"Somehow the Red Sox are still in first place as they begin the only four-game series they will play against the Yankees this season. Because of Schilling alone, the Red Sox have had to overcome more than the Yankees. Unless you consider the loss of Kevin (Game 7) Brown and Jaret Wright to be devastating body blows."
What's with all the boxing analogies, anyway?
Somehow, the Red Sox rose to the top of the AL East with their $130 million payroll.
Somehow, a team with four starters in the AL lineup has managed to hold off the Orioles and the catatonic Yankees.
The Red Sox are just a bunch of James J. Braddocks and the Yankees are ... the Yankees are ... that other guy. The guy who Braddock beat for the title. You know, the guy who had killed two people in the ring and was a total dick in the restaurant. That's who the Yankees are ... since we're using boxing analogies.
Nobody considers Kevin (Game 7) Brown to be a "devastating" loss, but Kevin (Game 7) Brown is still better than Darrell (Game Over Before It Starts) May and Sean (Cornish Game) Henn.
Even though Lupica makes this breathless pronouncement on Thursday, explaining the importance of the upcoming series ...
"Maybe the real Yankees are the ones who don't have the starting pitching and don't have the set-up men and aren't going to win the East this season. We will see about that, starting tonight. Real Yankees don't stand up against the Tigers and Indians and A's and Mariners. They do it against the Red Sox."
... just a few days ago (four days, to be exact), he was pooh-poohing the hype of the upcoming Yankees/Sox series ...
"This is the last Yankee-Red Sox series before September. They end last season against each other, they start this season against each other, they start the second half of the season against each other, they end the regular season against each other. One is written off. Another is written off. One won't make it. The other won't make it. They both won't make it.
Here they are. You know when one of them puts the other one away?
In Game 7, that's when."
This series means everything, this series means nothing. Lupica is downright Dickensian.
In typical Lupica fashion, he invents a non-existent storyline, so he can discredit it:
"Apparently the current storyline, and a pretty dumb one, is this:
Boy oh boy, the Red Sox should have put away our Yankees when they had a chance.
As if only the Yankees have had to overcome anything this season, as if Jaret Wright spending as much time on the disabled list as he has is somehow comparable, in the grand scheme of things, to the Red Sox having gotten exactly three starts out of Curt Schilling so far, and having Foulke blow up the way he has, time after time after time. Yeah, what can the Red Sox possibly be thinking, not being 10 games ahead by now?"
This is not the current storyline.
A prevailing observation is that, mathematically speaking, the Yankees are "lucky" to be in the mediocre AL East. They have played so poorly that they're "lucky" to be so close in the divisional race. The White Sox have already buried any contender that is just six games over .500. The Red Sox have not quite buried the Yankees.
This observation is not a sympathy grab. Nobody anywhere is claiming the Yankees have had to overcome any disastrous injuries this season. The Yankees haven't experienced any hardships other than their own disgusting play on the ballfield.
As for this upcoming series? Of course it's a big series. When a team is in third place in mid-July, every series is a big series. Game Seven of the ALCS won't mean much to the Yankees if they don't even make the playoffs.
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