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play. It will be interesting to see if the phenomenon carries over into the regular season.
    Remember the year the Orioles were relatively stacked and started 0-21? Or was it 0-22?
    Go you big David Ortiz.
    I call up the website and find we’ve shipped Tony Womack to the Cards. With Womack gone, we don’t have a designated late-inning base-stealer, unless Shump is showing flashes of his old speed. I feel bad for Womack, his salary and Lamborghini notwithstanding. He bunted and ran better than anyone on the team this spring, but not being able to play the field, he never had a chance.
    Shump takes advantage of this break by straining a hamstring in the night game. So after finally outlasting Womack, he essentially hands McCarty the twenty-fifth spot. March 24th
    The drawing for Monster seats was yesterday. All morning I avoid opening my e-mail, not wanting to jinx our shot. It’s noon when I finally check, expecting dozens of forwards from my co-conspirators. There’s a piece of spam from priceline.com, that’s it.
    At five there’s still nothing, good or bad.
    The Sox are playing the Yanks on NESN. Trudy says I can watch it, but there’s an interesting documentary on, and I say, “That’s okay. It’s just pre-season.”
    The documentary’s short, and we catch up to the game late. We’re behind 8–5, but when we rally in the bottom of the ninth, there aren’t enough Yankee fans left to overcome a hearty “Let’s go, Red Sox!” chant. It’s a classic Red Sox moment, that refusal to give in, even with Lowell Spinner Iggy Suarez stepping to the plate as our last hope. Iggy, feeling it, singles. With two on and two out, Dauber hits a flare to left, and it’s 8–6 with men on second and third and Hyzdu coming up. The chanting grows frantic, like we might actually pull it out. Hyzdu’s batting .173. He shows us why, taking three late, waving swings, and for the second time this spring we lose to the Yankees.
    I turn the channel. I know it’s only exhibition, and that it’s classier not to chase after meaningless wins, but it’s irritating.
    By midnight I still haven’t gotten any e-mail about Monster tickets. I think that can’t be good, but, like losing to the Yanks, there’s nothing I can do but eat it.

March 25th
    I’m hoping/expecting to shove all the work off my desk and get down to City of Palms to see the Sox on Saturday. I’ve got an invite to watch the game with Dan “Curse of the Bambino” Shaughnessy, the writer most New England fans (at least those who read the Boston
Globe
) most readily associate with the Olde Towne Team. And this Curse thing has really entered the New England stream of consciousness, as I’m sure you know—it’s right up there with the Salem witch trials and Maine lobstah, up there to the point where some wit with a spray can (or tortured sports fan/artist, take your choice) has turned a traffic sign reading REVERSE CURVE on Storrow Drive into one reading REVERSE THE CURSE. Ofcourse you and I know the so-called Curse of the Bambino is about as real as the so-called Books of Mormon, supposedly discovered in a cave and read with the help of “magic peekin’ stones” (true!), but like all those Mormons, I kind of believe in spite of the thing’s patent absurdity. March 27th
    At three the remaining Green Monster seats go on sale. Considering we went 0 for 34 during the online lottery, I can’t imagine there are any left, but at 2:57 I’m watching the seconds tick off on the Weather Channel. I’ve enlisted Trudy, against her will, to take the other phone, and at exactly three we bombard the old info line.
    Forty minutes into it, Trudy breaks through and hands over the phone. “I did my duty.”
    I wait through “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” and Boz Scaggs’s “It’s Over,” and “(Na Na Hey Hey) Kiss Him Good-bye.” When I finally get a human, he says there are actual seats left, which I think is wrong.
    “Anything for the Yankees?”
    “I can get you