Today we get our asses kicked again, 11–1, with most of the damage done in an eight-run fifth, as the Yanks chase Pedro. It’s humiliating, the kind of loss your friends at school will taunt you about tomorrow.

It’s also strangely unreal. The Yankees aren’t this good (even with performance-enhancing drugs), and we’re not this bad, and I have a creeping suspicion that this is payback for Friday night. We—Sox fans, I mean—get the thrilling comeback win, and their fans get the revenge blowouts. Looking back at how Mo blew the save Friday night (walk, hit batsman, missed location (and Sheffield’s bad throw), bloop that Lofton for some reason pulls up on), I suspect (at the risk of being labeled paranoid) this is all being orchestrated to ramp up interest on both sides. When a team does nothing to win and still wins, you have to wonder. Of course, 1986’s Game 6 is a classic example of that: walk, hit batsman, muffed grounder.

Mo also blew the Tek–A-Rod game with a gopher ball to Bill Mueller after throwing one to Trot that he just missed.

And Mo blew Game 7 of the 2001 series. This fan’s got to wonder.

The goal would be the dullest but most important of goals—financial security. Obscene TV ratings lead to obscene TV contracts. And who could blame the league? TV money floats the whole show. Just look at the NHL (if you can find them) for the flip side.

September 20th

Wake tonight against Baltimore, and there’s a sense of letdown, as if these games mean less. It’s not true, of course; it’s just a by-product of all the hype, and the fact that it’s Monday. (It’s no coincidence that of the six series we play against the Yanks, all but one straddle a weekend.)

Wake’s lost three straight and has looked awful. Tonight he’s sharp until the fourth, when he walks a batter, gives up a ground-ball single, hits a guy, walks a run in, then surrenders a grand slam to B. J. Surhoff. The O’s add three more in the fifth, walking and stealing bases, taking advantage of a passed ball and a blown rundown, and while we chip away late to make the final 8–6, this one was in reach only for one or two at-bats.

The Angels win so they’re four and a half back. Most of the Faithful think the wild card’s in the bag, but we have problems with the O’s, and face them seven times in our last thirteen games. Honestly, I’d rather play the Yankees.

September 21st