The Red Sox jumped ahead 3-0 in the first inning when Jason Bay hit a three-run home run, and the Nationals simply couldn’t touch Josh Beckett’s pitching. He left after seven innings with a 5-0 lead even though he had thrown only eighty-two pitches.
“Why would they take him out after he’s only thrown eighty-two pitches?” Stevie asked.
“So they can bring him back if they need him to pitch an inning or two of relief in game seven,” Barry Svrluga said. “Smart move by Francona, unless the bullpen blows up.”
It didn’t. Okajima walked Ryan Zimmerman and Adam Dunn to start the bottom of the eighth and stir the crowd slightly. John Farrell, the Red Sox pitching coach, trotted to the mound.
“What does he say to a Japanese-speaking pitcher in this situation?” Stevie asked.
“I think ‘Throw strikes, damn it’ is a universal in any language,” Svrluga said.
“I’ve always wondered what they say on the mound,” Susan Carol said.
“Well, it’s not like Bull Durham,” Svrluga said. “They don’t talk about getting candlesticks for a wedding gift or gloves being jinxed. In this situation it’s basic: ‘You’ve got a five-run lead, let them hit the ball.’ Sometimes the pitching coach will come out because he sees something technically wrong. Other times it’s to talk about how to pitch to a specific hitter.”
“And sometimes,” Mark Maske put in, “it’s just to give the guy a rest or to stall so the bullpen can get ready.”
There was no one warming in the Red Sox bullpen at that moment, and Farrell appeared to be talking animatedly to Okajima, who kept nodding his head. Stevie decided Svrluga was right: “Throw strikes, damn it” was a universal.
Whatever Farrell said worked. Okajima found the plate as soon as he left the mound and got the next three hitters in order. The Red Sox went down one-two-three in the ninth, but it didn’t matter. Jonathan Papelbon was lights-out in the bottom of the inning, ending the game with a three-pitch strikeout of Aaron Bleepin’ Boone.
This time Kelleher wanted Stevie in the Nationals clubhouse to get the hitters to talk about why Beckett-who was now 10-2 lifetime in postseason and 4-1 in the World Series-was so unhittable in October.
“If you see Doyle, just keep moving,” Kelleher said. “We don’t want to talk to him until tomorrow in Boston at the earliest.”
Stevie kept an eye out for Doyle as he moved around the quiet clubhouse. He had talked to a few players but then wandered over to Boone’s locker, since he had made the last out and was always good for a smart one-liner or explanation of what had happened.
Just as he arrived, a TV crew from Boston pushed in close to Boone and a guy with a blow-dried TV haircut stuck a mike in Boone’s face and said, “After that strikeout in the ninth, Aaron, do you feel as if the Red Sox evened the score with you in this World Series?”
Stevie couldn’t help himself, he laughed out loud. Boone looked right at him and winked. Then, with a straight face, he said: “Oh yeah, I would definitely call it even. I was thinking, even though the bases were empty, If I could just hit a six-run home run right here, I could win the game just like last night.”
The TV guy didn’t even flinch a little. “So it’s all even now, then?” he said.
“Actually, they’re up three to two,” Boone said.
Stevie had enough for his sidebar. As he started for the door, he noticed someone moving to block his path.
Norbert Doyle.
He tried to keep moving, but Doyle got right in front of him.
“Norbert, hi,” Stevie said, trying to sound friendly and casual.
Doyle ignored the greeting. “Why are you doing this?” he said, standing very close to Stevie. “Do you understand what’s at stake here? Do you know what happens if you write your damn story?”
“The truth comes out?” Stevie said, glancing around in the hope that no one would notice the conversation.
“The truth?” Doyle said, his voice rising. “You don’t know the truth. You aren’t even close to it.”
“How do you know what we’re close to?” Stevie asked, then regretted it because he really didn’t want an argument.
“I know,” Doyle said. He moved even closer to Stevie. “Let me tell you something, you write anything that hurts my kids, and I’ll come after you.”
He wasn’t shouting, but his voice was raised in an angry sort of whisper, and Stevie noticed a TV light shining in his face. Then another. Uh-oh. Player confronting kid reporter after World Series game. YouTube, here I come, he thought. Not to mention every local broadcast and maybe national too.
“Let’s talk about this tomorrow,” he said to Doyle. “Alone.” He looked around and said quietly, “Off camera.”
Doyle noticed the cameras too.
“Fine,” he said. “But this isn’t over.”
He walked back in the direction of his locker. Stevie tried to get to the door as fast as he could, but two TV cameras and a radio microphone blocked his path.
“What was that about?” one of the TV guys asked, a mike shoved in his face.
Stevie knew he had to come off very calm or he would make things worse. “Nothing important,” he said. “I have to get going, I’m on deadline.”
“But he was angry at you?” the guy persisted.
“Lots of people get angry at me,” Stevie said. “My English teacher is going to be really angry with me when I get back to school. I’m sorry, I have to go now.”
He bolted for the door before anyone could ask him another question.
He could feel his heart pumping from adrenaline. He walked as quickly as he could, head down, in the direction of the press box elevator.
He was stopped by the sound of a familiar voice. “Did my father talk to you?”
He looked up and saw Morra Doyle and felt his face burning.
“Only for a minute,” he said. “I think we’re going to talk tomorrow. I gotta run, Morra, I’m right on deadline.”
“That’s fine,” she said as he moved past her. “You may get some phone calls later.”
“Phone calls?”
“I think I may have to tell people how I had to fend you off at lunch when you tried to come on to me.”
He stopped and turned around. “Whaa?”
She gave him a sweet smile. “Do you think people won’t believe me?” she said. “See you in Boston.”
She turned and walked down the hall, leaving Stevie standing there wishing he had never heard the name Doyle.
22: BACK TO BOSTON
STEVIE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING about what had happened downstairs until everyone had written and filed their stories and they were on their way home in Kelleher’s car.
“So, now they’re resorting to blackmail,” Tamara said when Stevie had finished.
“But it can’t work,” Susan Carol said. “No one will believe a story like that.”
“As a matter of fact, there are people who will believe it,” Kelleher said. “But being accused of getting a little forward on a date isn’t that big a deal on today’s gossip meter. Stevie, you’re going to have to suck it up and just tell your side if it comes to that and not worry about what people think.”
“Great,” Stevie said. “My parents will be so proud.”
“Mine too, if it comes to that,” Susan Carol said.
Tamara’s cell phone rang. She looked at the number for a second and then answered.
“What’s up, Chico?” she said.
Stevie knew that Chico Harlan was the Post’s Nationals beat writer. Tamara listened for a minute, rolled her eyes, and said, “Hang on a sec.”
Holding her hand over the phone, she said, “According to Chico, several people went to talk to Doyle after the clubhouse incident. He said he had been telling you to stay away from his daughter, to stop calling her all the time.”