No Stone Left Unturned

Friday, October 8, 2004, 5:58pm

My poor little portable AM radio is swimming through a soup of electrical noise this evening even though I’ve set it as far from the laptop PC as I can find space. AM is lousy enough without help from electronic noise so I’ll need to decode the events at Fenway Park tonight with good ol’ fashion baseball reconstruction.

According to what can be deciphered the Red Sox are ahead 5-1 and if this trend continues they will clinch the series against the Angels with this game. The Angels won the Major League championship two years ago, but this week they hardly look like a championship team.

I hear on the radio that two blimps are wandering over the park, and indeed as I check from the train, I see their parade in long sweeping turns to the left.

Once again to my surprise inside the Back Bay Tunnel the radio noise abates like before, though still horrible. For the moment I hear only incoherent mumbling from a nonplussed baseball announcer – nothing exciting happening right now. Deeper into the tunnel all intelligible audio is lost except for broken voices from the carriage intercom speaker announcing our future station stops. So it seems that broken audio is the norm for tonight.

I’m on the wrong side of the train to see much as we make our closest approach to the ballpark. One of the blimps still lingers high over the giant Citco sign to my right – that much I can see – and so this must serve as evidence for passing close to the game – and my brother sitting in section 12 of the old barn. Perhaps if I hadn’t been so vague about my travel plans he might have kept me on his list for a spare seat. Vagueness is one of my trademarks in dealing with anxiety, so perhaps my wishi-washiness has resulted in simple justice this time.

As I sift the radio static for intelligible bits of baseball, I conjure an image of Percival Lowell standing with his neck craning upwards beneath a giant brass encased eyepiece decoding the fuzzy and shifting images of Mars no bigger than a golf ball held at arm’s length. The game is no great mystery like that. I know the language of baseball well enough to reconstruct the essence of events using maybe only 10-20% of what is announced. Six to one now. Sixth inning. Bronson Arroyo has six strikeouts for the Sox and has just walked his first batter of the game – Ersted, the Angels dangerous first basemen. Then the even more dangerous Vlad Guerrero whiffs after going 3 and 1. Big roar from the crowd. Energy is building – two strikes, two outs, top of the sixth, fans are on their feet.

Infield hit off Arroyo’s glove! Damn. Soon the noise builds once more.

Two on, two out. Another dangerous hitter. Curve fouled off by Gloss who’s already hit one homer in this game.

Ball in play to short. Force play underway – Cabrara to Belhorn.

Out at second! Inning over. Nine more outs to go.

Static prevents any sound of the Red Sox at-bat. It must not have produced much since the Angels are hitting once more just a few minutes later. Arroyo is coming out of the game after walking the first batter in the 7^th, and even before the manager has reached the mound the fans are rising to their feet giving him a well-deserved standing-O. Now the cheering builds to drown out the announcers themselves as Arroyo makes his way quickly to the dugout.

Even on AM radio it is a thunderous moment.

“Framingham!”

At Framingham Station the dimly lit Verizon payphone drifts past my window and we’re underway again. Next stop, Ashland Station – just as I now remember those MBTA signs about Track 2 from this morning.

Too late to do anything about that now!