Chapter 21

The New York fans were full of piss and vinegar for Game Four Wednesday night at Shea. It was a cold, windy late October night, and, not for the first time, I cursed the Lords of Baseball who let the season run overtime into weather like this. It was 49 degrees at game time but, between innings 90 minutes into the game, Surhoff told me it was 40 degrees and still falling.

It wasn't so bad in the dugout when we were at bat, but standing in centerfield, I felt like a character in that old movie, "Ethan Frome," standing out in the snow in that godforsaken farm field, wherever the hell it was... Northern Sweden, probably. Or Minnesota.

OK, so it wasn't actually snowing at Shea, but you get the idea.

But it was, apparently, even colder for the Mets than it was for us, and our starter, Rob Murray, was holding them down pretty good. Rob wasn't fast anymore, but he was canny as hell, and taking the weather into account, he pitched almost everybody tight and sawed the bats off in their cold, cold hands. Murray was still hanging in after six and we had a 4-3 lead.

Leading off in our seventh, Josh Brennan doubled down the left field line. I was next up and flied out, and Tejada popped to short, but Bob Crandall, bless his heart, homered, making it 6-3 and a much more comfortable late-inning margin.

Murray, however, was all used up, and Paul gave the ball to Alex Osborn in the Mets' half of the inning. Alex knew that his job, once again, was to get us to the ninth, when our best-there-was closer, Freddie Gonzalez, would no doubt be called upon for the third time in four games.

Alex was beautiful out there! How they could have shuffled this guy around in the minor leagues for all those years, I couldn't imagine. He'd hardly gotten a smell until his first season under Paul Warren, and now, in only his second year with the Birds, he was getting ready to call it a career. Kinda sad. But then, Alex had at least gotten his little brief moment in the big time, and had made good with it.

And he'd managed to capture the heart of young Maria Warren, the boss' daughter. Lots of guys have done way worse than that!

We held down the Mets and wrapped up a basically pretty dull-and-drab Game Four, 6-3. Alex and Freddie shut them down without a base runner in the final three.

The Series was tied, two apiece. Game Five, Thursday in Shea Stadium; Game Six (which would, indeed, be "necessary"), Saturday night, back at Camden Yards.

Shiggie was rested and ready for the final game in New York, and he lucked out because the weather was a little better. I got my first homer of the Series and two singles. I was offensive hero of this one, and we won it easily, 9-2. We could wrap it up back in Baltimore on Saturday, and we'd have Sam Bailey ready to go as our starter. I worried, some, about that. Sam was reliable and he'd won 21 games for us in the regular season -- same as Shiggie.

But Sam didn't throw hard, and I always felt a little less secure when he was our pitcher. By now, I guess I should have had a little faith. Well, I did have faith! I'd seen him win all 21 of those games! There'd even been a couple more he'd lost that he shouldn't have.

Didn't matter. It was still just -- scarier -- when Sam was pitching. He almost never struck anyone out. He coaxed a lot of ground balls out of the opposition's offense, which was great in July, but not-so-great in late, late October, when infielders' hands were cold and the wind blew hot dog wrappers around in the outfield, distracting our defense. (The hot dog wrappers were worse at Shea than in Baltimore. I don't know why. Maybe New Yorkers are just bigger slobs than the folks in Bal'mer.)

It's just a theory. I don't have any evidence to back it up.

After Alice and I had gotten back to Baltimore on our Friday "travel" day, we barely had time to settle in at my place before it was time to go back out and pick up my parents at BWI Airport. Alice wanted to wait at the house while I drove back down to pick them up, but I told her I knew my folks, and that I was absolutely certain they would be expecting to meet her -- immediately -- at the airport. We agreed that it was weird, and that there was no accounting for parents, but she finally agreed to go.

Alice was all tensed up. All the way out the Expressway, she asked me questions about my folks. "Do I call them by their first names, or what? Should I call your dad "Mr. Taylor?"

"People call him 'Bud, '" I told her.

"Bud? I can't call him 'Bud!'" She said it mockingly, sounding like the frog on the Budweiser commercial. "That's way too informal! What's his actual name?"

"His name is Lawrence Taylor," I said.

"Really? Like the football guy?"

I was a little surprised to find that Alice knew about "the football guy," but I agreed that he and my dad shared that name.

"But he's not the actual football guy, right?" she said.

"No. My dad sells medical supplies."

"Well, now, there's something we have in common! I know lots of people in that line of work -- from the hospital... But do I call him Mr. Taylor? Or what?"

"Oh, go ahead and call him 'Mr. Taylor, ' the one time. And then he'll tell you to call him 'Bud' and it'll all be over with."

"How about your mom? What's her name?"

"Elizabeth."

"No!"

"Yes."

"You're kidding me? Elizabeth Taylor?"

"Hey, c'mon. It's not that strange. Taylor's a pretty common name!"

"Yeah, but... it's still kinda funny. I mean, your father has the same name as the football guy, and your mom's named for a big movie star."

"Well, neither one of them was 'named' for famous people. It just worked out that way. I mean, Lawrence Taylor, the ballplayer, and my dad are more-or-less contemporaries in age. And my mother's parents might have heard of Elizabeth Taylor, but, don't forget, her family name wasn't 'Taylor.' She was originally Elizabeth Ann Johnson, Homecoming Queen of Booker T. Washington High School, in Charlotte.