SK: Nope. And Dougie played genius.

It hasn’t been Boston’s best week (I firmly believe that this season’s best weeks are still ahead of them), but we’re riding our fifth four-game winning streak of the season, and if we win again this afternoon, the Red Sox will be proud possessors of their fourth five-game winning streak of the season. There’s better news: I’ve lost track of All My Children almost completely, and am hoping that when my viewing habits once more regularize on that front, the child of Babe and the odious JR will be in middle school and developing problems of his own (kids on soap operas grow up fast).

August has certainly been the best month of the season for the Red Sox, and the team couldn’t have picked a better time to get hot. There isn’t a lot of wild-card competition on the horizon in the Central Division, but with the exception of the Mariners (now better than twenty games off the pace), the West is a shark tank. For the last week or so, all the sharks—Oakland, Anaheim, and Texas—have been feeding on their weaker Midwestern brothers, and all of them have been winning.[39] One of these clubs will win the division. The other two—along with the Red Sox—are swimming full-tilt at a door only big enough to admit one of them. I comfort myself with thoughts of the schedule, which will eventually force the sleek sharks of the Western Division to begin dining upon each other.

The Yankees, in the meantime, have finally begun to falter a bit as their pitching arms become more and more suspect (may I note—and not without glee—that their trade for Esteban Loaiza is looking especially doubtful; there are already trade rumors floating around). They’ve lost three out of their last four—the one win an almost miraculous come-from-behinder against the Twins—and while I don’t think anyone among the Red Sox Faithful are counting on a total Yankee el floppo (but how sweet it would be), I’d guess that few among us are unaware that the New York lead, which was ten and a half ten days ago, has now shrunk to seven and a half. Still a lot, but on August 21st, seven and a half games doesn’t seem like an insurmountable lead.

August 22nd