Up on the hill...

...(in Minute Maid Park) is where you'll find LA's Dave Roberts, helping to preserve teammate Eric Gagne's record-breaking series of 44 straight saves this season.

Gimme five!

The Expos rode a great pitching performance yesterday by Javier Vazquez (8 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 10 K) to shut out the Phillies (who are phading phast) and complete a four-game sweep, the Astros and the Marlins both lost, and the Cardinals beat the Cubs with a walk-off home run. So, what does it all mean? It means there's a five-way tie for first place in the NL Wild Card race (with St. Louis and Houston also tied for first place in the NL Central divisional race). Not only that, but there are three other clubs no more than 1 1/2 games behind this leading group - the Wild Card spot really is anybody's for the taking, even if USA Today's Hal Bodley suggests that nobody (outside of the currently-hot Expos) seems to actually want to do so...

So, one series to watch this weekend will be the Expos / Marlins one down in Florida, but most of the attention is going to be focused on the Yankees / Red Sox series at Fenway Park. The Yankees, as ever, seems to be trying to downplay the importance of this series between the two rival ballclubs, but don't try to tell me that the Red Sox aren't hoping to pick up three crucial games in the standings. I won't get to see the games, but I'm nonetheless looking forward to the Andy Pettitte / Pedro Martinez matchup on Saturday afternoon - there could be some fine baseball in store.

Don't look now, but...

...the Expos are just one game out of first place in the NL Wild Card race...the Yankees have been beaten up in the Bronx twice in two nights by the Frank Thomas - sorry, 'Chicago' - White Sox...Seattle is out of first place in the AL West for the first time since April 14... Oh yeah, and the Milwaukee Brewers have won nine straight games!

Weather forecast for today: cloudy, with an outside chance of low-flying pigs...

Eyes Wide Shut

I know I got all worked up about a similar play made by Ronnie Belliard last week, but Bret Boone's blind flip to second base during the Mariners' game against the Devil Rays is definitely worth a look. It's part circus, part gymnastics, part baseball. God, I love this stuff...

Wheelin' and dealin'

Teams are still busy on the trade market right now, but not necessarily for the same reasons. The San Diego Padres acquired Pirates' center-fielder Brian Giles yesterday, with a view to re-building. They want to bolster not only their offensive and defensive capabilities, but also their attendance for next season, when they will be playing in their brand-new stadium, Petco Park. Giles is a genuine star and a San Diego native, and it's hoped that these factors - combined with his numbers (an average of 35 HRs and 100+ RBIs over the past 4 seasons) - will bring fans out to the ballpark.

Giles' arrival in San Diego meant that outfielder Rondell White was suddenly surplus to requirements. Royals' GM Allard Baird lost no time in picking up White in an attempt to get Kansas City into the playoffs. The Royals may not have the Yankees' budget, but they seem to be making the right moves at the right time and for the right price. They picked up pitcher Brian Anderson from the Indians two days ago, and he won his first start in a Royals' uniform last night, giving up just two runs in six innings. Now they've added White, whose .278 batting average, 16 HRs and 66 RBIs could help the Royals down the home stretch.

Esprit de corps

A year after talks of contraction, and in the midst of heated debate about where they will play their home games next season and beyond (Montreal ? Montreal / San Juan ? Portland ? Washington DC ?), the Expos - a mixed bag of genuine superstars, promising young players and experienced veterans, owned by Major League Baseball and run on a shoestring budget - continue to amaze with their exploits on the field. Last night, they overcame an 8-run deficit to beat the Phillies 14-10, and in doing so closed the gap in the Wild Card race. They're now just two games behind the Phillies and the Marlins, and this kind of comeback win can only boost their confidence for the last month of the season.

Obviously, the players themselves have to be given credit for what they are achieving on the field, but there are two other key figures in the Montreal organisation whose contribution can't be ignored - GM Omar Minaya, who has put together a good ballclub on a very tight budget, and manager Frank Robinson, who seems to know how to make all those different parts gel on the field and produce good results.

