SK: Some of what happens to Daubach is down to pure luck—who gets hurt and who stays healthy. But you know he’s on the edge of being back in civvies. Or a minor league uni. Hope he made some good investments over the years.

February 29th

Reporters following Byung-Hyun Kim say he stays till 1 A.M. working out, but that he naps at all times. I wonder if BK’s regimen is like the Japanese, who throw two hundred pitches a day. He’s young and talented, with that weird submarine delivery, but he’s never thrown a full season as a starter. If he can give us two hundred innings and twenty quality starts, we should win the East. The worry is that he’s a head case. He gave Fenway the finger when we booed him during the introductions before the ALCS, and in the off-season he smashed a photographer’s camera. I guess he’s this year’s Oil Can Boyd or Cowboy Carl Everett.

March 1st

Steve calls as Trudy’s microwaving her lunch. I can barely hear him through the Geiger-like static. For the BC game, we’re parking in the players’ lot and sitting in the owner’s booth. As a bleacher rat, I’m a little nervous. What do you say to an owner—“Way to own”?

March 2nd

Oops—Yankees Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield received steroids from Barry Bonds’s trainer, according to the ongoing federal probe. Giambi showed up at camp looking shrunken. Sheffield says he’ll pee in a cup anytime anyplace, but when a reporter produces a cup, Sheff backs down. Makes me wonder if Steinbrenner went out and got A-Rod and Travis Lee in case the league suspends the BALCO Boys.

March 3rd

All day an unreal, nearly paralyzing feeling. It seems so impossible that we’re blowing off work and school that we have to keep repeating the news to each other like lottery winners: “We’re going to Florida!”

In the Charlotte airport, waiting for our connection to Fort Myers, I look around the gate for fellow pilgrims, but the one kid wearing a cap is a Brewers fan. It’s only when we’re on board that the hard core begin dribbling in—four single guys in their twenties, all big enough to be players, in various Sox hats.

We get in after midnight and the airport’s crazy. In the long line at the rental-car center, half the people are in Boston garb. Fort Myers is an endless grid of strip malls and stoplights, and everyone drives like they’re either having a heart attack or trying to find an emergency room for someone who is. We fly past Mattress World, Bath World, Rug World. It’s Hicksville, Long Island, with palm trees and pelicans.