Faithful by Stephen King, Stewart O’Nan Read Free Book Online

and Crespo, who’s had the best. April 1st
    On the very last day he could, Shump exercises an out clause in his contract and is free to sign with another club (eventually the Pirates), meaning Cesar Crespo, hitting .361, has earned a spot on the roster.
    Met vet Bobby Jones and Tim Hamulack will fight for the final bullpen spot. They’ll both travel to Atlanta—as will Adam Hyzdu, who’s already been told by Francona he’ll start the year in Pawtucket. He’s the twenty-sixth man, the last one cut, and knows he could have made the team if he’d only hit the ball. With Trot out and Kapler starting, our backup outfielders are the thirty-eight-year-old, leg-injury-prone Ellis Burks, first baseman/aspiring pitcher David McCarty and fullbacks Brian Daubach and Kevin Millar.
    The roster’s set, if not the lineup. The bench may not be as deep as the Yankees’, but it’s a good club, a 95–100 win club. My only worry now is health, with Nomar, Trot and BK already out. If we lose anyone else important, this could quickly turn into a lost season, like the Angels’ last year. April 2nd
    I drive to Boston to meet my friend Lowry’s lit class at Simmons College, right down Brookline Ave from Fenway. All the way up, I wrestle with the question of whether to drop in on Naomi. I don’t want to freak her out, but she hasn’t returned my calls, and we’re a week away from the home opener.
    I’m early, there’s a parking spot, and I can’t resist. From the sidewalk, the office looks dark, but that’s just the tinted windows. The big tally board with all the games broken down by sections is covered with
X
’s. Everything’s sold-out except some August games against Tampa Bay and Toronto.
    A young guy at a desk is on the phone with someone who got aced out of the Monster seats. “I’m sorry, sir,” the guy says, “but it did say first-come first-serve.”
    I’m loitering, and he looks up from the phone in mid-conversation.
    “Is Naomi expecting you?”
    He calls her, then explains that she’s all the way on the other side of the park (there
is
no other side of the park—that would be where the batting cages are, under the center-field bleachers). She says not to worry, it’s going to happen. It’s going to be a day-of-game thing, I’ll have to pick them up at the Will Call window.
    Outside, a crew is fixing pennants over Gate A. The one they’re working on as I pass says 1918 WORLD CHAMPIONS.
    I go down Lansdowne and look up at the Monster seats. Green metal stools perch upside-down on the counters, like a bar after closing. I try to imagine sitting up there, but the wind’s so cold it’s hard to believe the season’s only two days away.
    It’s after dinner when I finally catch up to yesterday’s game. We beat the Twins 4–3, taking three out of five from them to win Fort Myers’s Mayor’s Cup. The hero, ironically, was Adam Hyzdu, who homered to break the tie in the ninth. Too little, too late. April 3rd
    Last night we beat the Braves 7–3. Exhibition results mean even less the day before the opener, but I’m glad to see Manny pick up his first homer of the spring.
    Today the Braves shut us out, 5–0, with Foulke giving up two runs in a third of an inning. I tell myself it means nothing, but neither does our 17-12 Grapefruit League record (a half game, I’m sorry to report, behind the Yanks).
    In the last meaningful action of the spring, lefty Bobby Jones’s slider and 1.74 ERA win him the final roster spot over the less experienced Tim Hamulack.
    The Weather Channel’s predicting snow here tomorrow night. In Baltimore, for the first pitch, it’s supposed to be thirty-nine degrees.

April/May
    WHO ARE THESE GUYS?

April 4th
    Opening Day:
Notes on Addiction
    I’ve written about substance abuse a good many times, and see no need to rehash all that in a book about baseball…but because this also happens to be a book about
rooting,
the subject at least has to be mentioned, it seems to me. These are a