The one thing that p*sses me off is that the good citizens of Montreal don't actually turn out to watch this team play (except on nights like Monday, when 30,501 people turned up to watch them beat the Phillies...No the Phillies aren't THAT big of a box-office draw - what brought people to the ballpark were $5 tickets and $1 hot-dogs!!). I understand - I know that the fans feel they've been used and abused by the Montreal management, who have continued to trade all the club's best players year after year. I just get a little frustrated, because there is nothing I would like more than to have a major league baseball team on my doorstep that I could watch for six months a year. When you're stuck in the Baseball Desert, 4,000 miles away from the nearest franchise, any team - Expos, Brewers, Tigers, Devil Rays - looks like an oasis...

Who's in first?

There are now three teams in the Amercian League with identical 76-55 records. Seattle's loss to Boston (their sixth straight loss) coupled with Oakland's win in Toronto means that the A's are now tied with the Mariners for first place in the AL West AND tied with the Red Sox for first place in the Wild Card race. As a good friend of mine pointed out this morning: "If the A's miss out on the postseason party now, then they'll have to give themselves a good kick up the backside...".

Cutting-edge baseball analysis, only on The Baseball Desert (even if SI.com's John Donovan begs to differ)...

Hidden treasures

I watched For Love Of The Game for the nth time this weekend (great movie, btw - if you watch it with your male friends you can all express admiration for Kevin Costner / Billy Chapel's perfect game whilst secretly wishing that somebody as gorgeous as Kelly Preston would fall in love with you, and if you watch it with your significant other you can say "great love story, huh?", whilst getting off on the whole perfect-game trip)...

Anyway, after the movie, I thought I'd have another look at the bonus features on the DVD, which include a "Perfect Game" baseball quiz. I'd tried the quiz before, but never got to the end of it - it's a 'three strikes and you're out' system - but on Saturday I got lucky and made it through the 12 questions. Once I'd done so, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it gave me access to a 1932 Universal Pictures short called Slide, Babe, Slide, a little ten-minute baseball vignette which was as enjoyable as it was unexpected.

A's-y does it

The A's yesterday boosted their chances of making the postseason with a 17-2 blowout of the Blue Jays (including two grand-slams - the first time that has happened in the A's 103-year history). Once again, the Division / Wild Card permutations proved to be favourable to the A's - their Wild Card rivals, the Red Sox, won, which means that both clubs are still tied for first place, but Boston's victory came against the Mariners, which allowed the A's to gain ground on Seattle, who are now on a 5-game losing streak and seem to be falling apart. The A's are now just one game behind the Mariners in the AL West, and it promises to be an interesting couple of weeks, as the two clubs have almost identical schedules coming up, with games against the Orioles, the Devil Rays, the Rangers and the Angels. The AL West is most definitely up for grabs.

Nothing to add

There's really nothing I can say about Bobby Bonds' death that hasn't already been said. MLB.com has a good collection of reactions from the world of baseball, whilst USA Today / Baseball Weekly's Ian O'Connor has some interesting thoughts on the Bobby Bonds / Barry Bonds father / son relationship.

The one little detail that I did pick up on (because it's just the kind of useless piece of trivia that the Baseball Desert loves) is that the pitcher who gave up Bobby Bonds' last major-league home run - on 24 Sep 1981 - is still playing in the major leagues! Yankees' reliever Jesse Orosco - now 46 - was in just his second major league season (with the Mets) when he gave up that home run to Bonds in a Cubs / Mets game 22 years ago...

Great minds think alike

Managers are clearly starting to feel the effects of a long, hard season - clear, pertinent, detailed, well thought-out analyses have gone by the board and have now been replaced by killer, you-can't-argue-with-that one-liners. The effectiveness of these one-liners can be measured by the frequency with which they're used - yesterday, the Cubs' Dusty Baker and Philadelphia's Larry Bowa used exactly the same phrase to sum up their respective teams' situations: "It is what it is". Words of wisdom indeed...

