[If you wanna win a Monster SRO ticket for Father's Day, see this earlier post.]

I'm wondering what's wrong with Jed Lowrie. He's constantly doing that thing John Valentin used to do where he swings and hits a pop-up to the shallow outfield and puts his head down in disgrace before trotting to first. In his last seven games he has four 1-for-4s, two 0-for-5s, and an 0-for-6. This .125 clip has dropped his average 30 points. (It's been dropping a lot longer than seven days, but that's more because he got off to such a hot start.)

It's mechanical, Magadan, please fix and get back to me. Take your time, though, our O is doin' pret-ty, pret-ty...pretty good without Jed production. But we may need him to come through in a big spot in game 4 of the World Series because I want a sweep.

By the way, we're just a half game back of the Phils for best record in baseball!

Pretty easy win for Lackey. A 4-run and a 7-run inning. Every hitter in our ordered knocked in at least a run. 16-4 win. (That McCoy guy is pretty talented, eh?)

Tied for best record in all of baseball as of this moment, with the Phils and Cards yet to play today. Yanks won so we're still 2 up in the East.

We've played the Jays thrice on June 11th, all on the road, going 1-2.

6/11/1986: After a near-three hour rain delay, Roger Clemens moved to 11-0, giving up a run on four hits in 8 innings on a Wednesday night in Toronto. Don Baylor went deep in the 3-2 win. I was just about ready to graduate elementary school and was pitching for Rotary in my first year of majors in Little League. Fun summer overall. But terrible job by Ridgefield Little League for not allowing 10-year olds on the All-Star team. I woulda been a lock!

6/11/1988: The Red Sox fell nine back of the Yanks with a ten-inning loss at Exhibition Stadium on a Saturday afternoon. Lee Smith blew the save in the eighth, and Dennis Lamp gave up the game-winning single...and John McNamara wasn't long for Boston. It took awhile but it would be another fun summer--one Yankee fans have officially decided to erase from history.

1992: Fifty thousand came out to Skydome on a Thursday night to see the Jays whitewash the Sox, 4-0. Jack Morris's four-hit shutout put Boston 8.5 back of Toronto, who were on their way to their first World Series title. The Red Sox would go on to finish last, 23 games out.

We try to even the all-time June 11th series at 1:07 today in Toronto, Lackey v. Morrow.

CONTEST: I have a single Green Monster standing room ticket for Sunday, June 19th. Father's Day. If you can use it (here's my suggestion--if you're going to that game with your dad or whatever already, you could each take a turn going up to the Monster Seats with this ticket, which would be cool if you or he or whoever has never been up there), tell me how may pitches the Red Sox starting pitcher will throw tomorrow, Sunday, June 12th. Price is Right rules do not apply, the winner will be the one who guessed closest to the number, above or below. Put your entries in the comments. I will hide comments until after Sunday's game so nobody sees any of the other guesses. The only other rule is, by entering, you promise not to sell the ticket. Deadline to enter is tomorrow afternoon at 1:07.

11 hits, 8 by the top three in the order. HH: 7 IP, a run. To Bard, to Pap. Fairly pressure-free win, 5-1.

Yanks were up 11-2 going to the ninth, and actually had to bring Mo in. Cleveland had the tying run on deck but they ran out of steam, 11-7 final. Just having Mo have to enter that game is a win for me.

In 1977, the Toronto Blue Jays broke the Border Barrier in the American League. Just barely younger than I am, those pesky blue birds.

The Red Sox are 274-217 in 491 games with the Jays. We have nearly identical records against them at home (138-108) and away (136-109). At no point have the Jays had more wins against us than we had against them.

We've outscored them 2,457-2,286.

As for June 10th, we've played them twice, both on the road at Exhibition Stadium, in '86 and '88, going 1-1. So every time we've played them on June 10th, we've gone on to win the division.

6/10/1986: The first-place Sox came back from down 3-0 and scored a run in the tenth for a 4-3 win on a rainy Tuesday night. Bob Stanley got Jorge/George Bell to end the ninth with the bases loaded. Then Mike Stenhouse pinch hit for Marty Barrett--at Barrett's unselfish suggestion--with the bases loaded in the 10th and drew a go-ahead walk on a 3-2 count. Stanley set the Jays down in order for the extra-innings win. Boston had earlier tied the game on back-to-back dongs by Rice and Baylor.

