Change-up Read online

  Mearns looked at Stevie and Susan Carol. “If you’re scoring at home, Chuck is Charles Barkley, and Mike is Michael Jordan.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Stevie said to Justice.

  “Yeah,” Justice laughed. “But when Wilbon tells you his schedule, it usually comes out something like that.”

  Mearns nodded. “It’s true,” she said. “Every time I talk to him on the phone, he says something like, ‘Gotta go, I promised Mike I’d call him right back,’ or, ‘The commissioner’s on the other line, he’s been bugging me for days.’”

  Stevie loved this kind of talk about famous sports people, whether it was true or not. He knew Kornheiser wouldn’t be borne into the World Series by litter, but he suspected he would insist on having a car sent for him.

  “Hey,” Kelleher said, nodding toward the field, where the Red Sox had started batting practice. “We probably ought to get down there. Did we miss anything at the press conferences yesterday, Richard?”

  Justice shook his head. “You’ll be stunned to know that both teams have great respect for one another,” he said. “They’re both happy to be here.”

  “Let me guess,” Susan Carol said. “Everyone plans on giving a hundred and ten percent, and they hope that they can step up under pressure.”

  “Congratulations,” Justice said. “You not only have the cliché handbook down, but you already have the best quotes from today’s press conferences.”

  “Did anyone talk to Norbert Doyle yesterday?” Stevie asked.

  Justice shook his head. “Don’t think so. The clubhouses were closed to us, and the only ones who came to the press conference for the Nationals were Manny Acta, Ryan Zimmerman, and John Lannan, since he’s pitching tonight.”

  Stevie was glad to hear that. It seemed likely he’d be the first to talk to Doyle at any length at their interview the next day. And since Doyle was now on the World Series roster, the story was actually better than it would have been a week earlier. Maybe, he thought, he’d gotten lucky.

  “Come on,” Kelleher said, pulling Stevie out of his reverie. “Let’s get downstairs.”

  “Yeah,” Mearns said. “The sooner we get down there, the sooner we can stand around and talk to each other there rather than here.”

  Stevie knew from his experience at the playoffs what Mearns meant. Other than a short press conference with each team’s manager and the next day’s starting pitcher, there was just about no access to players pregame. During the regular season the media could go into the clubhouses almost any time and talk to players. Stevie had done that in Philadelphia during the summer on several occasions. But the postseason was different: the players were given a lot more privacy in October. So most of the pregame time on the field was spent talking to other writers. Still, for Stevie, that was fun too.

  After all, he was really glad to be here. And he did plan on giving 110 percent and stepping up his game. This was the World Series—his first World Series. He was ready.

  4: DAVID AND MORRA

  THEY STAYED ON THE FIELD until they were required to leave, an hour before the game was to begin. Stevie spent most of the time taking in what was going on around him: when the gates opened to the public, people came streaming into the stands, most in red or in red and white, many wearing uniform tops with players’ names on the back. Stevie was surprised to see a number of Ramirez shirts, since Manny Ramirez, the oft-troubled Red Sox slugger, had been exiled to Los Angeles. Some Red Sox fans apparently remained loyal to him.

  Stevie watched with amusement while fans lined up next to the dugouts, pleading with players to stop on their way off the field to sign autographs. During the regular season Stevie would occasionally see players stop to sign. But not in October. They were all business now.

  “Did you see who’s singing the national anthem?” Susan Carol said, wandering over near the Red Sox dugout while a number of fans pleaded with Jason Bay to “sign one, just one!”

  “Kate Smith?” Stevie asked, referring to the late singer who had become a legend in Philadelphia as a good-luck charm for the hockey team in the 1970s.

  “No,” Susan Carol said. “It’s the twenty-first century, Stevie. Try Beyoncé.”

  That did impress Stevie. Beyoncé was quite beautiful and she could sing. He remembered watching her sing “At Last” during the inaugural ball earlier in the year.