Whilst we're on the subject of managers, check out Jim Caple's article on ESPN.com on "Sweet" Lou Piniella's legendary on-field tantrums. Caple goes on to list some of baseball's most famously argumentative and demonstrative managers, finishing up, of course, with Baltimore's Earl Weaver, who was in a league of his own when it came to arguing, shouting and yelling:

"Weaver once said that it's the manager's job to argue with the umpire because he doesn't hurt the team by getting ejected -- and he did. He was ejected at least 91 times (one source says 98) and suspended four times in his career. Ron Luciano alone ejected Weaver eight times in the majors and four consecutive games in the minors.

Weaver was ejected in the regular season. He was ejected in the playoffs. He was ejected in the World Series. He was ejected from both ends of a doubleheader -- three times. He was ejected before a game started -- twice. And he was creative. He once tore up the rule book and scattered its pages on the field. He once faked a heart attack. He once ripped up second base and carried it into the dugout.

He once told an umpire that he could appear on "What's My Line" wearing his mask, chest protector and ball/strike indicator and still nobody would guess he was an umpire.

God, baseball misses him."

Classic stuff.

It ain't over 'til it's over

There's a reason that clichés become clichés - it's that, generally, they're true, as last night's games showed. No less than four games were won with walk-off home runs - the heroes were: Tony Batista (Baltimore), Todd Helton (Colorado), Jim Edmonds (St. Louis) and Barry Bonds (San Francisco)...

Hang on a second - didn't Barry Bonds hit a walk-off home run two days ago as well? Well, yes he did, and, despite the fact that he's not on the Baseball Desert's list of Ten (or Fifty or even Hundred) Favourite Ballplayers, I have to say that he's got me singing Aretha Franklin right now: "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" ... Giants manager Felipe Alou probably summed it up best after last night's game: "Maybe there might be a league on another planet where he's just another guy".

Bonds is having an amazing season by anyone's standards, and the hot topic right now is whether the NL MVP award should go to him or to the Cardinals' Albert Pujols. However, beyond the stats - and even if it's not something that will be taken into account in the award - you have to remember that Bonds is carrying the Giants to the playoffs whilst coping with a horrible personal situation. ESPN's Mark Kreidler has written a good article on the subject, and what he writes rings even more true when you realise that the article pre-dates Bonds' two walk-off homers.

Play of the day

I know that my impressions of the 'play of the day' are always going to be influenced by MLB.com, because that's the only place I can see any highlights, but Ronnie Belliard's amazing behind-the-back flip to second base would have to be at the top of anybody's list for yesterday. He grabs the ball and tosses it behind his back without even looking at Juan Uribe. Great double play.

Grand Central

Things are getting tighter by the day in the two Central divisions. In the NL, the top three teams are separated by just one game, and in the AL, it's even closer - the White Sox and the Royals are tied for first place, and the Twins are just half a game behind. It's weird, but after 120+ games, the two divisions are almost mirror images of each other:

1st place: White Sox (66-61) / Astros (66-60)
2nd place: Royals (65-60) / Cubs (65-60)
3rd place: Twins (65-61) / Cardinals (65-61)

I'm keeping with my new 'no forecasts' rule - I'm happy just watching the division races unfold, without trying to predict who's actually going to win them. However, there is a good piece on MLB.com about the Cubs' chances. I read that and an old Beach Boys' song came to mind: "Wouldn't it be nice...?"...

Insert bad pun here

Apologies in advance, but I can see endless bad pun possibilities coming up with this afternoon's game in The Big Ballpark In The Bronx - the Yankees' Roger Clemens (career stats: 304 wins, 4068 strikeouts) will be pitching against the Royals' Jimmy Gobble (career stats: 2 wins, 7 strikeouts). For some reason, the names 'David' and 'Goliath' spring to mind.

MLB.com, never afraid to use and abuse bad puns, have begun already: "Yankees look to Gobble up Royals". Look out for variations on the same theme as the afternoon wears on...

It's a funny old game

Best current winning streaks in the major leagues:
Texas Rangers - 7 games
Montreal Expos - 6 games

(Oh yeah, and the New York Yankees (6), but that's a little less surprising...).

