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the game was to begin. Stevie spent most of the time taking in what was going on around him: when the gates opened to the public, people came streaming into the stands, most in red or in red and white, many wearing uniform tops with players’ names on the back. Stevie was surprised to see a number of Ramirez shirts, since Manny Ramirez, the oft-troubled Red Sox slugger, had been exiled to Los Angeles. Some Red Sox fans apparently remained loyal to him.
    Stevie watched with amusement while fans lined up next to the dugouts, pleading with players to stop on their way off the field to sign autographs. During the regularseason Stevie would occasionally see players stop to sign. But not in October. They were all business now.
    “Did you see who’s singing the national anthem?” Susan Carol said, wandering over near the Red Sox dugout while a number of fans pleaded with Jason Bay to “sign one, just one!”
    “Kate Smith?” Stevie asked, referring to the late singer who had become a legend in Philadelphia as a good-luck charm for the hockey team in the 1970s.
    “No,” Susan Carol said. “It’s the twenty-first century, Stevie. Try Beyoncé.”
    That did impress Stevie. Beyoncé was quite beautiful
and
she could sing. He remembered watching her sing “At Last” during the inaugural ball earlier in the year.
    The pregame introductions were every bit as impressive. The crowd even gave the Nationals a nice round of applause when the PA announcer said this was the first World Series in the forty-year history of the franchise and the first for Washington since 1933.
    Every player from both teams was introduced, and the cheers seemed to grow louder for each Red Sox, with the loudest cheers saved for David Ortiz—“Big Papi” to Red Sox Nation—the postseason hero of their past world championships. By the time Beyoncé was introduced, the entire building was shaking with noise, and even sitting way down the right-field line in the auxiliary press box, Stevie couldn’t help but tingle.
    The ceremonial first pitches were thrown out by Bob Ryan and Peter Gammons, which certainly got the attentionof everyone in the press box. Ryan and Gammons were both Boston legends, having worked for the
Boston Globe
since the 1960s.
    “I guess the Red Sox have been in the series so much lately they finally had to recognize someone in the media,” Kelleher had said when he heard that his two friends were being honored.
    “Can’t think of two better guys,” Mearns said. “It’s a nice gesture.”
    There was very little nice about the game itself—except for the roaring fans of Fenway. The Red Sox scored five runs off Nationals starting pitcher John Lannan in the first inning, and Josh Beckett, the Red Sox ace, was unhittable as usual in postseason, not allowing the Nats a single base runner until the fifth. The Red Sox added three more runs in the sixth, then another in the eighth, and won 9–0 in a completely one-sided game.
    The game took under three hours—warp speed, Stevie knew, for a postseason baseball game. But there were no mound conferences, no pauses to bring pitchers in from the bullpen, and not a lot of pitches taken in the late innings with the outcome no longer in doubt. Stevie noticed the stands starting to empty in the ninth. Even a fast game ended close to midnight in the World Series.
    “Well, here we go again,” Richard Justice said as they all made their way down to the clubhouses. “We haven’t had a decent World Series now since ’02.”
    “It’s just one game,” Susan Carol said. “Beckett can’t pitch every night.”
    “Dice-K tomorrow,” Kelleher said, referring to Daisuke Matsuzaka, the Red Sox number two pitcher. “Anyone care to wager on a sweep?”
    “You’re just saying that because the Red Sox swept in ’04 and ’07,” Mearns said.
    “Well, yeah,” Kelleher said.
    The Nationals clubhouse was a lot quieter than it had been after game seven of the NLCS. Stevie was now accustomed to