Glimmer of Hope

Coming into the weekend, it looked like a perfect situation for a Yankee sweep: they had come off a terrible series against the Jays, and the Yankees had steamrolled past Detroit. But as often occurs in baseball, the conventional wisdom was wrong.

After Friday night, it seemed like this would be just another typical Yankee-dominated series, like the one last year at the end of June (where Ortiz pulled off a Buckner and Jeter made that catch in the stands). But two Boston wins later, there is a glimmer of hope. Perhaps the Yanks will have more games like the last two games, games where their starting pitching does absolutely nothing and the bats can't come out and rescue them. Games where they look more like the April '05 Junkees than the May '05 Junkees. Games where you wonder how the Yanks will do when they won't be able to feast off of the M's, A's, Mets, and Tigers for a good two weeks.

And maybe Renteria is finally heating up in a Sox uniform. Maybe Wells has something left. Maybe Manny Ramirez can get his average back where it used to be. And maybe a healthy Curt Schilling at the stretch run of summer is just what the Sox need to leave the Yankees in the dust.

But the Yanks get a reprieve, facing the woeful Royals next, while Boston takes on a struggling-but-still-threatening Orioles team. And since the end of their struggles, the Junkees have yet to prove that they can beat a good team like Boston, Texas, LA, or Baltimore. Till they start winning those series, there's still a glimmer of hope. In years past, Yankee-haters have had to do a lot of dreaming. But sometimes, like last year, those dreams just might become reality.