The Rangers, despite their good run, are obviously going nowhere, but the Expos are now only four games behind the Phillies in the Wild Card race, and so still have everything to play for.

Today's advice to myself is: "don't give up the day job"... My promising career as a baseball analyst was cut short last night with "the very shaky" Jeff Weaver's win in New York. I guess I put the curse on Jose Lima's winning-streak too - Weaver's win made a loser of him for the first time this season, and also meant that Kansas City lost a little of their division lead over the Chicago White Sox, who beat Anaheim, thanks to Frank Thomas's two 2-run homers.

Still, all was not lost. Montreal did complete a historic sweep against San Francisco - according to the Elias Sports Bureau, it's the first time in Giants' history that they've ever been swept in a season series involving more than three games. The Expos are currently in good company in the NL East, where every single team is on a winning streak, including the Mets, who have won six straight and who are 8-2 over their last ten games.

This is cool - we now have bi-lingual commentary on TEAM - they're switching from French to English as the mood takes them. I'm gonna enjoy this for a little while longer and then head on home to the 'burbs (oh yeah - I'm still at the office, 'working' hard ;-)). The guys on there have made a good point, though - anyone listening in who doesn't understand French has got to be hoping that it's a 1-2-3 inning...

Things are still scoreless in Montreal, in the bottom of the second. The TEAM radio guys have a French-speaking colleague visiting in the booth, and they're promising us a little baseball in French in the bottom of the third. Should be interesting...

It's been a tough day at work, so I've watched the play (see below) about ten times today just to keep a smile on my face, and I've realised it's a bit like watching Thelma & Louise for the umpteenth time - you hope that they find a way out of their dead-end predicament, but each time they drive on over that cliff and into the Grand Canyon. I keep hoping that Cusp will make it all the way to home plate, but Aaron Boone nails him every time...

I'll be keeping an eye on the Expos tonight (or "this afternoon", if you're on Eastern, rather than Paris, Time...) as they try for a first-ever season-sweep of the Giants. Hopefully they can carry over some of the energy they got last night from Brad Wilkerson's walk-off grand-slam. Allez les Expos!!

Meanwhile, it's "Lima Time" over in the Bronx, where the Royals will be facing the Yankees. You have to like Jose Lima's chances against the Yanks tonight - he's 7-0 for the season, with a 2.96 ERA, and he's up against the very shaky Jeff Weaver, who is 6-9, with an ERA of 5.78.

If you read the Baseball Desert regularly, then you'll know that as well as following Major League baseball from 4,000 miles away, I also play the game (for a team in the Paris suburbs), which has helped me realise that it ain't quite as easy as these guys make it look.

It was with some pleasure, then, that I checked out the report and the video highlights of Saturday's Yankees / Orioles game in Baltimore. The game started off with a management error: Yankee manager Joe Torre - who has been involved in big-league baseball for 43 years - failed to notice that the Orioles sent their batters up in the wrong order in the first inning. The Orioles went up to bat in the order shown on the scoreboard - which was incorrect - and had Torre noticed it and appealed immediately, the run the Orioles scored in that inning would have been taken away from them.

A game which began with such an elementary error could only really end one way, and it did - the Orioles ruined the chance to score the tying run in the bottom of the twelfth with a little bit of Keystone Cops baseball. This is what happened: Yankee reliever Jeff Nelson walked Jack Cust, and then Larry Bigbie doubled to right center-field. Cust made the turn around third base and was heading home when the Orioles' third-base coach changed his mind and gave him the stop sign. As Alfonso Soriano relayed the throw to 3rd baseman Aaron Boone, Cust slipped and fell on the basepath. Knowing he couldn't make it back to third, he headed for home (again). Boone threw to Jorge Posada at the plate, Cust changed direction, and Posada threw the ball back to Boone to catch Cust in a rundown. Unfortunately, no-one was backing Posada up at home plate, so Boone had nobody to throw the ball to, thus giving Cust a clear run home.

