Back at the ballgame, they've turned up the static again, and the crowd is getting ugly. The Red Sox are down 1-0 following a big Toronto third inning, which is to say as big as Toronto third innings ever get. The static continues, louder--it's like that night Elvis Costello cleared out an unsimpatico crowd by telling his roadies to turn up the white noise.

I decide to go downstairs for some beer and Twinkies.

"You got anything to smoke?"

I offer him one of my Marlboros. This is not, I gather, what he wants. With beer at 90 cents a pop, dope has become cost effective, a weird Republican alternative: more bang for the buck.

Groping

When I get back to my seat the two pubescent girls in front of me are frantically tickling each other. The peristaltic motion. And as if in celebration of the girls' new-found progenitive capacity and the spirit of hopeful spring, the Sox rally to tie it in the sixth. Dwyer hits a double, Allenson a single. Sizemore hits what looks like a sure double-play ball, but Allenson comes into the keystone like a cruise missile. Dwyer scores. Bang. An inning later Butch Hobson hits his 28th homer over the Green Monster with Fisk on base. It looks like the game is on ice, except that Don Zimmer has decided to unleash the awesome firepower of the Red Sox bullpen. Soon somebody named Rick Bosetti is trotting around the circuit and the scoreboard reads Toronto 5, Red Sox 3. The crowd, of course, blames Zimmer. The scoreboard flashes:

To our season ticket holders and all our loyal fans, thank you for your support. People begin to file out.

Last Hurrah

That is a shame, because they miss Freddie Lynn's 39th homer of the year, a frozen rope to right-center in the eighth which brings home Sizemore and ties up the game. Nobody really wants to stay for extra innings against the Blue Jays at the end of the year, and Pudge Fisk complies by clubbing the first pitch of the bottom of the ninth somewhere near Kenmore Square. As Yogi Berra once said, "It ain't over 'til it's over." Well, it's all over: Red Sox 6, Blue Jays 5. They can let the grass grow in Fenway. And after a perfunctory series in Detroit, the Sox can relax, play golf, smoke dope and work out on the Nautilus, and manage their investments. And their fans can dream--about the pennant and the World Series and the horrible hatchet murder of Don Zimmer.

'Til next year...