a Sox fan.

When we walk into California Pizza at 5:45 P.M., a light mist is hanging in the air. When we walk back out again at 6:45, the mist has thickened to a drizzle. By the time we’ve raised our arms to be frisked and have given our game bags over for examination outside Fenway Park’s Gate D (it’s just how things are done in twenty-first-century America, where the citizenry now live on Osama Mean Time), the drizzle has become a light rain.

Before clearing around midnight, the forecast calls for heavy downpours accompanied by strong winds. During the regular season, the fate of the game would be in the hands of the Red Sox up until the instant play started, and with the umps thereafter. In postseason, however, these contests are in the hands of Major League Baseball, an organization that seems to care a great deal more about TV revenue (witness the 8 P.M. starts, which ace out millions of little kids who have to get up for school on weekdays) than they do the fans, the players or the game itself. Last night, in the Houston–St. Louis game, play went on through a steady downpour. Base hits spun up wheels of water as they rolled into the outfield. I don’t mind getting wet, but I really don’t want to see Manny Ramirez, Trot Nixon or Bernie Williams leave his career on the outfield grass of Fenway Park.