We do not let young pitchers near the Rocket in this house

8/28/07: Yankees 5, Red Sox 3
8/29/07: Yankees 4, Red Sox 3
8/30/07: Yankees 5, Red Sox 0

Okay, so that hurt. In a variety of ways.* We can analyze it to death (Dice-K and Beckett both pitching into the seventh when even we could see that it was a bad idea? Manny being broken? the Yankees discovering pitching and defense to supplement their crazy offense?), we can weep and scream and crawl under the covers until Thanksgiving, we can stick our fingers in our ears and pretend like the pennant race isn't going to be just that-- a race. Or we can face reality, recognize that the season isn't over--for either the Red Sox or the Yankees** or, hell, the St. Louis Cardinals, if only because everyone else in that division decided to start losing, too--and hope and pray and do all those crazy superstitious things we do that the Red Sox remember how to hit,*** how to run, how to pitch, how to field, how to play the game we all love.

Moving on. There's another game tomorrow. And the day after that. Play ball, guys.

...Please?


*Can we just take this opportunity to please remind opposing pitchers to stop hitting Pedroia already? Let's not even get into the fact that Joba Chamberlain apparently got a standing ovation for trying--and failing, thank whatever deities you believe in--to bean Youk in the head. We say "apparently" because we were both at work today, and while this means that we were at least spared the horror of actually watching the game go down, it also means that we only know what we've read on the internet. Jennifer's Yankees-lovin' mother reports from behind enemy lines that Joba looked "really, really sorry and young" in his post-game press-conference and that she "felt bad for him because the umpires clearly overreacted." We report that we could really care less, and that this is your brain on Roger Clemens.

**And, seriously, thanks so much to all those people who said, "oh, the Red Sox have pretty much clinched it." Really. Because no way was that a jinx or anything.

***By "remember how to hit," what we actually mean is, "finally learn how to hit consistently."