Royals 4, Yankees 3

Rivera. Another tie game.

It is here that I depart for a week; I trust Sun Devil Joe, Robby Boy, Jimmy, O'Nan Imus, GSB and all the rest to hold down the fort.

Let's go, Yankees, indeed.

Twins 4, Yankees 2

Game happened right under my radar.

Yankees 9, Twins 6

Saw it via the scoreboard at Minute Maid (and has anyone noticed the Astros lately?).

Not the sort of game the guys have been winning.

Twins 4. Yankees 0

I smell a big slide coming. When Ponson gets elevated from "at least he'll eat innings" to "okay, we have to win if he keeps us in it," to "Ponson: Oh, God, we have to win this one 'cause look at who else we have," there is trouble.

This comes at a time when Boston has just lost the greatest Yankee killer since ever, when Tampa's best two players jus when on the DL, when neither Minnesota nor Chicago nor Texas are anything special.

Four games out of the Wild Card. But they'd better start hitting.

Angels 4, Yankees 3

Pettitte pitched fine, save one inning, against the Angels' meat grind of an order.

The larger question is: Just what is it with Rivera and ties this year?

As a consolation, I sat down to watch the Olympics: specifically, the Men's 4 X 100 freestyle relay.

Reader Desert Rose had informed me of her all-Olympic boycott, and I was already following suit, but was drawn back by my favorite sports, those involving either a race or a ball--meaning swimming, track and basketball. Thus I was able to see The Greatest Swim Relay Ever--or, as those over 40 will remember, the greatest swim relay since the 1976 Women's 4 X 100 free, when Shirley Babashoff and Co. upset Kornelia Ender's East German 'roid monsters for the only US women's swimming gold in Montreal. In those days, the freestyle relays were (as they are in most swim meets) the final events of the competition. The race result was so stunning--Ender and friends had dominated the distaff side in the pool to that point, winning 11 out of 12 gold, most of them in laughably easy fashion--that the East Germans actually filed a protest, claiming that Babashoff, swimming the anchor, had dove off the podium early. Babashoff, who had swum internationally since her early teens, who had spotted the East German cheating for what it was, who had called them on it, and who had then endured terrible press calling her a poor sport as she collected one silver after another, could finally smile. "Her fingernail touched and my toenail touched," she said with a laugh, gold medal around her shoulders, when asked if she had left early.

I would place last night's race just behind that one. But what a race.

Angels 11, Yankees 4

We may be agt the tipping point, people: Wang and Posada are gone; Matsui probably so; now Joba, maybe. And Pettitte soon to follow.

Don't blame Girardi.

Angels 10, Yankees 5

Hello, Ian, and goodbye.

Yankees 3, Rangers 0

Moose to the rescue, with his fifteenth win. Lesse, with Joba on the DL, Pettitte due to miss a start, Kennedy up for try number three, Rasner headed toward oblivion, Hughes god-knows-where on the way to recovery and Washburn still in Seattle, the Yankee staff has come down to this:

Ponson and Moose and pray to Zeus.

Yankees 5, Rangers 3

I skipped Tuesday's game--you know, when you just know your guys are going to come out flat and lose it, and you turn to the game every hour or so just for confirmation?

And Sexson's grand slam you know--you know--will only make things closer?

Anyway, nice to salvage one game, the most important of which is Ponson's semi-permanent place in the rotation, especially with Joba on the DL.

Eduardo

Hundering down in Houston, where right now, the hurricane's "clean side" in delivering mostly rain.

A move to the West, however, could be perilous.

Ranger 9, Yankees 5

As has been written:

You have to win a game you tie in the late innings.

Tampa, Boston, New York, Chicago, Minnesota . . . and Texas.

Six teams competing for three spots.

Yankkees 14, Angels 9

Okay, catch our breath first.

Yankees 8, Angels 2

Funny thing about Moose: every bad start he has (and they will happen; Guidry had a few in 1978), everyone wants to know: is Moose through?

Saw only the first five innings before obligations intervened and thought, as I exited at 4-2, Hey, he's got this under control.

And so he did.

Angels 1, Yankees 0

. . . And so, as I was watching the Astros' defeat of th Mets at Minute Maid, the yellow "1" came up on the scoreboard. The Angels, one run in the ninth.

Replaced by a white "1."

Then K-Rod. Ball game.

What is it with Rivera and ties?

Angels 12, Yankees 6

But the big news, of course, is all those trades. And the happiest team in baseball yesterday was the Yankees, ridding themselves once and for all of maybe their No.1 nemesis ever--more than Greenberg, Williams, Feller, Yaz, Palmer, Clemens 1.0, or Pedro.

Manny and his .450-vs.-the-Yankees batting average, Manny with all his home runs to the Mass Turnpike or the left field stands at the Stadium, Manny in the on-deck circle with men on, forcing some overmatched Yankee righty to pitch to Papi . . .

. . . Manny who, in the seventh and eighth, in the yawning gap between a starter and Mo, leaving you with the one hope that maybe he'd hit it at somebody . . .

. . . Many, who, for all his childish antics, for his time spent kicking it inside the Monster, for the ball he once cut off from center field while playing left field, for all the times he seemed to be playing the field on roller skates, always saved his best for the Yankees, even in the field.

Gone. Gone, gone.