Red Sox 9, Yankees 3

Missed this one. Was at Minute Maid Park watching the Astros defeat the Braves, 7-4, before a crowd split 3/1 Astros.

This was surprising. I have been following the Astros almost since 1991, the year the Braves discovered skill, and in games at the Astrodome and Minute Maid the split has been closer to 60/40. In any case my favorite Astro, Lance Berkman, went three for four with two homers, four RBIs and one-half of a sensational double play. In the sixth inning, score 2-1 Braves, the Braves had bases loaded, nobody out. Pettitte coaxed a strikeout. Then John Thomson, the pitcher, hit a pop-up to a drawn-in Berkman in right field. Fanceour tried to score on the tag; Berkman threw home, Ausmus juggled the ball for a second but corraled it in time to tag the crashing Franceour. Wonderful baseball.

Then, next inning, Berkman comes up, first and third, nobody out. Works an 0-2 to 2-2. I watch Thomson get his sign. No shake-off. Earlier, with another batter, Thomson had come in with a breaking ball 2-2, gone to 3-2, been forced to spot his fastball, given up a hit. I figured Todd Pratt, the catcher, was aware of this, and would not want to go 3-2 to Berkman. Again: no shake-off from Thomson.

"Fastball," I say.

Then--a fastball . . . which Berkman deposits ten rows up in the bleachers. Ballgame, in essence.

We pause here, because this is where the server crashed last night, wiping out the rest of my posting and my reference to yankeesfan1, a third-cousin from (I guess) New Jersey who met my parents, who vacationing back East this summer.

Yankeesfan1 solicited my opinion on Matsui. Well, I love that the Yankees have him, and unfortunately he's out for the year. Last night notwithstanding, the Yankees have held their own with a lineup halfway comprised of second-stringers. This has stood them well, but it is the nature of the six-month season that everyone gets exposed, for good or ill. There is never the case in the NFL, where a weak team can take advantage of an easy schedule and a soft division to fake its way to 11-5 and an illusion of respectability. The Red Sox seem good for 93-95 wins, and unless the Tigers start realizing that they're a year away, the Yankees will be in trouble.

Injuries, of course, are the main problem. Matsui is gone for the season, Sheff gone until September. Even if Melky Cabrera slides into Matsui's position (if nothing else, an upgrade defensively, witness Tuesday night), the two-headed solution of Bernie and Terence Long in right may hurt the Yankees in the long run. The Yanks have so far resisted the siren song of a trade, and right now a trade for significant value would cut into the nice little youth movement they have going. (What would Alfonso Soriano--who may well win the home run title playing half the year in the RFK Canyon--cost? Wang and Phillips? Cabrera and Proctor? Something outrageous, anyway.) As I wrote a few days ago, what the Yankees always have enough of is money; what they may want to do is settle for some .280, 25-home-run Preston-Wilson-type that some last -place team is eager to dump. But even there the pickings are slim.

So: following three weeks of sustained excellence, reasons to worry.