In terms of playing into October, the team’s job is now clear-cut (if slightly complicated by Jeanne, the fourth hurricane to strike Florida in the last five weeks). Of the seven games remaining on the regular-season schedule, the Red Sox need to win only a pair to assure themselves of a postseason berth. Another (and more meaningful) meeting with the Yankees may or may not lie ahead; in the meantime, let Trot Nixon, Boston’s rejuvenated right fielder, have the final word on this exhaustive (and exhausting) regular-season slate of Red Sox/Yankees matchups. “Nineteen is too many,” he said flatly in a postgame interview this afternoon. “We’ve seen everything they’ve got, and they’ve seen what we’ve got. I don’t mind playing them… but nineteen is just too many.”

* * *

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome once again to Super Pro Wrestling! For no other reason than he doesn’t like the way Doug Mientkiewicz is standing on the bag at first (or might it have something to do with Lofton’s mysterious ejection during the Tek–A-Rod brawl?), Kenny Lofton deliberately elbows him as he goes by—on a play that isn’t close, in a game that’s a runaway. Maybe Kenny’s frustrated, or just dumb, because he seems surprised—nay, outraged—when reliever Pedro Astacio throws behind him late in the game. The next inning, the Yanks’ kid reliever throws at Dave Roberts’s head. Uncool, and Roberts is justifiably pissed.

There’s a huge difference between throwing behind a guy and throwing at his head, and everyone in the game knows it. Likewise, if you purposely elbow someone, you had better expect to be thrown at. In both cases, the Yankees broke the unwritten code. If there’s any justice (and wrestling is all about poetic justice), the game will make them pay.

Side note: Today’s sellout was our 81st of the year. Only three other clubs in the history of baseball have sold out their entire home season. All three were playing in brand-new stadiums.[61]

September 27th