  The pregame introductions were every bit as impressive. The crowd even gave the Nationals a nice round of applause when the PA announcer said this was the first World Series in the forty-year history of the franchise and the first for Washington since 1933.

  Every player from both teams was introduced, and the cheers seemed to grow louder for each Red Sox, with the loudest cheers saved for David Ortiz—“Big Papi” to Red Sox Nation—the postseason hero of their past world championships. By the time Beyoncé was introduced, the entire building was shaking with noise, and even sitting way down the right-field line in the auxiliary press box, Stevie couldn’t help but tingle.

  The ceremonial first pitches were thrown out by Bob Ryan and Peter Gammons, which certainly got the attention of everyone in the press box. Ryan and Gammons were both Boston legends, having worked for the Boston Globe since the 1960s.

  “I guess the Red Sox have been in the series so much lately they finally had to recognize someone in the media,” Kelleher had said when he heard that his two friends were being honored.

  “Can’t think of two better guys,” Mearns said. “It’s a nice gesture.”

  There was very little nice about the game itself—except for the roaring fans of Fenway. The Red Sox scored five runs off Nationals starting pitcher John Lannan in the first inning, and Josh Beckett, the Red Sox ace, was unhittable as usual in postseason, not allowing the Nats a single base runner until the fifth. The Red Sox added three more runs in the sixth, then another in the eighth, and won 9–0 in a completely one-sided game.

  The game took under three hours—warp speed, Stevie knew, for a postseason baseball game. But there were no mound conferences, no pauses to bring pitchers in from the bullpen, and not a lot of pitches taken in the late innings with the outcome no longer in doubt. Stevie noticed the stands starting to empty in the ninth. Even a fast game ended close to midnight in the World Series.

  “Well, here we go again,” Richard Justice said as they all made their way down to the clubhouses. “We haven’t had a decent World Series now since ’02.”

  “It’s just one game,” Susan Carol said. “Beckett can’t pitch every night.”

  “Dice-K tomorrow,” Kelleher said, referring to Daisuke Matsuzaka, the Red Sox number two pitcher. “Anyone care to wager on a sweep?”

  “You’re just saying that because the Red Sox swept in ’04 and ’07,” Mearns said.

  “Well, yeah,” Kelleher said.

  The Nationals clubhouse was a lot quieter than it had been after game seven of the NLCS. Stevie was now accustomed to how crowded postseason clubhouses were, but the visitors clubhouse in Fenway was so tiny he could barely move from locker to locker. He managed to scrounge a couple of quotes from several players about Beckett—Kelleher had suggested he write his sidebar on how good Beckett was in postseason—but couldn’t get close to Ryan Zimmerman, who was surrounded by at least ten cameras, not to mention all the notebooks and tape recorders.

  It was already midnight, and Stevie had to file his story by 12:45. There was no time to hang around until the crowd around Zimmerman began to disperse. Stevie was heading for the door when he saw Norbert Doyle. He was standing at a locker near the door with one reporter talking to him. Seeing Stevie, he waved.

  “Eleven o’clock tomorrow?” he said.

  “Absolutely,” Stevie said. “We’ll be there.”

  “Great. My kids are really looking forward to it.”

  Stevie was tempted to say, “You mean David is looking forward to meeting Susan Carol,” but he resisted.

  “Us too,” he said, and raced back upstairs to try to write. O
nce again he knew what he was writing wasn’t particularly inspired. The quotes were hardly brilliant. “The guy’s got great stuff and great control,” left fielder Adam Dunn had said.

  Great, Stevie thought, like anyone watching couldn’t figure that out. Kelleher often reminded him that some nights you just do the best you can and make deadline. Stevie knew that was true, and he knew everyone else was dealing with the same banal quotes. Still, it didn’t make him happy to file such a nonstory.

  He was even less happy when he found Susan Carol writing away with a big smile on her face. “What are you so happy about?” he asked.

  “Me? Oh, nothing,” she said, still smiling. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Give me one sentence,” he said.