6/10/1988: Two years later, on a Friday night at Exhibition Stadium, once again Jeff Sellers started for the Red Sox and Bob Stanley finished it. But this time, Boston lost 3-0, shut out by Dave Stieb, a young David Wells, and Tom Henke. (Toronto manager Jimy Williams was booed when he came out to remove Stieb in the seventh.

Bonus quiz: Find the huge error in the photo caption.

Guess I should add "sleeping Yankee fans" to this post for search purposes. There was another shot of that second guy, where he nods off, then wakes up and starts clapping in "okay, let's get something started Yanks"-style as if to negate the fact that he just fell asleep. But they cut to it really late, so an animated gif of it would just look like a guy raising his head and clapping.

What a sight. Seeing the few Yankee fans who didn't go home nodding off to sleep, or just sitting there passed out. What a great job by NESN catching all of that.

The Yankees were also drifting off to sleep around 1 a.m. The Red Sox fell behind 2-0 early, after a 3-hour rain delay, and CC was rolling, until we tucked them in with a 7-run 7th.

The Papi HBP was anti-climactic, and only motivated David to get two hits, a single and a double, both in the seventh.

And run number 10 grand? It was knocked in by Granderson, fittingly, on a dong. And I still think I'm the only one to notice. Beauty part is, they got to 10,000 in this series, but it was one where they were swept. Swept out of first, at home. Can't wait to see the NY papers tomorrow. Including the one that proclaimed PAYBACK before this series.

8-3 final. I love how the post-2004 mindset Yankee fan (some of them anyway) will tell you how he/she knew they had no chance, even when they were cruising along with their ace.

So we came in 1 game back, and now we're 2 games up, with the best record in the league. On to Toronto.

As with June 7th (until two days ago), the home team has always won in the Red Sox' match-ups with the Yankees on June 9th:

1945 at NY: 13-7 L
1964 vs NY: 5-2 W
1982 vs NY: 3-2 W
2009 vs NY: 7-0 W

So the road team is due again! Some highlights from the other four June 9th affairs:

1945: Sox score 4 in the top of the first but lose a sloppy one 13-7 in front of 15 thousand on a Saturday in The Bronx.

1964: Yaz hit a two-run triple to give the Red Sox a lead they'd never relinquish, winning 5-2 at Fenway in front of a Tuesday-night packed house. The first four batters in the Red Sox lineup, despite each playing the whole game, ended up with 1, 2, 3, and 4 official at bats respectively. I wonder if that's the only time that's happened in history. I'd give ya skeets to treats no one's ever done it with the first five.

1982: Bob Stanley preserves a 3-1 lead in the 6th by relieving Bruce Hurst and getting a key double play ball. The Yanks leave the tying run on second in the ninth, and the Sox win 3-2. Tommy John takes the loss. Pictured, Jim Rice throws out old friend Butch Hobson at the plate as Muggsy applies the tag.

2009: Nick Green and Papi go deep, Beckett dominates, and the Red Sox stay undefeated on the season against New York with a 7-0 win.

After talking about this stuff on Joy of Sox, Allan wondered if there was a date when the Red Sox and Yanks never matched up against each other. So I did a Ctrl+F on each date on the list* and found that the range of dates the two teams have played each other (regular season) goes from April 3rd to October 10th. And except for October 9th, the only two dates the teams have never met on are August 24th and August 25th. And they've only played once on August 26th (2008).

Why have they never met on these dates, when, for example, they've played 32 games against each other on September 7th? I think it's because back in the day, Red Sox-Yanks was a traditional Labor Day weekend match-up. And since you wouldn't normally play two series in a row with a team, that leaves those late August days as ones where it would be unlikely the two would meet. There's a spike in frequency in early September, surrounded by two valleys. But the Labor Day thing hasn't been a tradition for years, so it's still a pretty big coincidence that those dates haven't been hit in 111 years. (The August 24-25 streak will continue in 2011.)


*If you click on the list and are immediately confused by a lot of games against the Orioles, remember that the Yanks were the Baltimore Orioles in 1901 and 1902. When I'm talking about the Yankees, I'm talking about the franchise, including their time as the O-Birds and Highlanders.

Last night, on top of being sick anyway, I got pink eye, which is much more disgusting than its pretty little name, and on top of that, we woke up at 3 a.m. to what sounded like a hailstorm inside the house. I looked out the window and saw all our recycling floating away down the street. It was actually quite beautiful, way more than pink eye should be, even. It turns out our roof had not been blown off, but limbs were down everywhere. I don't know how the one in these pics didn't damage my car, or the two other cars that were there at the time. If you go to the front page of ProJo you'll see more crazy Providence damage. More storms on the way, too, woohoo!

