No Buck/McCarver today which is always good. And national TV = classic CF cam at Fenway. I could have done without the artsy shots on live plays though. It'd be like showing an awesome close-up of a basketball player shooting--it may be beautiful, but the one and only thing we want to see is where the ball is going. Save the art for the replays, please.

Anyway, we won 8-4. Middlebrooks remains hot, hot, hotter than hell. Single, double, homer. (Though Fox credited the dong on-screen to Cody Ross.) Morales did fine work in another Beckett-injury-replacement start. Buchholz will miss his start tomorrow afternoon, so Aaron Cook fills in.

The Mets blew a 3-0 lead and lost to the Yanks, on two homers right down the lines. So we stay 5.5 out of first, but move up to 1.5 out of the last playoff spot.

Classic moment on Fox tonight. After the Yanks took the lead, the score bar at the bottom of the screen gave the score, then put up some player stats. They stuck with the Mets guy who'd hit their homer, then went to Ibanez, who'd hit the game-tying 3-run dong, and then for the third guy, you'd think it would be the person who knocked in the go-ahead run. It was a home run, too, so that makes the decision even easier. Fox instead ignored that player (Chavez) and went with Jeter, noting he was 1-3 with a stolen base. (His hit didn't knock in a run, wasn't part of a rally, and didn't lead to a run. The stolen base came in the same non-run-scoring inning. But if the guy so much as claps for a homer, we just have to know about it. And that, as we know, is no exaggeration.)