Boston-New York: The Return of Doug

Unfortunately, my audio equipment (iPod with a mic) wasn't quite charged before the game, and somehow got stuck on menu despite the buttons being locked, so there was no audio input from the game for this article yesterday. Still, a few observations from one of the most memorable regular season Red Sox-Yankees games of the past couple years:

I drove down from Maine that day, barely having time to get a decent dinner before the game, so I didn't hear about the trade until we got there and then - Oh my god! - they announced Doug Mirabelli as the catcher.

I kind of turned and looked at my girlfriend, saw that she had the same look of utter astonishment on her face. We immediately turned to grill our neighbors, and quickly learned of the Josh Bard, Cla Meredith, and cash or a player to be named later trade for Mirabelli. Of course, this boils down to Josh Bard, Cla Meredith, and cash/PTBNL for Mark Loretta - which is a pretty good deal, given the contributions he's made thus far.

Thankfully fans like this largely failed to make an impact - I know in my section there were a few scattered claps that were drowned out by the boos when Johnny Damon stepped to the plate. As I noted earlier, I applauded him more than enough when he was here - no need to do it now that he's trying to take our division away from us.

Most Red Sox fans were smart enough to realize that.

The game was terrific too, of course. The Yankees' starting pitcher, Chien-Ming Wang, lasted just five innings, as his ERA dropped to 4.89. The Yanks then employed five more pitchers - Aaron Small, who went on record with the loss, the immortal Tanyon Sturtze, Mike Myers, and Scott Proctor.

Red Sox pitchers? Tim Wakefield, Mike Timlin, and Jonathan Papelbon. Wake went seven innings and dropped his ERA to 3.89, while Timlin went on record for the win. Papelbon was his usual unflappable self, keeping his ERA at zero in the ninth. Of course, we never saw Mariano Rivera, so the two haven't gone head-to-head yet, but so far on the season Rivera has a 3.72 ERA with four saves, while Papelbon has ten saves and an ERA of 0.00.

Another key difference? Rivera costs $10.5 mill, while Papelbon is costing Boston around $350 thousand. I love it when rookies are good.

So, a great game, with a couple great storylines, and the right result. What more could I ask for? OK, it would have been better if it hadn't been forty degrees and raining, but other than that?

Yeah, I couldn't think of anything either.