PREGAME, GAME 1 ALDS: So nervous that I'm writing about...Keith Foulke?

I hate and love five game series.

They've been good to us before. We've been very blessed...

(The cosmic slop that was Game 3 of the 2003 ALDS versus the A's, 1986 versus the Angels.)

...and somewhat cursed...

(Actually...wait. The 2005 Red Sox were a paper tiger...we scored runs, but look at that pitching staff. And for God's sake, Boston, Keith Foulke gave you his knees for our glory. And his barely-adequate fastball. An inadequate fastball= no changeup.)

(Even Yankees fans are still trying to figure it out this changeup. I love Manny, but Keith Foulke is forever my World Series MVP.)



(So what if he insulted you, Johnny Burger King? Can you imagine talking to that much media in that small a clubhouse having blown a three-run lead, in a game an AL East Pennant-hungry team didn't actually have to win? I've got no game in particular in mind, so I'll leave it to the reader(s?): You can look it up.)

(And Burger King is pretty good! Call me Michael McDonald's and I'll get angry, but...wait, Michael McDonald is awesome too!)

Back to the subject I'm apparently dodging...we seem to own the Angels lately, but Kelvim Escobar also seems to have figured it out. Game 2 is everything to me because like I said yesterday, I don't shoot craps. But hey, 100 mil plus is already on the line. And he did this...



...at roughly the age when...well, let's just say I thought I was inhaling, but wasn't, and that was probably good. No matter how Daisuke works out, I'm sympathetic to wasted money. Er, not that college was that...um... Dude, I know some Dante! (And Dante. I was Silent Bob.)

I will have a drink or two with my game, at Slainte or somewhere nearby, but I'll pay the extra buck and make sure it tastes good. Probably just plain ol' brew. I don't wanna overdo it, homes.

Hope for the best and expect the worst, Sox Nation. What more can we do?

Workinonit: Keith Foulke and Nomar Garciaparra (sort of.)

As previously mentioned, I'm working on a play presently entitled David Ortiz is God which I'll periodically be posting pieces of here. Here are two monologues, one short one from Keith Foulke, forever my hero and the true World Series MVP, the second about Nomar Garciaparra, based on a dream a friend of mine had. Enjoy.

TITLE CARD
Keith Foulke, RHP
5-3, 2.17 ERA, 32 Saves

Keith Foulke, serious and somewhat ill-tempered, with the top button removed from his cap, speaks.

KEITH
I’m not gonna tell you it’s just a game. That’s not my job. My job is closing the game. I’ve got a fastball slow but accurate and a changeup slower but impossible to hit you think the not-fast fastball’s coming. I tread the line. A good team loses 62 games; a good closer loses three at most. If we get credit for a win, we usually blew the lead and didn’t get the job done right.



Excerpt from Scene 4.

BELLA

Come on, give it to me.

DAVE

Okay, okay. (breathes deep) Evil dream. Reaaallly evil dream. I can’t remember how it started, but where it ended was, well, I was a serial killer on the lam, running from like a hardcore police pursuit, and I looked the part, kinda like John Malkovich, but with a beard. They were chasing me down a this wooded area near some river, and at first it was lightly wooded. I grinned a crazy grin, taunted them, like (pig call) “Sooo-eeey! Can’t catch me now.” But oh how hubris comes before a fall…so then I tripped over a branch, and it hurt. I got up, but there was this one lone cop, right? Slim. Athletic, I mean, not fat like the others. I couldn’t care less about who the cop was when I first arrested me, of course, ‘cause fuck the po-lice, but…as we walked to the wagon, I asked, for some reason or other, “You got a family, officer?” And he said, “Not yet, but I’ve got a wife. I love her. She’s a renowned soccer superstar.” That hit me as strange. So I looked up. And it was none other than Nomar Garciaparra, wearing a police uniform with a Sox cap. He was firm but gentle as he walked me over. He kind of stroked my wrists around the handcuffs, even, sort of doing that (mimes some of Nomar’s at-bat routine) OCD thing he does, like, at the plate? And it wasn’t so gay…well, it wasn’t that not-gay, but the consolation was nice.

We got to the van, and I began to bawl as the enormity of what lay ahead of me…death penalty…started to dawn on my crazy bearded ass. I turned to Nomar, who sat behind me, and said to him, weeping, "I don’t wanna die. I don’t. I just wanna live. That's why I ran. I JUST WANT TO LIVE."

He just looked at me for a moment, almost lovingly, and asked the obvious question: "If you care about life so much, why'd you kill all those people?" I tried to tweak him with the response, "Murdering people was the only way I could really feel alive." But his expression didn’t change. Nomar’s face never moves. Then I bawled some more and contemplated suicide as we rode.

But Nomar was a nice guy. The Sox should offer him a fair extension.

Beat.

BELLA

You need help.

DAVE

Least I've never dreamed of Paul O'Neill.