If You Want to be the Man,

be the Man. Since coming to NY, Randy has planned on being the staff ace and even with all his troubles and the rather surprising level of success enjoyed by both Moose and Chien (there's an animal nickname oun in there), Johnson still is supposed to be the staff ace. Well coming off a great outing that alone saved the yankees from a five game losing streak, Johnson has the chane tonight to level his win total with everyone on the staff, and almost everyone in baseball, while doing the kind of thing aces do: winning games that their teams simply must have, against opponents their team has had trouble with. If the Yankees win tonight, and then take care of business against Baltimore, it's just all good at fenway. either they dramatically lengthen their lead on the Sox, they dramatically shrink their deficit with Detroit (if the Tigers get swept in Boston to extend their losing skein to 8, they're done), or a little bit of both. But they have to win at least 3 of the upcoming 4 games, which means they really need the first 2 (Johnson and Mussina). For its value in itself, for how it sets the Yanks up for a must win series against the O's, for the way it sets them up to play La again in 2 weeks, for the path it sets toward Fenway later this week, and because of how they've played recently, tonighht's game is, in my view, the biggest of the season so far. Aces win, or give their teams the chance to win, games like this. We've been waiting all year for RJ to prove himself still an ace. Tonight's the night we find out, one way or the other.