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I was glad for a guide in Ted Cox, who led me up to the fourth-floor press boxes, where we picked up scorecards and media guides. But the press box would be an arid place to actually watch a game. There’s of course no cheering (though I’m told there are sometimes groans or snorts), and the view in the auxiliary box–far along the third base line, with a partially obstructed view of home plate–is nothing to brag about. So we headed out, past skyboxes that look like only moderately updated versions of the basement bars swingers had in the 70s, all black and chrome, with tall stools perched in front of the windows and round coffee tables piled with salty snacks.
Before finding a place to watch the game, we swung by the conference room, a subdued chamber with tiered seating and a decorous moderator. We didn’t hear much beyond the usual pregame pabulum, except when Ozzie responded to a question about the Cubs’ playoff ouster the night before: ”I don’t want to say I’m very sad, but I have friends out there,” he said. “As soon as the game was over, I text Zambrano and–I can’t say what I said. I told him to keep his head up, don’t let these people bring you down.”
When Ted headed up to the press box to file his story, I went down to the conference room again, behind a line of the players’ wives, kids, family friends, and hangers-on. More than half of the 20 or so people at the postgame press conference were members of the Japanese media, there to cover Rays second baseman Akinori Iwamura, who batted .389 in the series with a slugging percentage of .722 (all the worse for Kosuke Fukudome). No one was exactly exulting–the Sox would have to win two more to advance, and that seemed highly unlikely. But Danks and Pierzynski, taking questions after Ozzie’s session, were loose and upbeat.
