I don’t have to worry about that for long. An usher I know is leaning nonchalantly against the counter of the Legal Seafood kiosk, chattering away into his walkie-talkie, as Stew and I walk by. He drops it into the pocket of his yellow rain-slicker and waves us over. “Go on home, you guys,” he says. “Game’s gonna be called at seven thirty.”

I ask him if he’s sure. He says he is.

We hang in a little while, anyway—long enough to soak up the rainy atmosphere of Fenway Park (soak it up, geddit?), where the game still hasn’t been officially called. The tarp remains on the infield at 7:58 P.M., however, and that pretty much tells the tale. The news and TV guys arehuddled under canvas mini-pavilions, reduced to taking pictures of and doing interviews with each other. Peter Gammons comes bopping busily along, looking like some strange but amiable human crow in his black trousers and long black raincoat. Stewart and I pass a few words with him, mostly about the possibility of Father Curt pitching again this year (unlikely but not impossible, given Schilling’s fierce competitive drive), and then we leave. I am actually back in my hotel room, drying my hair, before Major League Baseball can finally bring itself to unloose its clenched and rain-puckered fingers enough to let this one go.

October 16th

I open the curtains at 8 A.M. on cloudless blue skies. Tonight the Yankees and Red Sox will play baseball.

I’m bringing the whole famn damily to this one, so I have to buy tickets from a broker, and end up paying through the nose so we can watch what turns out to be the worst game of the year, maybe of my life—worse even than Mr. Lowe’s rainy debacle at Yankee Stadium. It’s fifty degrees, but the wind is gusting up to 40 mph, and we’re sitting in the very last row of the grandstand. Gales blow through the wire fence, around the mercifully insulating standing-room crowds at our backs and into our collars. Caitlin’s shivering, so I break down and sign up for a credit card just to get a free MLB blanket.

Bronson’s got nothing, but Kevin Brown’s equally ineffective. “Kev-in,” we chant. Jeter makes an error that leads to a run, and it’s “Jeeeee-ter, Jeeeee-ter.” (He’s been terrible in the field, just as distracted as last year, fodder for critics who say A-Rod should play short; but Jeter doesn’t have the reactions or the gun for third, and probably won’t accept a demotion to second.) After Bronson we throw the dregs of our pen, as if the Coma is conceding the game—as if he’s okay with being down 0-3. Weird.