With all that at work, it’s hard for the head to convince the heart how good this current Red Sox team is—the front three pitchers are solid, the hitting is fearsome from one to seven (I hate that Youkilis, an on-base machine, is sitting on the bench so much, though), and on a good night the defense is adequate. Terry Francona has shown mediocre managerial skills at best in the first half, but he’s also shown a willingness to learn. Sure, the Yankees are the elephant in the living room; at 55-31, they are the best team in major league baseball (given their incredible payroll, they better be). But let’s brush aside a little of our natural Red Sox/New England gloom here long enough to point that at 48-38, the Red Sox are ten games over .500, and that other than the Yankees, only Texas in the AL and St. Louis in the NL have better records[28]…plus we just beat Texastwo out of three. Now that we have our big guys back and starting to hit the ball, I think we’ll be in it till the very end, be it bitter or sweet. That’s as far as I’m willing to go right now, but I think in mid-July, that’s quite far enough. When I get the glooms, I just tell myself things could be a lot worse.

I could be writing a book about Seattle (32-54), for example. Case closed.

It’s 1–0 AL in the first inning of the All-Star Game, and Clemens is struggling (Jason Schmidt should have started for the NL, but politics is all). With one aboard, he gets two strikes on Manny. Yankee groupie and chucklehead blabbermouth Tim McCarver hasn’t brought up the fact that it was Clemens’s high fastball to Manny in the ALCS last year that sparked the Pedro-Zimmer brawl. He doesn’t have time now, as Clemens misses his location, serving Manny a thigh-high fastball on the inside of the plate, and Manny lines it into the left-field seats for a two-run shot. And while this is only a silly exhibition game, it’s a measure of vindication and revenge. Not a word from McCarver, as if his memory banks have been wiped clean.

Clemens gives up 6 runs in the first, and I wonder if batterymate Mike Piazza is telling the hitters what’s coming. Speaking of revenge.