The Red Sox are rock stars. That seems to be the consensus among the team, its fans, and the media horde that has been following them and growing all the time. My second visit to Fort Myers provided ample proof.

Fort Myers, Florida. It would seem this is a town with a hotel shortage, at least during the month of March. I don't know if it is always like this, or only when one of the resident Spring Training teams wins a World Championship, but I had a heck of a time finding a room -- any room at all, at any price below $400 -- when I came down here last week, and this week I came back to find the situation the same. I got lucky last time, I guess, booking a room through a travel web site, but this time, no dice. My media credential was only good for one day, anyway, though, so I drove down and back in the same day.

I arrived at two in the afternoon before a 6pm game, and while the team was doing its warm up stretches and taking batting practice, I had a nice long chat with Luis Tiant. Actually, I can't call it a chat, since it was pretty much just him talking, and I can't call it an interview since he didn't really answer my questions, but sort of talked about whatever he wanted to. Which was fine with me: what could be better than to listen to Luis Tiant lecture about pitching for half an hour? After that, I interviewed Johnny Pesky, so the trip was well worth it already, but the fun was just getting started.

It was, of course, Johnny Damon who started the whole "rock star" theme of my day, when he sat down after batting practice to talk with the media in the dugout. This after signing a couple dozen autographs, many [most, actually] for young women. The impromptu press conference was supposedly to update the writers on his medical condition. Johnny woke up last week with a lymph node in his leg and one in his groin, each swelled up to the size of a golf ball--they later said it was a form of cellulitis. The cause of the infection remains unknown--spider bite? ant bite? foul ball?--but he's on antibiotics and had a fever for several days. The news today is that he feels better and will be back in the lineup for the first time in a week. The questions about his health take, perhaps, two minutes, and half of what he says is unprintable (joking about swelling in his groin, for example). After that, one of the writers gets him onto a tangent about the team. "Oh yeah, we're total knuckleheads, you know that," Damon says, answering the "are you really idiots?" question for the umpteenth time. "But we're rock stars at the same time."

It must be true because who other than rock stars and Aston Kutcher gets asked questions about the state of their facial hair? A reporter points out that Damon shaved his beard and wants to know why. "I've been seeing my face everywhere. Man, I got sick of it. Didn't you get sick of it? I had to trim it up and take on a new look for a couple of days. It's a little hot here, you know." He also mentions that his wife likes the beard. "We've been getting a lot of brother and sister comments [now that I shaved], since she and I look so much alike. It's funny, too, because when I shaved a lot of these guys were like 'Whoa, hey, how you doin'?'" (i.e. "hey, good lookin' ...")Did I mention Damon is funny? I'm sure what he said doesn't come off half as funny in print as in person. Another thing I noticed is that he must be getting a lot more comfortable with interviews. This is a guy who used to say "um" a lot while being interviewed. I didn't hear him say "um" once this time around.

So we moved on to the next topic: his hair. The long flowing locks were recently frosted, and the blond streaks are pretty cute. A reporter asks him if it's true that he has a deal with his book publisher not to cut his hair until after his book tour is over. Damon admitted it was true, but he doesn't think he's going to cut it any time soon. "Yeah, we're going to maintain it during the first month at least during my obligations, but like I said before you never know when it's going to stop growing so I'm going to enjoy it while I can."

The questions meandered through many other subjects, including steroids, Barry Bonds, and the like, until a reporter asked another question about being world champs and being "idiots". "We play this game because we love it, but we also play this game because people dig what we do. We're rock stars, basically," Damon said.

The longer Damon sat there talking, the larger the group of reporters got, then some left, and others took their places, which meant that some earlier questions got repeated. Johnny took it in stride, though the answers got shorter and less serious each time. Gordon Edes from the Boston Globe came up and asked the rock star question for a third time. "So the rock star thing, why do you think of yourself that way?" Edes asked. "Is it the music, the long hair, the wackiness, the partying all night, what?"

"We're keeping the partying down this year!" Damon said, while laughing. "I think it's a mix of everything. We have Bronson coming out with a CD, we don't care what we get called. We're bringing the cool back into the word 'idiot'--or, for the first time ever! It's a cool word! We're a decent-looking team. I think chicks dig us."

When the question about how hard it would be to repeat, and then the question about Bonds came around again, Damon finally begged off and went into the clubhouse. We followed him, not to talk with him any more, but to look for other players to interview.

