It's a Dark Day in Bristol (when they see the BOSOX Stomped)

How can ESPN be expected cover baseball now? Who will replace Skip Bayless now that he's jumped off a ledge inscribed Exiting Fenway? How can Krukkie be expected keep the appetite necessary to chow down those 4000 calorie meals in homage to Curt (250 pounds and a) Schilling? What will Steve Phillips do now that Red Sox nation, the capital (as Z says) of ressentiment, is too broken to assuage his own ressentiment for never beating the Yankees as the Mets GM? What is left of Karl Ravech's hope to nationalize a franchise whose century-long proclivity for self-inflicted trauma made it one of the great New England Puritan/Irish Catholic, and thus provincial, phenomena in the history of sport?

Is this massacre as meaningful as the 2004 ALCS? No, because that was for an American League pennant, not the division. Pennants are meaningful; division championships exist largely to juice playoff revenues. But in a way the achievement is more remarkable. It involved 5 consecutive wins, not 4. All five wins came in the other guys park (and the Sox have been money in Fenway), instead of only 2 wins coming away. In 2004, both teams needed each and every game the Sox won; in this series, the Yanks stopped needing to win about three games ago, when the Sox started really needing to win. And yet the Yanks kept prevailing. In completing the sweep, moreover, the yankees also won the season series in August, something that just doesn't happen between these 2 anymore.

On the last point, the Yankees are now up not 6 1/2, 7 in the loss column, but 7 1/2, 8 in the loss column. Because there are no half games in the final standings, the Sox now have to finish a game ahead of the Yanks to win the division.

As for the game itself, everybody was pretty clearly exhausted, so while Lidle and Wells both pitched strong games, it was hard to tell whether their stuff was commanding or their adveraries too enervated to compete effectively. Under these conditions I actually thought slow Joe was right (for once) to sit so many of the regulars. Tired starters may not do any better than rested if clearly inferior subs, and there is another game in Seattle tomorrow night. In the midst of the slog, I thought it was to be expected that Jeter would hit the ball, Abreu would hit the ball, Cano would hit the ball and Melky would hit the ball. AROD, with a chance to break things open in the 4th, fast runners on 1b and 2b, nobody out, did what AROD does best, he drove the first pitch, which was a ball, right into the ground for a rally killing DP (his 19th of the season, highest in his career). The Yankees finally won this one because more of their gamers ground it out than Boston's, under conditions whose difficuly had to be worse for the visiting team. That they were able to overcome the obstacle posed by their greatest "star" is that much more impressive.

And thank God, Torre let them grind. When the unlikely Nick Green got the double off a tiring David Wells, (a little less) slow Joe actually had Melky bunt him over to third to get the insurance run (which turned out the winning run). Small ball at just the right time. Has the Joemeister been reading our blog?