I’m not gonna shed too many tears for the Orioles and their fans. Yes, it must suck to be fielding such a godawful team and to hear your park light up like Fenway every time the Sox score a run. But like Jake and Elwood, we’re on a mission. And with the Yanks losing last night, we’re now only six games away from the East and I won’t concede it until the math tells me I have to. Baltimore is the sort of team we have to step over en route to the promised land, so excuse us for doing so. Nothing personal; It’s just business.
I typically fear playing the “sure things” around the end of the season with the playoffs on the line; that’s typically when they rise up and claw yer onions. But the Sox are simply tearing it up these days. There was a time in early summer when we couldn’t buy a hit; now they show up like drunken relatives on Flag Day. And not too long ago I wondered aloud who the number three guy would be in this rotation; but Clay’s stepped it up big time and we may also be witnessing Daisuke II: Absence of Suck.
The Wild Card, I’d say, is in the sack. The Rangers are slipping off the radar, 4-6 over their last ten games. But I want the East. I want it so bad I can taste it. I want next weekend’s series in the Bronx to be another feather of embarrassment in their sad-ass caps; a sequel to the 2004 ALCS explosion that left them on the short end of the game’s most preposterous comeback. I want to see Mark Teixeira crumpled in the corner of the dugout, openly weeping as the Sox march off the field. Is that too much to ask, Gods of Baseball? I certainly don’t think so.
Jon Lester tonight. Until then, the award for Guy Who Sounds Most Like David Byrne But Isn’t David Byrne goes to the lead singer of Bell X1:
