After the sweep yesterday, I’m ready for a solid win. Tonight’s game is ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball feature, and starts an hour later than usual to make prime time. Once again, the pitching matchup’s in our favor, Wake vs. R. A. Dickey, a junk-balling righty. His off-speed stuff looks hittable but isn’t. Our whole lineup (except Bellhorn, who adds to his league-leading walk total) chases it. Dickey even throws a low knuckler called The Thing, the seams never turning. Wake, throwing his high, floating knuckler, matches him till the fourth, when Johnny misplays a liner into a triple, giving them a cheap run.

It’s 1–0 most of the game, with few base runners. Wake tires in the seventh, giving up several foul-ball home runs. Francona wants him to finish the inning, and with two out and two strikes (including another foul-ball homer), David Dellucci straightens one out, and we’re down 2–0. In the eighth Embree comes on and promptly gives up two runs.

In the ninth, the crowd chants, “Sweep, sweep,” waving brooms. Buck Showalter leaves Dickey in to get the complete-game shutout, even though he’s visibly tired. With one down, Manny hits a bloop single, Dauber crushes a liner right at the right fielder, Millar walks, and that’s it for Dickey, no complete game. For the third time in two days, on comes Francisco Cordero. Bellhorn works the count deep, turns on a fastball and sticks it in the upper deck—foul—then walks to load the bases. The crowd’s edgy now, and they’re as pissed as Dickey when Cordero walks Tek to blow the shutout. 4–1, bases still loaded for Crespo, who, despite ample playing time, has yet to drive in a run. Our thin bench is showing, because Francona literally has no one to go to, and Crespo flies to center to end it.

A weak game, and that includes the Yankee-style rally in the ninth, groveling for walks. Ortiz and Bill Mueller aren’t hitting, and Manny’s in a rare cold spell. Last year the bottom of the order could pick us up, but that’s when Bill Mueller was batting eighth and Trot ninth. Now we’re trying to get run production out of Kapler, Crespo and Pokey, and it’s not happening.

May 3rd

In anticipation of Saturday’s front-row Monster seats, I drive around town in the rain trying to find a fishing net so we can haul in shots just short of the Wall. I go to Sears, figuring they might have a Ted Williams model in his fishing line. The floor associate there tells me they no longer carry fishing gear—or baseball gear, for that matter. All they have is home fitness equipment.