Right now, team is fourth-rate

Yogi said it best. It ain't over till it's over.

Can't we trace pretty much all of it back to Yogi Berra? Wasn't it Yogi who pointed out that "If you ain't got a bullpen, you ain't got nuthin' "? After watching games this past week, who among us would dispute that notion?

This thing is not, of course, working out the way people around here hoped it would, which is not the same as saying it is not working out the way people around here thought it would. Did anyone honestly believe back in May that the Yankees, then tied for last in the American League East with Tampa Bay, 14 1/2 games behind the Red Sox, would actually remain there? If that be the case, please step into my office. I have a nice land deal in the Florida Panhandle we can discuss.

Really. It just doesn't work that way.

It simply stood to reason that the Red Sox were going to be challenged by the Yankees. The issue earlier in the season wasn't the Red Sox. It was the Yankees. At a point when the Red Sox were playing nice baseball, the Yankees were struggling for a variety of reasons. The Red Sox were 20-8 in May. The Yankees were 13-15. The Red Sox had no control over what the Yankees were doing.

Going back a ways, remember the glorious back-to-back-to-back-to-backs? Those homers were off Chase Wright. Should the Red Sox meet up with the Yankees in the AL Championship Series, you can be sure they won't be taking any hacks off Chase Wright.

Things happen over the long haul in baseball. Players get hot. Forty-year-old pitchers get hurt. Hideki Okajimas experience unforeseen and inexplicable bouts of greatness. Veterans go south overnight. Joba Chamberlains and Clay Buchholzes materialize. Calls do or don't go your way. Balls that seem to stay fair for a month go foul in the next month. The wind blows in. The wind blows out.

Oblique muscles decide to act up.

And sometimes the other guy is pretty good, too.