Even when Lupica is right, he changes his mind eventually.

The Red Sox have been hot in the past two weeks and winning 12 out of 13 is tough to do, even if your competition is, in the words of Mike Lupica, "tomato-can teams."

But why have they won 12 out of 13? There has to be a reason.

Is it because they traded Nomar Garciaparra? Is it because of ARod's fight with Varitek over a month ago?

No.

It seems odd that a third baseman has to be the person who simplifies things and tears down the pillars of baseball journalism, but ARod's flat-out correct:

``They are playing extremely well, but we're in the driver's seat,'' Rodriguez said. ``This game is about runs and they are in the best run of the year.''


Of course the Yankees didn't expect to lose six games to the Red Sox in just two weeks. Nobody expected the Red Sox to win 12 out of 13 against anybody. If you expected that, you're crazy. That's a .923 winnning percentage. If the Sox are able to keep that up in the remaining 30 games? They'll win 106 games and the AL East, and there is nothing the Yankees can do about it except pack their bags and head to Minnesota for the playoffs.

But they won't continue this pace for long. Why? Because ARod is right. Baseball is about streaks and slumps and nobody knows why they start and why they stop. Just watch Bull Durham on USA Network and you'll see that Kevin Costner knows more about the game than Mike Lupica and plenty of other sportswriters.

Lupica was actually right-on when he first mentioned the topic, mocking the idea that the fight "woke up" the Red Sox: "If it did really wake up the Sox, why did it take five innings for them to wake up?"

More to the point, why did it take three weeks? Am I really supposed to believe that the ARod fight woke up the Red Sox after a 20-game delay? Because that's the only way the theory holds.

As for the Yankees' need to "wake up," they just won five out of their last seven. Sure, the competition was "tomato-can" teams, but who does Lupica think the Red Sox have been beating lately? The recent Red Sox success is more attributable to a fight in July -- a delayed reaction to a fight in July -- than to just plain old Good Baseball by a $130 million team against weak competition?

See, there's really no way to prove Lupica wrong or to prove Chimelis wrong. Because if you go looking for something long enough, you'll always find it:

• Jeter's early-season slump was due to ARod's presence on the team (no word if ARod's slump was due to John Olerud's presence on the team).
• Yankees' loss to Florida in the World Series was due to lack of character (Paul O'Neill teams also lost in playoffs, but it couldn't be because of poor character).
• The Sox are better since getting rid of Nomar (but let's ignore the fact that the Cubs are better since acquiring Nomar).
  

How can one disprove these theories? It's all 20/20 hindsight.

But all I ask is that of these Leonard Nimoys "In Search of" reasons for slumps and streaks is that they apply their theories evenly.

I wonder if Lupica has noticed how well the Astros have played since Andy Pettitte's season-ending injury? Could that be why they're playing so well? Nah, it couldn't be. That would make no sense.