  She shrugged. “I got lucky,” she said. “Bill Buckner was in the Sox clubhouse, and he recognized me, I guess from when we were doing Kidsports. They had told everyone he was off-limits until the off-day press conference, but he talked to me.”

  Stevie stared at her. In the middle of a packed World Series clubhouse, she had gotten an exclusive story. Buckner was famous for the error he had made in the 1986 World Series when Mookie Wilson’s ground ball darted between his legs, allowing the New York Mets to score the winning run.

  For years Buckner had been the symbol of Boston’s postseason futility. Stevie remembered being at lunch one time with Kelleher and Esther Newberg, his literary agent. Newberg was one of those crazed Red Sox Nation fans.

  “Watch this,” Kelleher had said quietly to Stevie while Newberg was going on about how much she hated Buckner.

  “So, Esther, do you remember what the score was when Buckner muffed the ball?” Kelleher said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Was it six to five, five to four? I know we were ahead by a run.”

  “No, you weren’t,” Kelleher said. “The score was tied. All you Red Sox fans act like Buckner lost the World Series for you, when even if he makes the play, the game just goes to the eleventh inning.”

  “I don’t care,” Newberg had answered. “I hate him. I don’t want to hear this.”

  Stevie remembered wondering what it was like to be Buckner, with so many people hating him so passionately. Buckner had been “rehabilitated” after the Red Sox finally won the World Series in 2004 and then again in 2007. That was why he was in Boston—as an invited guest of the team. And Susan Carol had gotten to talk to him—alone.

  “I should have known,” Stevie said. “Everyone else has zilch, and you’ve got Bill Buckner.”

  “Stop it, Stevie,” she said. “I got lucky. Now go write.”

  He did, but he wasn’t happy. Susan Carol had once called him the most competitive person she had ever met, and he knew she wasn’t far wrong. He wasn’t a good enough athlete to shine that way, so journalism was the way he competed. And his girlfriend had just whipped him.

  On the media shuttle back to the hotel, Kelleher asked Susan Carol how it had gone with Buckner.

  “You’ll have to read about it in the Post,” Mearns said with a smile. “She wrote a great story.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Kelleher said. “Did your genius editors find some extra space?”

  “Uh-huh,” Mearns answered. “They put her on the front. They actually put a Redskins feature inside.”

  “Whoa,” Kelleher said, turning again to Susan Carol. “You must have had great stuff to knock a Redskins story off the front.”

  “I think it was a story about the backup quarterback,” Susan Carol said, stealing a glance at Stevie, who was pretending to look out the window. “It wasn’t that big a deal.”

  “A hangnail is a big deal in Washington when it comes to the Redskins, you know that,” Kelleher said. “So what’d he say?”

  “He said it was really nice of the Red Sox to invite him back, but he still didn’t feel completely comfortable in Boston,” she said. “It still bothers him when people ask him what it felt like to cost the Red Sox the ’86 series. And get this, he said he kind of hopes the Nationals win, because Boston has been winning so much recently. The Nationals are the underdogs now. Washington could use a championship, and Boston’s had two World Series, three Super Bowls, and an NBA title the last few years.”

  “You’ll make a few headlines in Boston with that story,” Kelleher said.

  Stevie stared out the window. Susan Carol had written a story that everyone would be talking about the next day. He had written a story that his parents would read.

  Maybe.

  The World Series hadn’t started a whole lot better for him than it had for the Nationals.

  Stevie and Susan Carol had agreed to meet at 9:30 for a prebreakfast before they met with the Doyles, but Stevie woke up early and went downstairs by himself. He needed a little time alone to pout. He sat at a window table, staring at the harbor and wolfing down some French toast and coffee.

  He was halfway through Bob Ryan’s column in the Globe when Susan Carol walked in, looking around the room until she found him.

  “Couldn’t wait for me?” she said, glancing at his empty plate.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I woke up early and I was hungry.”

  She slid into the chair across from him, took the pot of coffee that was on the table, and poured a cup for herself. He kept reading.

  “Are you mad at me or something?” she said after several seconds of silence.