Of course, given the mess of a play that had started, that would have been too easy. Cust managed to stumble as he raced home, fell flat on his face and was tagged out by Boone about six or seven yards from home plate - ballgame over, the Yankees win, "theeeeeeee Yankees win!!!". It's reassuring to see that even the big guys can make a mess of a simple play like that. It isn't breathtaking baseball, but it's guaranteed to bring a smile to your face (unless you're an Orioles fan...).

The Wild Card see-saw continues: the Phillies' win, coupled with the Marlins' loss, allowed them to move back to first place in the NL race, whilst the Red Sox - powered by Manny Ramirez's ninth-inning game-tying home run - came from behind to beat the A's and regain control in the AL Wild Card race. The Sox just don't seem to want to roll over and die as they have done in previous seasons.

Meanwhile, over in the NL, the Astros seem to be going through a mini-collapse. They've lost three straight games, and, unfortunately for them, all three games were against the ballclub right behind them in the standings, the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs are now just a 1/2 game behind the Astros AND the Cardinals, who are in a tie for first place.

Hang on a second.... The Red Sox AND the Cubs still going strong in mid-August?? - I must be daydreaming. I guess I should finish up here at work and go and have a nice long nap...

Sad guy alert !!! It's a public holiday here in France, and I'm sat here in the office working (OK - at this precise moment, I'm not working as such, but I will be once I've checked out last night's boxscores....).

USA Today / Baseball Weekly has a good article on Royals' manager Tony Pena and the "you gotta believe!" philosophy he seems to have instilled in his team. I'm re-reading Roger Angell's 'The Summer Game' right now, and this year's Royals' team has a lot in common with those Amazin' Mets of '69, who came off seven straight losing seasons to win the World Series. I'm not getting carried away and saying that the Royals will definitely go on to win the whole thing, but I do like their spirit.

I'm going to need to take some time off work (or maybe become a full-time Baseball Consultant) if I'm going to try to keep up with what's happening in the pennant / Wild Card races.

Baseball, both on the field and off, is a sport of endless possibilities, but I sometimes do find myself yearning for the much simpler joys of, say, English Premiership soccer - one single division, where teams play each other just twice a season (once at home and once away). Major League has two leagues, six divisions, games between all the different divisions, six division winners and two Wild Card winners - it takes some keeping up with!

Don't get me wrong - I love baseball and its endless permutations, but you only need to take a look at yesterday's boxscores and today's standings to realise that things sometimes get complicated. As Spinal Tap's lead guitarist once said of his composition "Lick My Love Pump": "it's simple lines intertwining". The problem is that if you have too many simple lines intertwining, you end up with a mess of spaghetti!

So, back to yesterday. Oakland lost a game in the AL Wild Card standings because the Red Sox won (against the A's, as a matter of fact). They also lost a game in their divisional standings because Seattle beat Toronto. The Red Sox obviously gained ground in the Wild Card race, but they also gained ground in the divisional standings, since the Yankees got the crap kicked out of them in New York by the Royals, who in turn moved further ahead of division rivals the Chicago White Sox, whose loss to the Anaheim Angels meant that they also lost ground to Boston and Oakland in the AL Wild Card race, which is, I think, where we came in. The only team in all of that for whom things are clear is the Angels - they're 17 games behind Seattle in their division and 13 games behind the AL Wild Card leaders. I think we can safely say that they won't be repeating as World Series champions this year...

I have a ton of work to do, so I'm not even going to start on the situation in the National League - it'll have to wait until another day, when my brain's had a chance to have a little rest. Hats off to the Marlins, though, who had an extra-inning walk-off homer for the second consecutive night. It looks like the Fish are really cookin' down in Miami ...

The Baseball Desert's "Optimist Of The Day" award goes to Toronto's Reed Johnson, who thought he could boldly go where no man had gone before. He challenged Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki on a single hit to right field and was gunned down by one of Ichiro's patented lasers as he slid into third base. Full marks for trying, Reed, but, next time, be happy with one base...

