Yankees vs Red Sox 2011 Part 1

And so it begins again, another season battling it out for first in the AL East, except this year has started differently than most people expected. The Yankees have been pretty good, minus the 8th inning Tuesday and some missing MPH's off of Phil Hughes's fastball. The Red Sox, meanwhile, have gotten off to about as awful a start as you can imagine, losing games on base-running mistakes, not hitting, hitting but not pitching, forgetting basic rules like force-outs at home, and generally looking terrible. Red Sox Nation is crumbling, and anything less than a sweep of the Yankees this weekend will signal absolute disaster in Bean Town. "Don't even get me stahted about the Sahx".

Most of this panic is warranted (0 and 6 after the acquisitions they made is inexcusable) but let's put things in a little bit of perspective. The season is 162 games, that's 156 more games left. They've yet to play a home game and they started the season on the road against what seems to be an offensive juggernaut in last year's AL champ Rangers. PTU contributor Lupica already wrote his "worst team money can buy" column this morning (and only mentioned fathers and sons once I believe) and ESPN has begun their doomsday clock "computer simulated" championship odds crawl on the bottom of the screen (Johnny Five apparently thinks the Red Sox are 20% less likely to win the Series after this week). Don't get me wrong, I'm loving every minute of this; I wish they would lose every game the rest of the season, Carl Crawford would be run out of town crying, Dustin Pedroia's scrappy little ass would get lyme disease, and Ben Affleck would fall down the stairs. But it's a week into the season, and most likely the Sox will get it together enough to be right there, annoying as ever, breathing down the Yankees' necks for the last couple weeks of September. Let's get it started.