“These are two teams heading in opposite directions.”

“The Red Sox are reeling and the Yankees are rolling.”

It’s just hysterical how reactionary the mainstream press is. I mean, did everyone think the Yankees were going to play .900 baseball for the rest of the season? Better still, was it just a given that the Sox were a .300 ball club? I think the obvious answer ot noth questions is “no”. So why all the noise about the Sox as though they are on life support? And why had the Division already been handed to the Yanks again? Forget the Red Sox, what about the Jays and O’s too? Fact is, the last three weeks or so have been just one of 8 or so stretches of the same length that occur over the course of every single season.

Friday night was particularly painful because Terry Francona and his staff cost the Sox the game. No need to sugarcoat it, no need to implement euphemisms like “aggressiveness” in the place of stupidity. The sixth inning was a disgrace, the top half displaying the latest two embarassments of Dale Sveum’s 3rd Base coaching career while the bottom half featured Tito, almost defiantly, handing the ball to Alan Embree over Matt Mantei or Mike Timlin yet again. We all know the specifics of what transpired. Their respective gaffes cost Boston an important game.

The lines tomorrow in the paper will go something like “Who could have seen this coming?”, referring to today’s 17-1, record setting drubbing of New York in the Bronx. The point of course is that in any given game, nobody can see anything coming. But given a group of players’ track records you can get a feel for how a team might do over the long haul. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be surprises. There always will be. What it does mean is that it would behoove most to refrain from sweeping remarks based upon a couple of weeks worth of baseball evidence. Sure it stirs up the airwaves but to those of us that know a lick about the game it’s just silly, tired and worst of all, boring. The Red Sox are good. So are the Yankees. No need to work yourself into a lather over short-term travails.

Oh yeah, and I am happy for this guy too. Let’s hope he keeps it going…(CNNSI photo).

Enjoy the Sunday-nighter tomorrow night. Moose has been great lately but against rinky-dink lineups. We’ll have a better sense for whether or not he is back tomorrow night.