Wake gets another win, moves closer to Cy and the Wise Guy.

We move into first place again.

Jeter with an incredibly huge double play.

Domination of the Yanks in their building.

They're still two short of 10,000 runs against us. Shutout tomorrow, please.

We're 6-2 all-time against the Yanks on June 8th games. 4-1 in The Bronx, where we'll be tonight. (Should be around 90 degrees at game time!) Here are all the results, but I'll only give you extra stuff for some of them, since I know you're busy "working."

6/8/1935 vs. NY 12-6 L

6/8/1935 vs. NY 4-2 W

6/8/1944 at NY 8-7 W (Roy Partee's homer through the near-darkness wins it for the Red Sox in the bottom of the ninth, after New York had earlier erased a five-run deficit. This was billed as a "twilight" game--a 6 p.m. start in the days before Fenway had lights. Sunset was 8:19 and the game lasted two hours and five minutes.)

6/8/1945 at NY 6-4 W

6/8/1982 vs. NY 4-3 W (We come back to tie the game three separate times, including a run off the Goose in the eighth. Then Carney Lansford hits a walk-off single in the 10th. In NESN employee news, Remy went 1-4, Rice went 2-4, and Eckersley allowed 3 runs in 7 innings.)

6/8/1988 at NY 4-3 W

6/8/1989 at NY 8-7 L (The Sox out-hit the Yanks 16-14 but lost 8-7 in 11 innings. In the first six innings, the teams combined for 5 dongs, all solo shots, but Boston found themselves down 7-2. They got 2 back in the 7th, then had to face Rags in the 9th. With two out, Kevin Romine, father of current Yankee prospect Austin Romine, singled in a run. Then Randy Kutcher, pinch-hitting for Gedman, doubled home two to tie it. We nicknamed Kutcher and Romine Batman and Robin for some reason, probably having to do with that Prince-centric Batman movie coming out that summer. "Vicky Vail...Vicky Vail." The Sox loaded the bases with nobody out in the 10th, but couldn't score. In the bottom of the 11th, Steve Sax singled in Don "Sluggo" Slaught off of Big Foot to win it for the Yanks.)

6/8/2006 at NY 9-3 W (Ah, a game from the "my blog" era. I had several posts about this one--I was living in NYC at the time but didn't go to this series--which you can sift through here. Relive five years ago!)

I liked getting three quick ones in New York. I felt pretty confident throughout, despite Don's gloom and doom. We're now tied with them for first again after the 6-4 win. (They're right on pace for that 10,000 run mark, though. Gotta hold 'em under eight these next two games.) (But if they get that 10,000th in game 3 and we're ahead 21-2 or something, I totally won't give a shit about it.) (Wait, I kinda don't anyway, I'd just prefer if it happened quietly rather than loudly, since it's inevitable.)

Teixeira, do you need me to call in the National Guard? Should we keep an ambulance at the ready next time you're at the doctor's and she hits you with that little tomahawk thing? That Russell Martin dude got it in the same spot and he ran down to first. (I also liked how he stood on the fence to try and catch a foul ball. I always say guys should do that if the fence is low enough--why not? Okay, that's two compliments for Martin. Enjoy 'em guy, 'cuz it ends there!)

And what the hell happened to Bobby Jenks? It looked like he was gonna vomit. Tito was like, If you're gonna spew, spew into this. Jeez, at least Teixeira got hit by something.

NESN only had a few gratuitous Jeter shots tonight. Nice job, (he said quite facetiously.)

Speaking of that guy, he was part of my new pet peeve tonight. The "never an error" thing. He hit a routine grounder to short. Scutaro backed up on the ball, and then threw it into the dirt, and Adrian couldn't scoop it. In other words, the definition of an error. There's no decision to be made there. It's just an error, end of story. Yet we're at the point where I was 100% sure they'd call it a hit. The "new way" plus "almost at 3,000 hits" equals No Doubt Base Hit. So I got this vision:

Jeter up, sittin' on 2,999 bloops. Ground ball right side...through the second baseman's legs! His hustle really caused that, Paul. And they're ruling it a base hit! Number 3,000 for Jesus Jeter! [Twenty minutes of applause, confetti falls.] And they're taking him out of the game just so he can get three curtain calls! And as the camera follows him into the bathroom while play goes on...that's the one millionth time Derek Jeter's been shown on TV for absolutely no reason! Another milestone! And another curtain call!

P.S. Did you know we're only a game and a half behind the best record in baseball?

