So, what are we to say about a team when it doesn't collapse, fold, choke, fall apart, crumble, disintegrate, melt, break down, crash and burn, fizzle, flop, or fade?
The language is rich in words to describe failure. The Red Sox have had most of those terms applied to them at times throughout their history. So where are the words to describe what these Sox of 2007 are doing, in the face of the best second half the Yankees have had since Joe Torre became manager in 1996?
Somehow, "hanging on" doesn't quite cut it, not when history's most expensive team rolls into town on an 8-1 tear and has run off a record of 40-20 since the All-Star break, a .667 clip that conjures memories of the .684 pace (54-25) the '78 Yanks played at in erasing a 14-game deficit to overtake the Sox. All that winning, and the Yankees arrive 5 1/2 games behind and needing more than a three-game sweep this weekend to catch the Sox.
As good as the Yankees have been, the Sox have not blinked, despite forecasts of folding/spindling/mutilating after they were swept three straight in Yankee Stadium at the end of August. The Sox enter this weekend with a 9-3 record in September, though it took their biggest comeback of the season, rebounding from an 8-1 deficit against the Devil Rays to win, 16-10, Tuesday night, and the belated return the next night of the David Ortiz signature moment, the walkoff home run, to keep the Yankees at bay.
That's why the words came flying out of Jonathan Papelbon following Ortiz's first walkoff home run in more than a year, which produced a 5-4 win over Tampa Bay. "The biggest thing was keeping our lead going into this series," Papelbon said, "and this will build some momentum. The last two or three weeks of the season, it's absolutely huge for this ball club to be going into the stretch with this lead and having some momentum."
The Sox have 15 games left. They have spent 136 days in first place. At 31 games above .500, they are at their high-water mark for the season. At the All-Star break, they were 9 1/2 games ahead of the Yankees, who on May 29 trailed by 14 1/2 games. They have lost 4 1/2 games off their lead since the break, but after playing at a .609 pace before the break (53-34), they have played .600 ball since (36-24). They have stayed the course.
The Yankees, after last night's 2-1 loss in Toronto, have 16 games left. Even if they do not catch the Sox in the American League East, they are leading the wild-card race by a comfortable 3 1/2-game margin over the Detroit Tigers, setting up a possible (likely?) meeting between the archrivals in the AL Championship Series for the third time in five years.
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