BOSTON -- How's the weather out there, Willie Banks?
"It's smoking out there, dude," the Red Sox reliever professed after the first game of yesterday's doubleheader. "I'll tell you what, I threw a couple of pitches, stepped off the mound and I saw white spots. It was that hot out. I'm just glad I'm alive."
Yesterday was, as Banks so eloquently expressed, a mercilessly hot day at Fenway Park. Hotter than Atlanta, according to home plate umpire Bill Hohn. Hot enough to soak through three T-shirts, said Lou Merloni. Little white spot hot. It was an eyelid-sweating, ammonia towel-pressing bear of an afternoon. The lyric little bandbox was a little metal sweatbox. Any fan in the dead calm grandstand could attest to that.
And they played two.
The game-time temperature for the first game was announced as 88 degrees. According to Michael Foley, the physician in charge of first aid at the park, temperatures reached the mid-90s. It was 104 on the field. Ten people needed medical attention during the game because of the heat.
When the first knuckleball from Tim Wakefield fluttered across the plate, it looked like an afghan of haze was draped across the shoulders of the city. Wakefield wore a long-sleeved nylon undershirt to keep sweat from dripping down his arms and onto his fingers where it would affect his knucklers. The umpires wore olive-colored shirts to deal with the heat. "But on a day like today it doesn't matter what shirt you're wearing," scoffed Hohn, the home plate umpire. "This is the hottest one this year."
And to make it that much interesting, this was a day game after a night game just three hours before another night game. The evil split doubleheader. It meant the schedule was screwy.
"I got here at 10 this morning," center fielder Johnny Damon said after the first game. "Ate a little. Went back and played cards. Took optional BP at 11:30. At 12:10, I came in here, rested up a little and got some fluids in before the game started. Right now, I'll eat, play some cards, chill out until 6:45 or 6:50 then get out on the field. I won't take a nap. It'd be too tough to get back up. I figure I'll be home at 11. It's a good thing we have a night game tomorrow night."
Thankfully, the first game progressed quickly. Wakefield and Toronto starter Chris Carpenter were both cruising and through six innings the game was scoreless.
Meanwhile, the bowels of the park felt like just that. There wasn't much movement in the concourses and what movement there was, wasn't rapid. The Diamond Room, the in-park bar in the left-field grandstand, was locked up tight as a drum. The woman in charge of letting the patrons in on this fact said she'd disappointed well more than a hundred people already.
"It is the hottest day we've had this year," said 69-year-old Bob Bandera, who was working as an usher behind home plate. Bandera's been at this 10 years. He was asked if he could recall the hottest game he'd ever worked.
"This is it," he shrugged.
Stifling though it was, the crowd still had a little left. When Merloni hit a two-out triple in the seventh to put the Sox up 2-1, the crowd in the left field grandstand raised their naked arms in unison.
But not Bruno Rivera.
The cook arrived at 10. He worked the grill for the people in the seats next to the dugouts. He cooked until 2, cleaned up until 3 and was in the elevator, headed up for a cool shower at 3:10.
"From what I know it's probably in the high 90s," he said. "For me, it feels like 150. For real."
The other workers were also taxed.
"The heat makes it very difficult in the later innings," Damon said. "You want to be the man to get the big hit and hopefully you have enough in you to do that. Your clothes are completely drenched, feeling nasty and sticky. What this team probably needs is a special day-game jersey that's lightweight. I think only us and the Yankees don't have them. There's a lot of tradition here, but we haven't won (the World Series) here since 1918, so out with that."
Merloni found irony in the Fox 25 TV promo that ran on the big screen when the talking head delivered the weather report.
"The weatherman came on and issued a warning to stay away from activity and here we are in a doubleheader," he said.
Banks, who relieved Wakefield in the seventh, still couldn't get over the fact Wakefield wore long sleeves.
"I'm impressed by that," said Banks. "I'd rather be out there butt-naked."
Sox starter Sunny Kim threw the first pitch of the second game at 7:05. It was 93 degrees.
