ShareThisBy BILL REYNOLDS
The Providence Journal
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Back in early June, I wrote that the American League race was over, that the New York Yankees were as dead as a three-week-old corpse.
I was wrong.
I was wrong, even if the Boston Red Sox hold on and eventually win the A.L. East. I was wrong because this is now a race, regardless of what happens the rest of the way. I was wrong because I didn't think the Yankees were constituted to do what they have done for over a month now, which is to be the best team in baseball.
They have done it for a number of reasons: an offense that's now doing what it always was supposed to do, better pitching, better production off the bench, all reasons that teams get better. All this and two great young pitching talents in Philip Hughes and Joba Chamberlain now in New York, too.
Maybe most of all, they have done it by overcoming adversity, no small thing in New York, where the tabloids eat the weak, the daily diary of negativity hovering over every failing team like a mushroom cloud. Let's not kid ourselves here: I wasn't the only one back in early June saying the Yankees were in a free fall. Far from it. The New York media was a Greek chorus of doom and gloom.
But somehow this team has survived. Maybe it was the veteran leadership, led by Derek Jeter who essentially said when the Yankees almost needed a telescope to see the Red Sox that the Yankees just had to start winning games and forget about the standings. There's no question that manager Joe Torre is at his best when dealing with the circus that can be New York, always a calming presence, the lifeboat in the swirling sea. In a season that might be his last in New York, he might just be having one of his best years as a manager in the Bronx.
Can they keep up this torrid pace?
You would think not.
But they are back in the hunt, and deserve much credit for that. They are back in the divisional race and in the thick of the wild-card battle, have saved their season, made people like me very wrong.
So call this the eat-crow column.
Pass the salt.
As for the Red Sox, what in the name of Smoky Joe Wood is going on here?
Or, can Boston stop the American League race now?
Yes, the Yankees are hotter than a Hollywood starlet, but it's the Red Sox who have been playing for too long now with little sense of urgency, the feeling that all the real work already has been done, like some boxer who builds up a lot of points in the early rounds, then just hangs on for the decision.
Was it all too easy the first two months of the season, just get great starting pitching and give the ball to setup-man Hideki Okajima and close Jonathan Papelbon, baseball by the numbers?
Or what happens when the pitching starts to slide a little, new reliever Eric Gagne has some bad outings and causes some confusion in the pen, Okajima isn't quite as dominant as he was earlier, and why didn't Theo get another bat in here?
All this and the Yankees keep coming.
In retrospect, maybe the Red Sox are simply not as good as they were the first two months of the season. Maybe that was the aberration, not this. Maybe it's simply the fact that the Red Sox simply do not hit like they have the last few years, too many guys struggling, and Manny and Big Papi not putting up the kind of numbers they did in the past. The fact that this team has holes that the great start camouflaged.
That's what the next seven weeks are going to show, one way or the other.
The luxury of having the big lead is over, as is the luxury of having the Yankees in a free fall. Now here it is the dog days of August, the Yankees keep coming, and those halcyon days when the Sox were up 14-1/2 games now seem as gone as the Fourth of July.
(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold@projo.com.)
