Sox-Yanks, Round 3

Giddy as a schoolboy on Christmas morning, brethren. Still buzzing over Jacoby's steal of home, which stands as the exclamation point (or middle finger, if you are of a hostile bent) to this weekend's sweep of the Yankees.

Preferring the eloquence of punctuation, I'll go with proper grammar and add this simple declarative sentence:

This latest series and its crowning jewel of Jacoby's swipe of home illustrate the point Brian Cashman made last week at SCSU. The Yankees, as an organization, are still chasing after the Red Sox and their more efficient business model of drafting well, developing from within, plugging gaps with free agents and not overpaying for older talent.

What a lovely role reversal. No wonder I can watch games calmly these days. Larry Lucchino may make us cringe from time to time, but at least Sox ownership, as a whole, has little of the impetuous egoism and occasional insanity that are hallmarks of The House of Steinbrenner.

Those are the true standings, the "big picture" that lies behind the actual three-game gap between Nation and Empire in this morning's paper.

Sunday's series finale underscored this point. There was none of the comeback drama of the first two games, just a lesson in the ways one storied franchise has gotten the upper hand on another.

*Exhibit A: Young Jacoby's steal on a still-effective, but aging Andy Pettitte.

*Exhibit B: Young pitchers. Justin Masterson starts and gets the win. Farmhand Michael Bowden, up for one game only, helps close it out. Now he goes back to Pawtucket and continues to develop with the likes of Clay Buchholz and Daniel Bard.

Would the Presence of A-Rod have made a difference this weekend? Maybe. But you know what? We're still waiting for the Presence of A-Rod to make a difference.
Right now, from the bushes to the bigs, the Red Sox are the better franchise.