Yankees 13, Red Sox 5

It is now clear that, at this minute, the only two healthy Boston pitchers who scare the Yankees are Schilling and Papelbon. This is an amazing comedown for Boston, as the number of pitchers whose entrance or scheduled start made me groan used to be as long as the Orange Line: Wakefield, Timlin, Embree, Foulk--even, by and large, Pedro, whose record wouldn't reflect it. Any of those guys would start or come in and I'd throw up my hands; by and large, the Yankees were helpless, and this was before the Red Sox acquired Josh Beckett, who ran over them in the 2003 World Series, while playing for Florida.

And now? Well, Pedro and Embree are gone, Wakefield is hurt, Foulk is ineffective, and Timlin--who, as The Sports Guy points out (scroll down to Boston), was unconsciounably allowed to participate in the WBC at the age of forty--is, in the words of TSG, "a walking corpse." Beckett, it now appears, may have made his name and life's fortune based upon a pain-free few weeks in October three years ago, is a good, not great, pitcher subject to the vagaries of his health and curveball.

If people know nothing else about baseball, they should know this: a pitcher injured while young will usually stay injured, off and on, for his entire career. Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Carl Pavano, Brandon Backe--the list goes on, and these are just the recent names. A general manager who frames his rotation around suspect wings will soon be sleeping in the street.

And so now we have Curt Schilling, who some thought was finished as a pitcher 22 months ago, being asked to go out tomorrow and stop the, uh, bleeding. And if he gets in trouble early . . . well, who will fill the breach? We join The Sports Guy in mid-rant:

(

Note: Not to keep bringing up my keeper league, because I wouldn't want you to think that I'm obsessed with it, even though I probably am … but Hench and I had Timlin, Delcarmen AND Hansen on our keeper team this season, and we traded all of them in separate moves last month. Why? BECAUSE WE WATCH BASEBALL! BECAUSE ALL OF THEM SUCK! THAT'S WHY! Really, we're going to war with a one-man bullpen for the next 10 weeks? That's the plan? Good God, I can't wait to have Belichick and Brady back in my life. I want everything to make sense again.)

He forgot Van Buren, who gave up a bases-clearing triple to Jorge Posada which was--what?--the second triple of Georgie's career? The third?

For those keeping score at home, choke artist A-Rod is now 5 of 13 with five RBIs in the series.

Correction: correspondent SunDevil Joe reports that, "By the way, it was Manny Delcarmen, not Van Buren, who gave up the triple to Jorge. What does it matter as I'm sure he's back in Pawtucket today."

Yes.