NEWARK - It's spitting rain in the nearly deserted ballpark. Frank Kois of Middletown, N.J., buttons up his Yankee windbreaker and ducks under his Yankee umbrella.
The public address system blares raucous can-can music, and out in the home bullpen, a middle-age pitcher wearing a gray Newark Bears sweatshirt dances merrily along with it. It is the very same guy who was on the mound when the Red Sox ended an 86-year drought and won the World Series in 2004.
"Keith Foulke?" says Kois, fumbling through his program. "No way."
Way.
"Oh my God," says Kois. "Oh wow, I'm very surprised. I guess I'll have to root for him now. He's a Bear."
In the 2004 postseason, Foulke was more than a bear. On the mound, he was a baseball god. Foulke appeared in 11 of the Sox' 14 games and gave up just one meaningless run for an ERA of 0.64.
In the four-game World Series sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals, he was on the mound at the end of each game, winning the first and saving the last. Many observers believed that Foulke, and not Manny RamÃrez, should have been named World Series MVP. Count the never-shy Foulke among them.
"Do I think I should have been MVP?" says Foulke. "Absolutely. I mean, 'cause I did everything humanly possible that I could've done."
Foulke's life has been difficult since he hoisted Jason Varitek in his arms that night in St. Louis. Red Sox Nation believed that he didn't care about the fans (see: the "Johnny from Burger King" remark) and, worse, that he hated baseball. There were knee surgeries, elbow surgery, an ugly divorce, and a year of retirement.
Interviewing Foulke is difficult. By his own description, he's "a wise-ass." He says, "I don't care," a lot. At best, he's candid. At worst, getting the truth out of him is tedious.
"Why do I always get in trouble with the fans for speaking my mind?" he asks. "Everybody laughs when I tell them I don't like baseball.
"I don't like the fact that there's so much downtime and I don't like the downtime. It's not like I show up at 7 p.m. and watch a three-hour ballgame. I'm here at 2:30 p.m."
He says he's 100 percent healthy for the first time since 2003, when he won the Rolaids Relief Man Award and led the American League with 43 saves for the Oakland A's. After the World Series in 2004, he says, he could barely walk up stairs, his knees hurt that bad. Then he says not to publish that.
"I don't ever want to make excuses," he says.
He's pitching here in Newark in the independent Atlantic League because at age 36, he wants one more shot at The Show. His ERA with Newark is 0.82. He has seven saves and he's averaging more than a strikeout an inning. But he says the uniforms don't fit and the baseballs are scuffed and dirty.
