Without question – and I was leading the charge.

But, this team, in the last three weeks or so, looks like a different team now, no?

I don’t know about comparing this team to the ‘98-00 teams. Sure, we have looked great recently and I’m as excited/hopeful as anyone. But in the words of Alan Greenspan, let us not succumb to irrational exuberance. Some of the reason we have looked so good is because we are playing bad teams. The Yanks are simply beating the teams they should beat, which they didn’t do early this year and which the Sox are not doing now. So I’m hopeful and expectant, yes, but trying to keep things in perspective. (Remember a lot of people on this blog were ready to absolutley kill this team after the TB debacle).

They really have come together as a team and have that confidence that you need to win. It’s a good sign.

Steve, that feeling you’re talking about is the feeling I always got with the ‘98-00 Yankees. I tell my wife (who I hadn’t yet met when the Yankees never lost) that you could be watching the game, and they could be down 6 runs in the 7th, and you KNEW they were going to win that game. And they did, pretty much every time, and certainly every time that it counted. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever really seen in sports, and for the last 2 weeks the ‘05 version of the team has re-captured its glory. Here’s hoping it lasts until November.

I know what you’re feeling, Steve, I feel it too. I was speechless when the ‘pen made a game of it again last night, but I never felt the Yanks wouldn’t win.

Anyone else taken a look at Prospectus’s post season odds report this morning?

Yanks – Division Champs: 61.64535
Red Sox- Division Champs: 38.35465

I like those odds!

Re- Paul in Boston:

Funny you brought that up about the three disappointments (95, 01 and 04)…I was just thinking about them, and I agree- I rank the 2004 as the “least painful” of the three.

The Mattingly Factor in 95 and the 9/11 factor in 2001 were worse than the curse being lifted in 2004…..which admittedly is a bit odd.

Good to see that Posada reversed his trend of stinking up the joint in September.

Moose was keeping the ball down, and the Orioles looked more like golfers than ballplayers.

GO TRIBE! Gotta love the Sox losing ground to the division and the WC and not being able to do a damn thing about it!!

a nice scenario tonight- Yanks and Sox both lose (we are due for a loss- better now than later),and the Tribe win..

I’m excited, and amazed, and doing my best not to get my hopes up too high — after all, aren’t we less than a year from one of the greatest disappointments in Yankee fan-dom history? (I actually still count 1995 Seattle and 2001 Arizona as more painful, for various reasons, but last year was still pretty bad.)

All this winning seems so fragile, I don’t want to do anything to ruin it. How’s that for magical thinking?

SL, you’ve captured how tumultuous this season has been, and that we have to fight the tendency to think the Yankees have done anything…they have not. They have only come back from being left for dead twice this year to have a better than average probability of winning the division.

But: Then you think back to 11-20 in May, swept by KC in June, et al and can’t help but be excited.

JeremyM – thanks for that link. I may do an entry on that set soon.

Mikey I – few things make my day better than hearing good things from a first time/long timer! Thanks.

Leiter will make the postseason roster. It’s either him, Franklin or Embree.