Proving grounds

Custer had his stand. Donna Summer got her dance. And 80’s spandex band Europe gave us the countdown.

The Yankees get this weekend.

Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and company all roll into town this evening for a three-game series with the Red Sox – amidst a college town once again of divided baseball partisanship -representing a last-gasp effort of any desire they have of stealing the AL East away from the Red Sox. Facing a 5 ½ game deficit with just two-plus weeks to play, it would seem a chore of some magnitude for Joe Torre’s boys to take the division for a 10th straight season, but a sweep of their rivals this weekend would inflate those possibilities exponentially.

For the Red Sox, this weekend’s goal is simple: Prove they can beat the Yankees.

Even once would do. Coming off last month’s embarrassing sweep in the Bronx, the Red Sox have now lost seven of their last eight meetings with New York, after kicking off April with a quartet of consecutive victories that might as well have been played in 2002 for all their relevance now.
In the sweep, the Red Sox bats (JD Drew might still have that bat on his shoulder) were dazzled by Andy Pettitte, lifeless against Chien Ming Wang, and confused by Roger Clemens, the same trio of Yankee starters who will happen to take the hill over these next three days. The Red Sox counter with the launching pad once known as Daisuke Matsuzaka, Cy Young candidate Josh Beckett, and Curt Schilling in Sunday night’s finale vs. Clemens, an ESPN showdown of grizzled veterans that will also potentially become known as the best game that nobody watched. The Candid Camera Patriots are facing off against the Whiny Chargers at the same time on NBC, fans flocking in droves to John Madden in lieu of the continuing torture that is Joe Morgan.
Since May, the Red Sox and Yankees have met nine times, Boston managing to win just twice. Wang has three of those wins, and he could also wrestle the Cy Young away from Beckett based on the outcome of tomorrow’s terrific pitching matchup. Beckett hasn’t looked great against the Yankees (although he was hurt by bleeders and bloops in giving up 13 hits the last time out) with a 5.49 ERA for the season. Matsuzaka, as bad as he’s been lately, has been atrocious against New York, a 6.98 ERA, and will have to try and beat Pettitte tonight in order to calm any possible panic in the streets of the Fens late tonight.
There shouldn’t be any. The Red Sox are going to the playoffs, that much is for certain, as if the virtual guarantee that they’ll do it as AL East champs. It’s after that that you might want to start up the worry brigade.
We were massively criticized in the space a few short weeks ago for declaring that the Red Sox wouldn’t win the World Series, an admittedly blasphemous claim seeing as they’ve managed to win one in the past 88 years. But steamrolling through the Angels or Indians in the ALDS wouldn’t seem to pose too much a gargantuan task for the Red Sox, who even with a struggling Matsuzaka, Tim Wakefield, and Eric Gagne, still possess the best top-to-bottom pitching in the league. It is the Yankees, however – those same Yankees left for dead like a possum on the side of the road (The plead here: guilty) – that pose the biggest threat to any repeat memories of October glory in New England.
And the Red Sox have not shown one iota of a reason why we should have any faith in them getting past New York in the ALCS. Sorry, none. Unless you want to count those four wins in April, back when there was still a foot of snow on the ground in much of the northern region.
That’s why what is happening right now in the American League should be of great interest to Red Sox fans. The Angels, playing the last-place White Sox this weekend, are within three games of Boston’s long-held best record in the game. The Indians, at 85-61, are just four games off the mark. Of course, the team with the best record gets to play the wild card team in the ALDS, unless that team is in your division. With the Yankees a virtual certainty to make the dance (up 3 ½ on the Tigers), the Red Sox are potentially slated to face one of Cleveland or Anaheim in the first round come next month.
Either team provides Boston with a nice matchup, as the Red Sox are 5-2 against the Indians and 6-4 against the Angels. However, if these are indeed the four teams heading into October, there is nobody the Red Sox would rather face than Cleveland in the first round, leaving their enemies to deal with the Angels, whom the Yankees are just 3-6 against this season. The Yankees are 6-0 against the Indians, who might as well lay down the red carpet for New York’s ALCS trip.
So, potentially, two things favorable factors can happen here. The Red Sox can hang on to the best record in the game and hope that the Indians do not leapfrog the Angels for the second-best mark, at which point they would have to deal with New York. On the other hand, the Angels could wind up with the better record than Boston, and still face off against the wild-card Yankees while the Red Sox play Cleveland.
Worst-case scenario is that the Indians continue their roll all the way to the best record in the game, which might be tantamount to a tribal sacrifice vs. the Bombers.
If the Yankees and Red Sox do happen to meet yet again in the ALCS, it will be the third time in five seasons, the prior two being a pair of the most memorable baseball postseason series in history. But even with a top-two of Beckett and Schilling, one has to wonder how much firepower the Red Sox would have in the tank this team against a team with a resurgence that can only be compared to Boston’s 2004 squad. Even with a bullpen that conjures memories of the one in New York’s World Series run, is it enough against a lineup that might be the best the game has seen in decades?
It’s not that the Yankees are that much exponentially better than the Red Sox, but that what they have pulled off in the second half of the season has been a streak of epic proportions. And this is not an indictment of the Red Sox on the whole, who to their credit have valiantly been able to hang on despite the Yankees’ surge. But honestly, if these two teams faced off in October, how much hope would you hold out?
When the Red Sox face the Yankees this season, they seem a completely different team than they do against anyone else. And while the Yankees have a clear-cut goal of coming in here for the sweep, and making one last dash at the division crown, Boston’s mission is much more simple. Just win a game.
Because if this is an ALCS preview, well, odds are we’re all in for a short October.