Empyreal Environs

Game 139: September 4, 2007
Blue Jays	3	L: Roy Halladay (14-7)	70-68, 2 game losing streak 21-16-7 series record
Red Sox	5	W: Josh Beckett (17-6) S: Jonathan Papelbon (33)	84-55, 4 game winning streak 29-12-5 series record Magic number: 17
Highlights: Beckett went eight strong to give most of the bullpen a needed hiatus; he struck out seven while capitulating three walks and three earned runs. Papelbon was summoned for the ninth for the third game in a row, but in his previous two appearances he hurled 23 pitches total. Last night he only needed nine. The Jacobyn Revolution is in full effect: the rookie outfielder fell a double short of the cycle, making the other outfielders look nervously over their shoulders while their heads are still intact.

The Royal Rooters finished the 2007 season with a 2-0 record in their outings.

It’s reassuring to be surrounded by friends in sometimes hostile territory. The bleacher crowds in Section 42 were particularly unruly last night. One upstart fan had to be restrained by three security people. Two more were required to pull him out of the area and down the stairs and the uniformed police officers also had to get involved. The raucousness amongst those I know buffered me from anonymous hooligans.

Matt, former formulator of mojo, selected Alexis Rios (his real name) as his Polite Heckling™ target for the evening. Some highlights:

• Alexis! Your appearance is less than satisfactory.
• (After Jacoby Ellsbury tripled in the sixth.) Alexis! Don’t feel badly about that play. It happens to all of us. Well, not Ellsbury, but you get my drift.
• (After Rios took off his cap to wipe his brow to reveal his baldness.) Alexis! They sell wigs for that. They look very natural. You can even swim in them.

As usual, Matt’s heckling spawned hapless imitators. As drunk as he was, they were drunker, as witnessed by their hackneyed “You’re mother was great last night, Alex!” and “Alex, you suck!” numbly fumbling through the night air.

Where other fans use their words like imprecise cudgels, Matt’s phrases are scalpel-like save for the fact that they cut for no other purpose but to spill blood.

Between hollers at Rios, Matt recapped the hyperbolic entrances he and his brother devised for starters and relievers while at Monday’s game. (Of course, since I gave them the tickets, their row won the $25 CVS gift card.)

Mike Timlin would drive out of the bullpen in a star-spangled monster truck and drive over cars with sickels and stars painted on them. A bald eagle would descend onto Timlin’s shoulder and drop a ball into his glove. (Too Yankee, I opined. Bald eagles stood for truth and justice until the Yankees co-opted them.)

Daisuke Matsuzaka would plummet out of the sky on a dragon whose heart was being impaled by his broadsword. (My suggestion: a katana. His reply: Stereotype! Revised suggestion: shards of a splintered baseball bat.)

Other scenarios were not for any specific pitcher but just for the sake of exorbitance. Topless women pulling a gold chariot with the pitcher in a toga and laurel wreath, attended by dozens also wearing togas. Train tracks divergent from the existing line by a madman running through the middle of Fenway with a damsel in distress tied right next to the mound; the pitcher would leap out of the onrushing train, save the maiden, and take the mound. A water slide beginning at the top of Fisk Pole and swooped all the way to the rubber. Terry Francona touching his finger to the mound, like God to Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and a pitcher springing forth from the earth fully formed.

Those entrances would be reserved for veteran major leaguers, of course. For the rookies far less elaborate ingresses would be devised, like coming out of the bullpen with a single unlit sparker and having a Bic lighter fail repeatedly. Or a lumbering hulk of a man, a gentleman about the size of Matt Stairs, making his way out to the mound and disgorging the greenhorn from his mouth onto the hill.

It would be easy to take Stairs lightly given his peregrine career and slack production. Beckett lapsed in the fifth, forgetting that the unmemorable outfielder has been incendiary lately. The Cy Young candidate was burned by his oversight and Stairs launched a three-run homer into his team’s bullpen.

The team has neatly reversed the negativity and downward spiral that it seemed to resign itself to in the sweep in the Bronx. With two straight series victories against two teams in the division, I’ve been heartened enough to begin including the “magic number” in the game summary table. First half stalwart Kevin Youkilis may have snapped out of his slump with a 2-for-4 showing that included a home run to dead center off the vaunted Roy Halladay.

Boston, you are the only, only, only
Don’t blame us if we ever doubt you
You know we couldn’t live without you
Red Sox, you are the only, only, only