We've played the Yanks four times on June 7th, winning the three home games and losing the one road game.

6/7/1935 vs. NY 2-1 W

A few days after Babe Ruth quit baseball (then with the Boston Braves), rookie Babe Dahlgren went three for three with a double and a triple in the Red Sox' 2-1 victory over the Yanks at Fenway. This Babe would no longer be needed the following year when the Red Sox got Jimmie Foxx. He moved over to the Yanks where he'd later replace Lou Gehrig at the end of his 2,130-game streak, a record that may never, oh whoops, totally was broken! Gehrig scored New York's only run on a double play. The win moved Boston to within 4.5 games of first place, but they'd never get closer than that in 1935.

6/7/1944 vs. NY 8-1 W

Tex Hughson got a complete game 8-1 win in the first of a four-game sweep over the world champs at Fenway. A five-run fifth which included a Joe Cronin two-run dong put the game away.

6/7/1988 at NY 4-3 L

The Red Sox scored three in the first off Charlie Hudson, but Oil Can Boyd allowed four in the second, and that was it, a 4-3 Yanks win at the Stadium. Ellis Burks was thrown out at the plate by Rickey Henderson in the eighth attempting to tie the game. Cecilio "Birdshit" Guante got the save. Billy Martin effed with Boyd by telling the umps to make him remove the chain around his neck. The Sox fell nine behind the Yanks that day, but Morgan's Magic would soon begin, and Boston would beat out the choking Yanks for the A.L. East crown.

6/7/1990 vs. NY 3-0 W

Greg Harris dominated the Yanks on an 80-degree night in Boston, giving up just one hit in eight innings. The Chicken Man, Jody Reed, and the Gator knocked in runs and Jeff Reardon walked away with a 14-karat save in the Sox' 3-1 victory. It completed Boston's first four-game home sweep of the Yanks since 1969. This time it was Boston in first with New York way behind. Unlike the '88 Yanks, the Red Sox wouldn't blow it, winning their third division title in five years.

Only one team in MLB history has scored as many as ten thousand runs all-time against another team. The New York Yankees franchise has had 10,433 pricks cross the plate against the Baltimore Orioles franchise. The 10,000th run was scored by A-Rod, who was driven in by Robinson Cano in the 6th inning of a game at Camden Yards on 7/27/2007.

I bring this up now because we're on the verge of seeing the 10,000 mark reached again. Unfortunately, it's the Yanks again. And just as unfortunately, the Red Sox are the opponent.

The Yankees have scored 9,988 times against us, with three games coming up in The Bronx starting Tuesday night. If we can hold them to fewer than twelve runs in the series, at least they won't get to put the stat up on their scoreboard. Then again, A. it's not that big a deal and B. nobody seemed to even report the 10,000th run they scored against Baltimore.

More on that Yanks-O's thing: The first run the Yanks scored against the Orioles was back when the Yankees were the Baltimore Orioles, and the O's weren't even the St. Louis Browns yet--they were the Milwaukee Brewers. In their first-ever matchup, played in what the Baltimore American referred to as "Klondike weather" on May 25th, 1901, in Milwaukee, the (then) Orioles scored their first run in the second inning. I used the article and boxscore to figure out that Cy Seymour was the one who crossed the plate. (The football weather led to eight Baltimore errors, and the future-Yanks lost 6-3. Future actor Turkey Mike Donlin hit a home run that went so far, "the neighbors could not find it.")

So I guess the Go-Go's had some kind of video contest. And wouldn't ya know it, my friend Al freakin' wins the thing! Nice job, Al. If you're confused, any time I've shown you pictures from The Pist reunions, Al's the singer. Anyway, check out his winning vid, complete with the Go-Go's talking to him! I wish Belinda Carlisle would talk to me! (Side note: she was my first concert, in like 1988, when I was 12, at some amphitheater on the Atlantic City boardwalk.)

Was good to see Peter Brady pitch well against his personal whipping boys, the A's.

We get a 3-game sweep after losing 4 in a row. If the Yanks lose today, we enter the series against them in a tie for first. Lester, Wake, Beckett against three dicks.

Up at 8, helped Kim load in at the Providence Art Fest, hung out there for a while, headed off to Danbury/Ridgefield for a show and some old-haunt-visiting. Seemingly the whole time the Red Sox were on. What an effed up win, but we'll take it. We remain one back. Home at 2 a.m. and would like to do a "day in pictures" but must sleep 10 hours first.

Funny how the game that was moved up six hours as not to run into the hockey game almost did.