In my case, the one other player I was hoping to interview for Fifty Greatest Red Sox Games was Kevin Millar. He was nowhere to be found, but I tagged along with some guys who wanted to talk to Jason Varitek. Tek emerged from the trainer's room looking like a mummy of ice packs, huge bulging wraps covering his shoulder, hip, and knee--an electronic tea timer clipped to the bandaging to tell him when to go back and get it all taken off. He couldn't sit all wrapped like that, so he stood, statuesque in skivvies and impervious to the cold, in front of his locker, while we plied him with questions.

One of the out of town writers asked him the rock star question, as well. Tek tried to give a diplomatic answer first. "Oh, I think we've got maybe one rock star, but you know it's just a different group. It's unique, a unique blend of different people. I mean look." At this point he pointed across the clubhouse. "Look in that corner. Those aren't all rock stars." He shouted to the guys there. "Hey Doug, Kevin, look!" Millar and Mirabelli looked up from their conversation. "See, those aren't rock stars."

The questioning of Varitek went on for a couple of minutes until he suddenly said, "Oh, that's gross!" In the non-rock-star corner Kevin Millar had begun a performance I don't think I can accurately describe. Let's just say the full moon was involved, as well as jumping jacks. The entire clubhouse was laughing by this point, except for some of the uptight white male sportswriters. "Is that a rock star?" Varitek asked one of them. The man sputtered in response. Tek then asked me the same question.

"Oh, definitely," I said.

A bit later, after Millar had put on more clothes, I approached his locker and asked if I could talk to him a bit about 2004. He begged off, saying he had to go get iced. Millar can really do the big puppy dog eyes thing, and when he says he's sorry he takes your hand in his and it seems so sincere. "How about after the game? Can you meet me back down here after the game?" I told him sure, that would be fine, and he winked when he said thanks.

Of course, that was before I realized that my media credential didn't actually include clubhouse privileges. When I got upstairs to the press box, and took it off, I noticed that "clubhouse" had been crossed out. That was a little puzzling to me, since the media relations people knew I was there to interview players and where else but the clubhouse would that happen? I was just lucky some writers had cornered Damon in the dugout. It would have made more sense for them to let me have the clubhouse but not the press box, since I didn't actually need to cover the game itself.

About the game, there is not much to say other than Wakefield's knuckler wasn't knuckling the way it should, so the Reds jumped out to an early lead. Big Papi hit a home run. And Foulke pitched well. Damon didn't look so great at the plate, but what do you expect after missing a week with fever and swelling? That is all I remember. I could look at my notes, but there was more fun to come.

After the game, I headed down to the interview room with the beat writers, to hear Tim Wakefield and Terry Francona speak to the group. The Sox have decided to do it post-season style, which has its plusses (enough room for all the writers to get in) and its minuses (a more formal setting and atmosphere). They didn't really say anything of import, but it was interesting to see.

This time, I was barred from the clubhouse, and told if I wanted to speak to Millar, to wait at the end of the hall for him to come out. I saw he was there, clean-shaven and dressed in his street clothes, as he ducked out of the clubhouse and into Terry Francona's office. Perhaps ten minutes after that, he finally came my way, heading for the parking lot.

"Kevin, you said you could give me a couple of minutes after the game," I said, as he walked past me.

"Oh, darling, I'm sorry," he said, taking my hand in his again even as he was walking away, letting my fingers slip out of his as if a tide were carrying him away. "But I've got to go and pick someone up at the airport."

"Well, can I give you call, then?"

He told me to call him at his hotel, said he was registered under his own name, and to give him about a half an hour.

I told him I would, but sincere as he came across, something told me I had just been rock starred for the third time that day. For those not familiar with the verb "to rock star," it's a special form of giving the brush off, reserved for the fabulously famous.

The hotel he named was the one where I knew a lot of the coaches were staying--Dale Sveum had told me to look him up there, too. So I went back to the press box and packed up my stuff, and decided to go down there myself. I could call Millar from the lobby as easily as from my car, couldn't I?

I pulled up at the hotel about twenty minutes later, and who do I see sitting on a bench outside, chewing the stub of a Cuban cigar, but El Tiante. The air was thick and humid, and he was nattily dressed in a pair of slacks and a short-sleeve button down shirt, worn tropical style (untucked). Since we'd already done our interview, we chatted like old friends.

"What are you doing sitting out here by yourself?" I asked.

