New York City

Games 144 through 146 – Red Sox

Red Sox 6, Orioles 5
Orioles 4, Red Sox 0
Red Sox 6, Orioles 5
Record: 78-68

The Sox overcame Mike Timlin’s one-man crusade to repay the Orioles for their generosity this season, taking 2 of 3 from the Birds despite the desiccated hurler’s best (?) efforts in the first and 3rd games. The Sox are now 13-2 against the Charm City 9, leading snarksters across the blogosphere to petition David Simon to set next season’s episode of The Wire in and around Camden Yards. The despair and violence wrought by the Sox is at least a match for that found on the Corner. The first episode will focus on the reunion of Kevin Youkilis and his long-lost identical twin brother, Det. Thomas ‘Herc’ Hauc.



(Note to self: a comparison of the Sox roster and the cast of The Wire is a splendidly hackneyed idea. Get to work on that. Big Papi as Stringer Bell, Curt Schilling as Tommy Carcetti, Jason Johnson as the hapless Prez – this could be interesting. Somebody alert Deapspin to watch this space.)

Hidden by the Sox’ dominance against the O’s is their 65-66 record against the rest of the major leagues. And, in the interest of further turning my stomach, let’s extricate Boston’s 16-2 interleague mark from that tally, which yields a ghastly 49-64 record against all teams not from Baltimore or the NL East. Gack.

Turning on a dime, does anyone else have a mental picture of George Steinbrenner sitting in a darkened control room, rubbing his hands and muttering a Burns-esque, “Exxxcelllent” as every other contender in the American League dashes themselves against a series of very hard, very unforgiving boulders? The Tigers are in freefall, the Twins – despite playing good baseball at the moment – have lost Francisco Liriano for the season (and with him any chance of taking a series against the Yankees, in my extremely unbiased and expert opinion), the White Sox are playing as if they expect someone just to grant them access to the postseason, and the A’s are quietly working to get just far enough to be exposed by the Yankees in October.

I’ve seen this train coming for some time now, and I’ve refused to acknowledge it, but the Yankees sure look unstoppable right now. Whitney would have something to say about that, but the stitches from the liver transplant/gender transformation surgery make it difficult for him to type. We’re tentatively expecting him back for October.