THE SWEEP!

It sure feels good to sweep the Yankees, even if it is this early in the season. Often times a sweep is much more one-sided than this one was, which is to say that this series was pretty even despite one team winning all the games. The Red Sox only out-scored NY by 4 runs.

The Yankees lineup is just incredible, and its only going to get deeper if not better when Matsui comes back. One would think that A-Rod will come back to earth at some point, and he didn't hit homers in the last two games of the series, settling for a single single (ha!) tonight. Once Wang and Mussina come back this could get interesting.

But enough about the losers, lets talk winners. The Red Sox had quite a spectacular game between Mike Lowell's two homers and Dustin Pedroia's terrific diving stop to save the tying run from scoring in the eighth. Of course there was also the little thing about hitting back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs to turn a 3-0 deficit into a 4-3 advantage. The first to homer was Manny, followed by J.D. Drew, Mike Lowell, and finally Jason Varitek. A couple odd facts about that... well, odd happening:

• The '07 Red Sox became the fifth team to hit four consecutive homers. No team has ever hit five in a row.
• Each hitter who homered did so for the second time this season.
• Chase Wright became the first pitcher to give up four consecutive homers, as all previous happenings had been divided between pitchers. {Wright actually became the second pitcher to give up four consecutive homers. The NY Times has the story.}
  
• The last time four players homered consecutively was... [drum roll]... last season, when the L.A. Dodgers pulled off the feat against San Diego.
  
• Oddly enough, one of the four Dodger hitters who homered last September 18th was J.D. Drew. I have no confirmation about this, but Drew has to be the only guy to ever participate twice in hitting four consecutive homers.
• By my back of the envelope calculations, on average, hitting four homers consecutively happens once every 121,000 games. Ish.

So, anyway, a great sweep by the Sox. Tonight's win was Boston's fifth win in a row, and with that win we pull four games ahead of NY, 4.5 ahead of Toronto and stay 1.5 ahead of Baltimore. Tampa Bay is 5.5 behind. Boston also has the best record in Major League Baseball.

Tomorrow: The Blue Jays make their first visit to Fenway in 2007. Its Wakefield vs. Tomo Ohka.

Go Sox!