The whole stadium was standing now, wanting Lugo to at least get the tying run in with less than two outs. Hanrahan, knowing that Lugo had home-run power, worked carefully, falling behind 2-1 before Lugo fouled a pitch off with a vicious swing.
“He just missed hitting that pitch a long way,” Maske said.
Hanrahan was like most relief pitchers in that he never used a windup, just pitching out of the stretch because he often came in with runners on base. Now he stretched and threw again.
Lugo reached out for the pitch and hit a fly ball to right field. It wasn’t deep, but it wasn’t shallow. Austin Kearns took a step back and then came in to make the catch, clearly trying to get himself in position to make a throw to home plate. Varitek tagged up, Kearns made the catch, and Varitek took off for home.
“This is going to be close,” Stevie heard Susan Carol say, even over the din of the crowd.
Kearns ’s throw was strong but just a little bit off-line on the first-base side of the plate. Varitek started to slide as the ball was arriving, and Nationals catcher Wil Nieves grabbed the ball out of the air and dove back in, trying to get the ball on Varitek before Varitek got to the plate.
Varitek, Nieves, and the ball-in Nieves’s glove-appeared to arrive all at the same moment. Nieves landed almost on top of Varitek’s legs, applying a tag as Varitek slid into home. Plate umpire John Hirschbeck stared at the two men for a moment, then pointed at Nieves’s glove, which he was holding in the air to show that he still had the ball. Hirschbeck’s arm came up in the air, and Stevie thought he heard him say, “You’re out!” even though he couldn’t possibly have heard him from so far away in the cauldron of noise. Nevertheless, the arm raised in the air was enough. It was a double play. Varitek was out. The game was over. Somehow the Nationals had won, 1-0.
As soon as Hirschbeck gave the out call, Susan Carol jumped from her seat, yelling, “They did it, they did it!”
Stevie had also jumped from his seat and, instinctively, he turned to hug Susan Carol. She did the same thing. Then, almost in midhug, they both stopped, awkwardly pushing back from one another.
The reaction of the other writers around them was considerably more subdued: they were clearly surprised by the sudden ending but not emotional. Stevie had covered enough sporting events to know that journalists taught themselves to try not to show emotion even if they felt it.
Seeing that she and Stevie were the only ones who appeared excited, Susan Carol calmed down quickly. “That was an amazing game,” she said, as if defending herself.
“Yes, it was,” Stevie said, trying to sound cool and restrained-even though he didn’t feel the least bit cool.
Then they gathered up their notebooks and followed everyone else in the direction of the clubhouses.
9: SILENT TREATMENT
IT TOOK SEVERAL MINUTES to make their way through the crowds to the locker room area, which, unlike in the newer ballparks, was not on a separate level where there was no public access. The media had to stand against a wall so that fans could pass by on their way out of the ballpark.
As planned, Stevie went first to the interview room to meet Bobby Kelleher and the other Herald staffers at the game. They would discuss their postgame plans-who would write which stories. There wasn’t much doubt what the story of the game was: Norbert Doyle.
Kelleher, who had taken the elevator from the main press box along with Nationals beat writer Doug Doughty, was waiting in the back of the room when Stevie walked in. Susan Carol had gone to wait outside the Nationals clubhouse, having already talked to Tamara Mearns by cell phone.
“Nice of Doyle to turn what was a decent news story into a made-for-TV movie, wasn’t it?” Kelleher said when he spotted Stevie.
“What happens with my story now?” Stevie asked, then realized he was being selfish thinking about that first.
“Good question, actually,” Kelleher said. “I already talked to the desk. They’re going to insert a couple of paragraphs up high about how Doyle pitched tonight, but leave most of the game description for the game story and my column.” He smiled. “There is one other change.”
“What’s that?”
“The story was inside the Sports section for the early edition. Next edition it’s on the front page.”
“Of the Sports section, right?”
“Of the newspaper,” Kelleher said. “You did it again, kid.”
Stevie felt good about that, although he knew he’d backed into the A1 story. Still, like Doyle in the eighth inning, he didn’t mind catching a break or two.
“So what’s my sidebar now?” he said, hearing a microphone being tested in the background. Deadline was closing in.
“Wil Nieves,” Kelleher said. “He’s a good story in himself-journeyman catcher, up and down from the minors his whole life. He was Mike Mussina’s personal catcher for a while in ’07. Doyle pitches kind of like Mussina-changes speeds, good control, doesn’t throw hard. Plus, Wil’s a good guy. You may have to wait him out a little bit, though, because a lot of people are going to want to talk to him about the last play at the plate.”
“And you’ll do Doyle?”
Kelleher grunted. “Everybody will be doing Doyle,” he said. “He’ll come in here first, which will be okay. It will be a mob scene when he goes back to that tiny clubhouse and all the columnists want to talk to him some more.”
“Columnists like you?”
“Yup. This guy is now officially the story of this World Series-maybe even if he never throws another pitch.”
“He’ll pitch again after tonight, won’t he?”
“Oh, he’ll pitch game six or game seven,” Kelleher said. “But there’s no guarantee there will be a game six or a game seven. Who knows? Maybe the Nats will win in five.”
Now that, Stevie thought, would be a storybook ending.
Assignment in hand, Stevie made his way back down the hallway in the direction of the Nationals clubhouse. He couldn’t help but notice how quiet the walkway under the third-base stands was-especially when compared with the night before, when the Red Sox fans had been celebrating winning game one.
He wasn’t the only one who noticed. “The silence is deafening, isn’t it?” said Jeff Arnold, another writer for the Herald. His assignment was to talk to Austin Kearns about his throw on the last play.
“I guess they’re surprised,” Stevie said as they fell into the back of the media line waiting to get into the clubhouse.
“Not surprised, stunned,” Arnold said. “It’s funny how things change. Once, Red Sox fans expected disaster in October. But they’ve gotten used to winning now. This is the first time they’ve lost a World Series game since 1986.”
Stevie hadn’t thought about it that way. The Red Sox had swept the World Series in both 2004 and 2007 and had won the opener in this one. There had been years when they weren’t in the Series, but lately, when they got there, they were unbeatable.
The line was barely moving in the direction of the door. “Why is it so slow?” Stevie said. “It only took a few minutes to get into the Sox clubhouse last night.”
“The security guy on the visiting clubhouse here is a real pain in the neck,” Arnold said. “He looks at every pass as if it must be fake, does everything but ask your blood type. I guarantee he’ll give you a hard time.”
Stevie shrugged. Security guards never seemed to believe someone his age could actually be accredited to cover events like the Final Four and the U.S. Open tennis tournament. He steeled himself as he followed Arnold to the clubhouse door, which was blocked by a burly man who was-as Arnold had predicted-checking every pass as if the secret to happiness were written there in code.
Arnold survived inspection and stopped just inside the door. “What are you waiting for?” the guard snarled, looking over his shoulder while Stevie waited for his inspection.