Red Sox v. Yankees

[ZippyTheChimp]

Incredible. They all lost.

[Jasonik]

Who'd a thunk it?

Anyway, here are how some possible scenarios would play out from an MLB article.

What if the AL East and Central divisions end in ties?
Next Monday, the Red Sox would play the Yankees at Yankee Stadium and the White Sox would play the Indians at Jacobs Field. The losers would then play a Wild Card playoff game on Tuesday to determine the AL's final playoff setup. The Yankees would play the Indians at The Jake; the Red Sox would play Cleveland at Fenway Park; and all combinations against the White Sox are yet to be determined.

What if those divisions are won outright and two teams in the AL Wild Card race finish with the same records?
Next Monday, the Yankees would play the Indians at the Jake or the Red Sox would play Cleveland at Fenway Park. All combinations against the White Sox are yet to be determined.

What if the Yankees, Red Sox and Indians all finish with the same records?
The Yankees and Red Sox play in New York for the AL East title and the loser plays the Indians for the Wild Card berth on Tuesday. New York is at the Jake if the Yanks lose and the Tribe is at Fenway if the Red Sox lose.

Why, you might ask, is there a Wild Card playoff game when the Indians would have a half-game better record than the Yankees-Red Sox loser? MLB has determined that it would not be fair for a team that's tied for a division title at the end of the regular season to be displaced in the postseason by a second-place team. Thus, the mandatory Wild Card playoff game.

What if the Yankees tie the Red Sox in the AL East?
Next Monday, the Yankees would host the Red Sox, unless those two teams finish with the best records in the AL. In that case, there wouldn't be a playoff game. Both teams would make the playoffs and the first-place team is determined by the two teams' head-to-head record. As of Tuesday, the Yankees led the season series, 9-7.

[Jasonik]

''We know it's going to come down to this weekend, it's the master plan. God's way. Yankees-Red Sox."

[ZippyTheChimp]

Yankee fans consider last year an act of God. I think God actually coined the phrase been there; done that. So you're on your own against the Evil Empire.

[Jasonik]

-- Major League Baseball conducted coin tosses today to determine where one-game Wild Card playoffs between the Red Sox and Chicago White Sox and the White Sox and New York Yankees would be held. Chicago won both coin tosses and would host either team in the event of a season-ending tie atop the Wild Card standings. The game would be held on Oct. 3.

[lofter1]

Shouldn't this \/ be up-dated?

Poll: Who will bring home the 2003 pennant?

Be advised that this is a public poll: other users can see the choice(s) you selected.

Poll Options
Who will bring home the 2003 pennant?
Boston Red Sox
New York Yankees
I'm a Mets fan.

[Jasonik]

A compendium of articles about this weekend's series: here

[NYatKNIGHT]

Updated the poll....

[Jasonik]

[ZippyTheChimp]

.

[Jasonik]

Here they go again
Red Sox, Yankees at end of collision course

Tom Singer MLB

BOSTON -- And, so, they fool us again. Just when we thought the Yankees and Red Sox had given us all they could, they found another level.
And this is it. The ultimate series, for the ultimate prize. Three games in Fenway Park, where either the Yankees will deliver the ultimate payback or the Red Sox the ultimate encore.

A year after the Red Sox danced in Yankee Stadium, the Bombers could turn The Fens into their mosh pit, needing only two out of three to celebrate their eighth straight division title.

Or, the Red Sox could do the two-step, dealing the Bombers another final blow.

Or, neither happens, and they're left in a pretzel to be undone in Game No. 163, on Monday in the Bronx.

The Yankees soared here on their strong second wind -- 15 wins in their last 18 games -- and the Red Sox await them just plain winded -- a mediocre 11-10 in their last 21 -- but relieved to steal one from Toronto.

So not much will be decided in the next three days. Only a division championship, a Wild Card pass into the postseason, and an MVP Award.

Alex Rodriguez will try to pick the pockets of David Ortiz, the Big Papi who virtually wrapped his Big Paws around the trophy with another pressure performance Thursday night.

Cataclysmic, or merely seismic, this series under the multicolored New England fall foliage?

These are noble teams, dignified by the resolve with which they have run the race. They are not sleek, but dinged. Teams buckling under the weight of their cities' expectations, pulled down by their own flaws.

But they have refused to give in or give up until they cross the finish line, like a couple of aging marathon runners stretching on bowed legs for the tape.

The collapse can wait until Monday ... or Tuesday ... or next Sunday ... or whenever a last out sends them into winter.

The champion of the American League East Division and the AL Wild Card will be determined by pitching matchups no one could have conceived six months ago -- not even under the influence of strong hallucinogens.

Friday night, someone named Chien-Ming Wang will go for the Yankees opposite the old Yankee, David Wells.

Wells owns two of Boston's three wins over New York since Memorial Day -- 7-2 on May 29 in Yankee Stadium, 17-1 on July 15 here.

Saturday will pair Randy Johnson and Tim Wakefield, 81 years of contrasting aces. The two are as compatible as P. Diddy and Pavarotti. Two of Wakefield's right-handed knuckleballs equal one of the Big Unit's flames. But Johnson hasn't lost since Aug. 21 and Wakefield has allowed nine runs all month.
Scheduled to lower the regular-season curtain on Sunday are two veteran right-handers who are accurate reflections of their teams' seasons. It will be a poetically just finale.

Mike Mussina, who alternately looked prime or like he was pitching a cannonball, is due to meet Curt Schilling, who got phat off the World Series triumph but ultimately didn't have two good legs to stand on.

A three-game sweep would give Boston its first division title since 1995. You wouldn't want to bet on that, but you could hope for the Red Sox to win the first two and leave the next step up to Sunday -- remembering the mastery Schilling conjured only three weeks ago in Yankee Stadium, where he stepped totally out of 2005 character with eight innings of five-hit ball.

The Red Sox shed one major haunt last year, but have set themselves up for a new one. If they hit a postseason roadblock, Terry Francona's crew would have a hard time letting this one go.

Not because they blew a big lead over the Yankees -- the biggest they had was 5 1/2 games, on Aug. 10.

But because they blew the chance to build a big lead. While the Yankees were regaining their bearings from a blown-up rotation and were panicked into overhauling a third of their lineup, the Red Sox never took advantage.

They know this, and it gnaws at them.

"This was the season for us to be 10 games up on the Yankees," Ortiz said a few days ago. "They can't play worse than they did at the beginning of the season."

The Red Sox didn't even make as much of that as did the Baltimore Orioles, who led the division until June 23.

By the time the Sox cut the cord to '04 and started to focus on the present, so did the Yankees. The race was on, one of the best races in their long history.

Seldom in 105 seasons have they never been separated by more than 5 1/2 games.

It has taken a lot out of both of them.

The Yankees have a beat-up pitching staff, a soft-tossing center fielder and a sore-legged right fielder.

The Red Sox have a one-armed center fielder, a shelved closer and a gasping offense too often reduced to its two-headed monster, Manny Ramirez and Ortiz.

They each deserve this shot. They deserve each other. We deserve them both.

"It's the master plan," Johnny Damon said. "God's way ... Yankees and Red Sox."

Amen.

[Jasonik]

[ZippyTheChimp]

Red Sox: Krispy Kreme swollen guts hiding under baggy uniforms.

Yankees: Correctly accessorized designer originals.

[redhot00]

[BrooklynRider]

I'm happy to see there are gay Yankee fans expressing themselves openly.