The Yankees won today’s game, 7–3. The final game of the series will be played tomorrow at 11 A.M. (it’s the annual Patriots’ Day game in Boston), and with today’s win and tomorrow’s matchup—Boston’s Bronson Arroyo versus the Yankees’ Kevin Brown—the Yankees have an excellent chance of earning a split… curse them.

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The loser, I’m very sorry to say, happened to be ex–Red Sox closer Tom Gordon, the star of a book I wrote…and in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Flash will be the Red Sox closer forever. Sorry, Mr. Steinbrenner, but there’s not a thing you can do about that one.

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Here’s what I understand about hockey: Bulky men wearing helmets and carrying sticks in their gauntleted hands skate around for a while on my TV; then some guy comes on and sells trucks. Sometimes chicks come on and sell beer.

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The record he shares, perhaps not so coincidentally, with fellow former Portland Sea Dog Kevin Millar. SO

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There was a time when you could see The Wave going around at almost all baseball parks and football stadiums; to my knowledge, only at Fenway does it survive. Survive? Nay, sir or madam, it thrives! Tonight it went around and around in the eighth, when the Sox sent eleven men to the dish and scored six times. I myself refuse to wave unless I am also allowed to scream Sieg heil! at the top of my lungs.

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48 degrees, according to Channel 4 weather when I got back to my hotel.

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The start of last night’s game was held up for an hour and a half in anticipation of rain showers that never came.

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In truth, Tek—for some reason only known to himself, Stewart O’Nan always calls him Tek Money—did not try very hard to avoid this pitch; it was a classic case of taking one for the team if I ever saw one. And, as a man who got to watch Don Baylor play, I’ve seen my share.

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Greek God of Walks… but you knew that.

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It’s true that Smarty Jones lost the Belmont Stakes in the final hundred yards yesterday, but he can’t bat cleanup or go to his left on a ground ball hit deep in the hole, so fuck him.

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Today’s newspapers described Wells’s latest stint on the DL only as resulting from an “off-field incident.” A guy I know who follows the game closely says Wells injured his wrist when he fell off a barstool. I assume that was a joke, but given Wells’s declared proclivities, one cannot be entirely sure.

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Although he was clearly pleased (at one point during his postgame comments, Pedro called it a “dream game”), and given the outcome—no runs and just two hits in eight innings pitched—he had every right to be.

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Go, you Pistons! Stick it to ’em! Booya, Shaq! Double-booya, Kobe!

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