“This is it?” he said. “This is Fenway Park?”
“Just wait,” Kelleher said.
“Patience has always been Stevie’s strength,” Susan Carol said, smiling.
They rounded a corner in the empty hallway, and Kelleher led them up a short ramp. As soon as they emerged, Stevie gasped.
“Wow,” he said, even though he knew the word was completely uncool.
“Worth the wait?” Mearns said, standing right behind him.
The ballpark was completely empty except for some maintenance guys and a few security people who were just beginning to fan into position. The grounds crew was just setting up the batting cage so the Red Sox could start batting practice. Standing ten rows behind home plate, Stevie felt as if he could reach out and touch it because the stands were so close to the field. The place was tiny. A lot smaller than Nationals Park in Washington. But he could see instantly why it carried the aura that it did.
The first row of seats were so close to the field they seemed to almost be in fair territory. The seats around home plate were all red and glowing in the late-afternoon sunlight. The famous Green Monster loomed in left field, looking even bigger than it did on television.
“Everything is so close,” Susan Carol said, echoing Stevie’s thoughts. “What an incredible place to watch a game.”
“There are two places left in baseball that are really special,” Kelleher said. “This place-”
“And Wrigley Field,” Susan Carol said, finishing the sentence for him.
“Exactly,” Kelleher said. “Some of the new parks- Oriole Park, Safeco Field in Seattle, the place in San Francisco -can be charming. But not like Fenway and Wrigley.”
“What do they call the park in San Francisco now?” Tamara asked.
“Not sure,” Kelleher said. “They keep changing corporate names on it every few weeks.”
“This place will never have a corporate name on it, will it?” Stevie asked.
“God, I hope not,” Kelleher said. “But most owners will do anything to make a buck these days. Come on, let’s go up to the press box and drop our stuff off. We can’t go on the field until BP starts anyway.”
They walked back under the stands to an elevator that whisked them to the top of the ballpark. The press box was glass-enclosed and seemed to be about nine miles up from the field.
They made their way to the seats assigned to Kelleher and Mearns. “In the old days this was a one-tier ballpark, and the press box was on the roof,” Kelleher explained. “Then they built all these corporate boxes on top of it and put the press box on top of them. We went from the best view in baseball here to one of the worst.”
“We don’t get a lot of sympathy about it, though, do we, Bobby?” a voice said behind them.
Kelleher turned and smiled at the sight of a middle-aged man with thinning brown hair and a big grin. Stevie wasn’t sure why, but he looked familiar.
“No, Richard, we don’t, do we?” he said, shaking hands with the man.
Richard laughed. “I tell my friends back home that October’s a tough month for me because I’m away from my kids covering the playoffs and the World Series. They just look at me and say, ‘Yeah, tough life you lead, pal.’”
“Ever call one of them at about two o’clock in the morning when you’re trying to get a cab outside a ballpark?” Kelleher said.
“Thought about it,” Richard said. “But I still don’t think I’d have a lot of people crying for me. So, are you going to introduce me to these two guys or not? That’s the only reason I came over here-to meet them.”
“Figures,” Kelleher said. “Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle and PTI, meet Susan Carol Anderson of the Washington Post and Steve Thomas of the Washington Herald.”
As soon as Kelleher mentioned PTI-the one ESPN show Stevie watched regularly-Stevie knew why Justice had looked familiar.
“I’m a big fan,” Justice said, shaking their hands.
Susan Carol gave Justice the Smile, the one guaranteed to charm anyone and everyone who came into its range. “Why, thank you. As much as I enjoy you on PTI, I really love your writin’ in the Chronicle,” she said. “I read you online all the time.”
Once, hearing Susan Carol rhyme “laan” with “taam” would have made Stevie shake his head. Now he got a kick out of it.
“Speaking of PTI,” Tamara said. “Rumor has it that Mr. Tony may actually show up at a game when the series moves to Washington.”
Justice laughed. Mearns was referring to Tony Kornheiser, the PTI co-host whom Stevie had met at the Final Four in New Orleans. “If they send a car to his house and if they give him four extra credentials so he can be carried in by litter, he may show up,” he said.
“What about Wilbon?” Mearns asked, referring to Kornheiser’s co-host.
“Michael’s checking his schedule,” Justice said. “He’s got golf with Chuck one day, and something with Mike another day, and I think he’s supposed to give the keynote address at the NBA owners meetings, but he’ll try to make it if he can.”
Mearns looked at Stevie and Susan Carol. “If you’re scoring at home, Chuck is Charles Barkley, and Mike is Michael Jordan.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Stevie said to Justice.
“Yeah,” Justice laughed. “But when Wilbon tells you his schedule, it usually comes out something like that.”
Mearns nodded. “It’s true,” she said. “Every time I talk to him on the phone, he says something like, ‘Gotta go, I promised Mike I’d call him right back,’ or, ‘The commissioner’s on the other line, he’s been bugging me for days.’”
Stevie loved this kind of talk about famous sports people, whether it was true or not. He knew Kornheiser wouldn’t be borne into the World Series by litter, but he suspected he would insist on having a car sent for him.
“Hey,” Kelleher said, nodding toward the field, where the Red Sox had started batting practice. “We probably ought to get down there. Did we miss anything at the press conferences yesterday, Richard?”
Justice shook his head. “You’ll be stunned to know that both teams have great respect for one another,” he said. “They’re both happy to be here.”
“Let me guess,” Susan Carol said. “Everyone plans on giving a hundred and ten percent, and they hope that they can step up under pressure.”
“Congratulations,” Justice said. “You not only have the cliché handbook down, but you already have the best quotes from today’s press conferences.”
“Did anyone talk to Norbert Doyle yesterday?” Stevie asked.
Justice shook his head. “Don’t think so. The clubhouses were closed to us, and the only ones who came to the press conference for the Nationals were Manny Acta, Ryan Zimmerman, and John Lannan, since he’s pitching tonight.”
Stevie was glad to hear that. It seemed likely he’d be the first to talk to Doyle at any length at their interview the next day. And since Doyle was now on the World Series roster, the story was actually better than it would have been a week earlier. Maybe, he thought, he’d gotten lucky.
“Come on,” Kelleher said, pulling Stevie out of his reverie. “Let’s get downstairs.”
“Yeah,” Mearns said. “The sooner we get down there, the sooner we can stand around and talk to each other there rather than here.”
Stevie knew from his experience at the playoffs what Mearns meant. Other than a short press conference with each team’s manager and the next day’s starting pitcher, there was just about no access to players pregame. During the regular season the media could go into the clubhouses almost any time and talk to players. Stevie had done that in Philadelphia during the summer on several occasions. But the postseason was different: the players were given a lot more privacy in October. So most of the pregame time on the field was spent talking to other writers. Still, for Stevie, that was fun too.