Other defensive gems included Desi Relaford coming from out of nowhere to make a great catch at the wall in Kansas City - it was such an unlikely catch that Derek Jeter had already gone from first to third when the ball fell into Relaford"s glove, thus giving the Royals an 'easy' double play when Relaford threw back to first to double off Jeter.

Thanks should go to Barry Bonds (and it's not often you'll hear me saying that about The Baseball Desert's least-favourite player) for demonstrating the point made on Monday that individual exploits are all well and good, but sometimes count for nothing in a team game - Bonds hit career homers nos. 649 and 650 last night, but it wasn't enough to help the Giants beat the Mets. QED.

Things are definitely hotting up in the AL. The A's beat the Red Sox last night (or should I say Mulder beat Pedro?) to tie for the AL Wild Card lead - this is the first of seven games that will oppose the two clubs over the next ten days, so the first round goes to Oakland. The remaining six games may go a long way to deciding not only the Wild Card race, but the AL East title itself. The Red Sox lost ground on the A's, but luckily for them, the Yankees were beaten by the Royals in Kansas City. The Royals also did themselves a big favour with their win, since their closest rivals - the White Sox - lost to Anaheim, despite putting together a four-run rally in the ninth inning.

So nothing is settled in the AL Wild Card, and even less in the NL - there are still five or six teams with a legitimate shot at winning the race, although the Phillies and the Marlins have a couple of games' lead over the clubs behind them. I'm all for the Wild Card if it means seeing either of those teams in the postseason. Unfortunately, I'd like to have my cake AND eat it here - I'd like to see both of these teams in the playoffs, the Marlins because I'd like to see how the D-Train would pitch in that kind of situation, and the Phillies because, well, they're the Phillies. Maybe I should give Commissioner Selig a call and see if he can come up with a way of having both teams make it.

Last night's game between the Atlanta Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals once again showed that you never really know what's going to happen when you go to the ballpark. In the bottom of the 5th inning, Braves' shortstop Rafael Furcal became only the 12th player in Major League history to turn an unassisted triple play. Okay, so it's not quite "wow - there's something I've never seen before", but with a sum total of 12 plays in I don't know how many games, it's hardly everyday stuff either.

What I like even more about the play is that is highlights the twin aspects of baseball that make the game so interesting - the individual performance within a team context. Baseball is all about individual performances and battles (hitter vs. pitcher, fielder vs. hitter, catcher vs. baserunner, etc.), but they are always placed in a team context at some point. Sure, Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001, but he'd probably trade them in a heartbeat for a World Series ring. Furcal's play is a perfect example of this - exploits don't come any more individual or unusual than an unassisted triple-play, and his name will go into the record books for one moment in yesterday's game, but, at the end of the day, the bigger picture will show that his team couldn't hold on to the lead they had, and St. Louis ended up coming from behind in the bottom of the eighth and winning the game on a home run by Albert Pujols (who else...?) off the almost-invincible John Smoltz. Just chalk up an 'L' for Smoltz and the Braves. Sorry, Rafael...

The play is worth checking out, though, on MLB.com. Furcal catches Woody Williams's line-drive, steps on second base to double off Mike Matheny and then takes three steps towards first to tag out Orlando Palmeiro. One, two, three - inning over. Great play...

I know it's a 162-game season, and no one game really counts any more than another, but if the Kansas City Royals don't make it to the playoffs, they'll look back on last night's game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays as one of the keys to the season.

The Royals have been watching the White Sox slowly close the gap in the AL Central, and so, with the White Sox not playing last night, they had a chance not only to stop a two-game losing streak, but also to put a little bit of distance between them and their rivals.

Things started off pretty well - they were up against the American League's second-worst team, and they took a two-run lead into the bottom of the ninth. However, even though the Devil Rays might not have a lot to brag about in the 'W' column, what they do have - as manager Lou Piniella is quick to remind everyone - is a lot of heart and enthusiasm, and so, even down by two in the bottom of the ninth, they don't quit. So what happened? Well, the Rays managed to tag KC's closer, Mike McDougal (proud possessor, btw, of one of the best nicknames in the game - "Mac The Ninth") for three runs (two of them earned) and won the game 3-2.