"Oh, my wife just went inside," he said. "She's going to bed. I'm just sitting here finishing my cigar and maybe make a few phone calls." He had his cell phone in his hand but didn't seem in a hurry to use it.

We remarked on the weather, he said he loved the heat and humidity, and I said in a few days I had to go back to Boston, where it was supposed to snow again. He told me I should stay in Florida.

Inside the lobby I sat down near the door and opened my computer, typed up some notes, and then called the hotel operator. "I'm sorry," she told me, "we have no guest here by that name."

So there you have it. Either Millar's such an airhead, he can't remember the name of his hotel, or he gave me the brush off three times in a row.

Well, fine. If he doesn't want to talk, I can understand it. The media hordes following the Sox are always large, but since winning the World Championship, they've only gotten bigger. More writers, more tv, more talk shows, more non-baseball stuff like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Barry Bonds couldn't take the scrutiny brought about by BALCo and the fact that he is due to break two of the most hallowed records in baseball. Perhaps Bonds is a bad example since he's always hated talking to the media. But even the best guys must get tired of it sometime, no? Or maybe I'm willing to cut Millar a break because of those puppy dog eyes. There was a steady stream of baseball players through the lobby -- all high school and college players, by the look of them, though. There's some kind of annual baseball and softball tournaments going on in Fort Myers, which might explain why hotel rooms were so hard to come by.

Anyway, a few minutes later, Senor Tiant came in, got himself a cup of coffee, and sat down in the chair next to me, idly watching the television showing CNN Headline News.

"Not going to bed early?" I asked.

"Nah. I never do," he said. "I'm often up at three in the morning."

We shot the breeze a little more, and then I asked him if he'd seen Kevin Millar by any chance. He confirmed that Millar didn't stay there. "He stays at some fancy place, closer to the ballpark," Tiant said. "Only the coaches and guys like me stay here." I think he may have meant "guys who aren't making millions of dollars."

So that clinched it, no Millar. It was now just after ten p.m., I was getting hungry, and I had a two and half hour drive back to my parents' house north of Tampa ahead of me. So I asked Luis my last question of the day, which was: "Is there anywhere good to eat around here?"

El Tiante then gave me the rundown of the restaurants near the hotel, Mexican, Italian, and so forth, and said the Outback Steakhouse nearby was really quite good. I said goodbye then, went back to my car, and first tried the mexican place, but their door was locked. So the next place up the road from there was the Outback.

I went in and the hostess told me that yes, they were still serving food, and since I was alone, would I prefer to sit in the bar? Sure, I said. I'll sit in the bar. So I sat down next to a nice man in a Red Sox polo shirt, and his wife, in a red Red Sox sweatshirt. The guy on the other side of them, I was amused to note, was a tall fellow with a receding hairline. "It's not every day," I said to the guy next to me, "that you can say you had dinner with Tim Wakefield."

"You got that right," he said, and then pointed further down the bar. And can you guess who was sitting there, a couple more stools down?

Kevin Millar.

He and Wake and an older guy I didn't know were sitting together. A bit later another guy came in and joined them. Millar had a grilled chicken salad, but I don't think he's cutting carbs since he had a beer with it. (I had the grilled steak salad myself, no beer, since I *am* cutting carbs.)

They finished up their meal a little before I finished mine. Millar paid and then came walking by us. I pointed to him and said as he went by, "Kevin Millar, I can't believe you rock starred me three times today."

He looked at me and blinked and said "What? What did I do now?"

"You blew me off pregame, postgame, and then you gave me the wrong hotel."

"Oh my goodness, well, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Oh, you know, facing Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning of Game Four of the ALCS, that's all."

"Oh yeah, that whole shebang..."

"But I'm not going to ask you about it now."

"You're not?"

"No way, man. You and I are off the clock. We're in a bar. We're done working for today." Well, his eyes kind of lit up when I said that. He went off to find the rest room and then came back to chat a little more. The truth of the matter is, it would have been nice to get some quotes from him to put in the book, but ultimately it will be a good book regardless of whether I got him to talk or not. And it was nice, perhaps nicer, to just shoot the breeze and chat, too.

So that was my day with the rock stars that are the Red Sox. I'll leave you, though, with these parting words from Johnny Damon: "You have to know what's important. Yeah, being part of Hollywood and all that stuff is cool, but guess what? None of that would have happened if it weren't for baseball. That's what's driving us. No one wants to be the next movie star; everyone wants to be a repeat champion."