Let's start with the good news, eh? The Orioles showed up! Second inning, they got right to it, taking the lead at juiceless Yankee Stadium. And Miguel Gonzalez held the Yanks' bats to zilch. So it was 3-0 until the 6th, then 4-0 till the 9th. At which point the Yankees, still oblivious to the fact that he's a Red Sox undercover agent, sent Derek Lowe to the mound and he got the "save," giving up a dong to the first batter and then 3 hits in a row, clinching the win for the non-Yankees. You're doing a great job, Derek, keep it up! 6-1 final.

So Balty takes game one. Two games back! Even NESN is finally starting figure out there's a race. Still, Don says things like "all of a sudden" the Yankees have dropped back to the pack "a little bit," implying he just doesn't follow the rest of the division. Which is pretty difficult considering he reports the scores every single night. Again, if this were the Red Sox going from a 10-game lead to a 2-game lead, TC and Don and everybody else would be lovin' it, using their favorite line about the objects and the mirror and the closeness and the appearance and whatnot. Meanwhile the Yanks are collapsing before their eyes and they're like a month behind on it.

Speaking of Don-isms, tonight he referred to the Angels, who just swept us in Anaheim, saying how "they had an even longer flight than we did." Well yeah Don, considering Oakland is the closest American League city to L.A., it would have to be. How does Don take the shortest possible flight and then play shocked to the fact that another team had a longer one? They all did!

Well, as I was typing all of the above stuff, the A's scored 9 runs in an inning against the Red Sox. But hey, they were already up 9-2, so fuck...us, I guess. More than half of Oakland's starting lineup tonight was made up of ex-Red Sox (or brothers of ex-Red Sox). And they all love to "get back at us" despite that we really didn't wrong any of them.

Even though the tying run is on...(what's the word for 14-tuple?)...deck, I'm gonna go ahead and call this one in the 8th. Red Sox lose, (at least) 18 to (at least) 2.

[Update: 20-2 final. I did some research. The Red Sox had been 8-8 in games decided by 18 or more runs. We've only lost by 18 or more four times in my life. 1980, 1990, 1994, and 2000. The 2000 one was 22-1 to the Yanks, on the day Libby Dooley died. The 1980 one was also a 20-2 loss, at home against California. Only 3 Angels had fewer than 3 hits in that game, and those guys each had 2. Freddy Patek went 4-6 with 7 RBI. In the '94 game, the Twins had 10 runs through 3, then tacked on 11 in the 5th for a 21-2 victory. I believe Mike Greenwell was the only guy to appear in two of these four games ('90 and '94). In 1923, we actually lost two games by 18 or more (20 or more in fact), losing 27-3 (in game one of a doubleheader; we lost game two 8-5) to Cleveland and 24-4 to the Yanks.]