It's not just the loss that's going to be hard on the Royals - it's also the manner in which they lost it. It was a real heartbreaker, but as with any broken heart, you've just got to pick up the pieces and try to move on...

It's ironic - the day Yankees fans breathed a collective sigh of relief at the sight of Armando 'Meltdown' Benitez packing his bags and heading out west to Seattle (in a trade which brings ex-Yankee Jeff Nelson back to the Bronx) is the same day that New York's über-closer Mariano Rivera proves that he really is human, blowing his fourth save in the last six chances.

Obviously the Yankees can't win every game - even with their huge payroll and seemingly bottomless pit of talent - and Mariano can't possibly save every single game he enters, but these little slip-ups seem to be different this year. New York is used to having a fairly comfortable lead in the AL East, especially heading towards September, but this year, the Red Sox just keep winning games - it's almost mid-August, and the Red Sox are still breathing down the Yankees' necks.

Last night, the Sox got a stellar pitching performance from Pedro Martinez - he gave up ten hits over nine innings, but at the end of the day, that added up to just a single earned run. He also had some key strikeouts, including the last out of the game with the bases loaded (okay, so it looked a little outside from what I could see on MLB.com, but you've got to give Pedro credit for challenging the hitter in that situation.)

Boston isn't going to have an easy ride - they're fighting it out with the Yanks for the division title, and they're just a 1/2 game ahead of the Oakland A's in the Wild Card race - but they have a realistic chance of making it. I'm gonna run the risk of losing my 'Yankee fan' status for ever and being banned for life from The House That Ruth Built, but you know what? I hope they do - I'd love to see this Red Sox team in the postseason...

The Kansas City Royals did themselves a big favour last night in engineering a come-from-behind victory against division rivals the Chicago White Sox. The teams have two more games against each other this week - the games might not quite seal the fate of the two clubs, but KC has a chance to get a couple more games clear of the White Sox before playing the Devil Rays and then the Yankees. The White Sox head out to California after the series, to play the A's and the Angels. By this time next week, the situation in the AL Central could be much, much clearer.

Oh yeah, whilst we're on the subject of players hitting the ball out of the ballpark, I thought I'd share today's weird fact. I happened to glance at the home-run leader board this morning and it occurred to me that's there's a magic number floating around. No, not in the numbers that the players are putting up there, but the number they have on the back of their jerseys - 3 of the current top four home-run leaders wear the number 25: Barry Bonds (Giants), Carlos Delgado (Blue Jays) and Jason Giambi (Yankees). I dunno what it means, but now you know...

I've been out of circulation for a couple of days, and I come back to find that trades have been made all over the place. The Giants showed how serious they are about getting back to the World Series (and winning it this time) by signing Sidney Ponson from the Orioles, whilst in the AL East, both the Yanks and Red Sox made moves. It remains to be seen how much the Yankees' moves were to meet real needs and how much they were a case of showing the Red Sox that they are not the only ballclub capable of making big trades...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (well, in Arlington at least), Alex Rodriguez has been making noises about a future which might not include the Texas Rangers, should the club continue to keep losing and propping up the AL West. A-Rod has always been a bit of a mystery to me - he left perennial contenders the Seattle Mariners to sign his ten-year, $252 million contract with the Rangers. Money is important, and I'd be a liar if I said that I wouldn't have done the same thing in his shoes, but it always seems like so much wasted talent, having a great ballplayer like him on such a bad team. He's still there to compete, though, as last night's walk-off grand-slam against the Red Sox showed, and there are also two other redeeming features in amongst all the talk of money and poor ballclubs - 1) A-Rod is apparently a genuine nice-guy, and 2) he has the sweetest swing you could wish to see. I watched him hit the home-run against Boston and it just looked so natural - you watch a guy like him hit one out of the park and he makes it look so easy and effortless that you almost start to think: "Hey - I'm in the wrong job - I could do that!". It's a thing of beauty...