SO: It was good and breezy and Wake had his knuckler dancing. Just like yesterday, the Tigers hung in till the fifth, when their starter faltered, and then their reliever totally imploded. Yanks were losing last I heard. Could we be only four and a half back?

SK: Indeed we could! And 1.5 ahead in the wild card!

SO: Supersweet. Now, I don’t want to throw cold water on the party, but the Yanks have a cake schedule the rest of the way. They’re home 20 of their last 32, and we’re the only winning team they face (okay, and three against the Twins, but by then Minnesota will be resting starters for the playoffs). In any case, it’s time to square off with the Angels. Some very large games.

August 30th

The last time Tim Wakefield pitched against the Tigers, he gave up six home runs and still got the win, a feat only accomplished once since the days when most big-league teams rode to their away contests on trains.[42] Yesterday, though, on a day so hot the pitchers in the bullpen used a groundskeeper’s hose to spray the fans in the lower right-field bleachers to keep them cool, Wakefield beat the Tigers again, this time more tidily, going eight strong innings and giving up only three hits. No one was any happier than me. I hate to sound like Annie Wilkes here, but I’ve got to be one of Wake’s biggest fans.[43]

And why not? Look at all we have in common. Wakefield stands 6′2″; I stand 6′3″. Wakefield weighs 210; I weigh 195 (and used to weigh 210). Wakefield’s middle name is Stephen; my first name is Stephen. Wakefield got hit by a car while jogging in 1997; I got hit by a van while walking in 1999. When Wakefield started against the Braves in the 1992 National League Championship Series, he was the first rookie to do so in nine years. When I started for the Boston Red Sox in the 1986 ALCS, I was the first rookie to do so in ten years.[44]

More importantly, Wakefield is the sort of player George Will was talking about in his overidealized book-length essay Men at Work, one who really is a man at work. There is… well, I was going to write there’s little star-time ego about him, but in fact there seems to be no star-time ego at all about him. He comes to the ballpark not full of prime-time flash like Jose Canseco did, not wearing the ostentatious earring like Barry Bonds does, or with the panhandle-sized chip on his shoulder as Roger Clemens still seems to do (the Rocket still wants everyone to know they climb when he walks, by God).