  “Me? Angry? Why would I be angry?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Steven Richman Thomas, other than your parents—maybe—is there anyone who knows you better than I do?” she said.

  He didn’t answer for a moment, trying to think of something clever to say.

  “No,” he said finally.

  “Okay then, let me take a stab at what’s going on here,” she said, taking a long sip of her coffee. A waitress came up and Susan Carol ordered fried eggs, orange juice, bacon, and toast.

  “Is that part of your swimmer’s diet?” he asked.

  “Don’t change the subject,” she said. “I can eat pretty much what I want as long as I’m working out.”

  “And you’re always working out,” he said.

  She flashed him the smile he had seen charm so many people. “True. Now, as I was saying …”

  He put up a hand. “Do we really have to start the day with you psychoanalyzing me?”

  “Yes, we do,” she said. “Because that’s the only way to clear the air.”

  He sighed, knowing that nothing could deter her.

  “Okay, okay, go ahead,” he said.

  She leaned forward. “You’re upset because you feel like you blew it with Norbert Doyle after the seventh game of the playoff series,” she said.

  He started to respond but she put up a hand. “Wait till I finish,” she said. “So, you beat yourself up about that, and then he makes the series roster. You get an interview with him and his kids, but the boy asks that I come along, so that upsets you even though it’s no big deal and you know it. Then, last night, I catch a lucky break—one that you might very well have caught if you’d been sent to the Red Sox clubhouse—and so you’re angry at me even though I haven’t done anything to make you angry. Nothing at all.”

  He knew she was right. As much as he liked her, really liked her, it still bothered him that she was a little bit taller than he was, a little bit more athletic, a little bit smarter, and, clearly, a little bit more rational.

  “Stevie?” she said, bringing him back from his musings.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Look, you’re right. I know you’re right. But sometimes it’s hard to be your friend, even your boyfriend.”

  “Why?” she said.

  He shrugged. “You know why,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just hard trying to keep up with you.”

  “Do I ever act like I’m better than you?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “But you don’t have to. You just are.”

  Her food arrived, and she waited until the waitress had left before answering.

 
“Sometimes it’s hard to be your friend,” she said. “You’re so smart, and such a good writer, and you’re good-looking, and you’re funny, and you’re brave. And you still don’t think you’re good enough.”

  “Well,” he said. “I may be good enough, but I’m not as good as you.”

  She sighed. “Now you’re just being difficult, and you know it,” she said. “Today I had the big story. But you’re about to do an interview for a story no one else will have tomorrow. So get over yourself already.”

  She picked up her fork and began to eat. Stevie poured himself another cup of coffee and went back to Bob Ryan’s column.

  • • •

  They started talking again on the twenty-minute walk to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, which was where the Nationals were staying.

  “This is your story, so I’m going to stay quiet while you ask the questions,” Susan Carol said.

  “You have to at least be nice to David.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll be nice to David. And Morra. I’m just here to help. Where are we meeting them?”

  “There’s a restaurant in the lobby. We’re having breakfast again.”

  They rounded the corner onto Essex Street, following the directions the concierge at the Marriott had given them. As they turned onto Avery Street and approached the front door of the Ritz, they could see a coterie of security people and police stopping people from going inside.

  “I didn’t think about this,” Susan Carol said. “Of course there’s security. Otherwise the place would be overrun with fans and autograph seekers.”

  “What do we do?” Stevie asked.

  “You follow me,” a voice behind them said.

  Stevie and Susan Carol turned at the sound of the voice and saw a tall young man with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a big smile on his face. He looked at Susan Carol, still smiling.

  “I’m David Doyle,” he said. “It’s great to meet you, Susan Carol.”

  Stevie could see that Susan Carol was startled by David Doyle’s appearance. He was a good three inches taller than she was—which made him about six foot two, Stevie guessed. Since Norbert Doyle had said his twins were fourteen, Stevie had expected someone more like himself and less like a J.Crew model. Susan Carol had no doubt expected the same thing.