Though the clinching’s circumstances merit such a disclaimer, don’t tell anyone from the Red Sox that they backed into the American League wild-card berth. Yes, they’ve lost five straight games, and yes, players left Fenway Park after Tuesday night’s 8-7 loss to Toronto and then returned to celebrate the Angels’ 5-2 win over Texas in [...]

It is tempting, in the afterglow of a 10-0 win in which Clay Buchholz worked seven shutout innings and the Red Sox walloped six home runs, to believe that all is swell and that the Texas Rangers are destined to disappear in the rear-view mirror.
Well, such happy thoughts need to come with a large disclaimer: The [...]

Realistically speaking, the American League playoff roster is pretty well set. Barring unexpectedly dramatic swoons or charges, the Yankees will win the East, the Tigers will win the Central, the Angels will win the West, and the Red Sox will be the wild-card entry for the six time since the current post-season arrangement was implemented.
Boston [...]

A 162-game season can often read like a six-month baseball-hued soap opera when the storylines shift gears from one day to the next. After Friday night’s 20-11 Yankees win, arguably the ugliest Red Sox home performance since Game 3 of the 2004 American League Championship Series, Brad Penny’s bleak future served as the main talking [...]

 Maybe they’ll begin to right themselves tonight when they open a four-game series at Fenway against the Tigers. Maybe the sight of The Wall and the sounds of the faithful will have them all hitting like it was May. Maybe a flock of pigs will do a flyover during the seventh-inning stretch.
What NESN dubbed “Rivalry [...]

Going on the theory that the Yankees’ 13-6 win Thursday night was, as suggested by one Globe subhead, a case of The Empire making a statement, the fear should be that it was simply the start of a missive that may not be finished until late Sunday night, if not early Monday morning.
If one piece [...]

New Yorkers pride themselves on their allegedly superior sophistication in all things, including baseball. But the next time someone makes that claim, point them to the poll on the Daily News website posing the silly question, “Is this a must-win series for the Yankees in Boston?”
The choices: “Yes, they need at least two wins” and [...]

Back from vacation, having kept one eye on the consistently inconsistent Red Sox …
Dominating at home and struggling to play .430 ball on the road is nothing new for Boston, as generations of Red Sox fans will attest. Back in the day, it was due to the club’s obsession with right-handed power hitters possessing the [...]

We’ll know this has become a full-fledged scandal when Boss Steinbrenner II (aka, Hank) clamors for an investigation by Major League Baseball, then sets up invisible doggie fences designed to force all visiting base coaches to stay inside their boxes.
As for now, we’ll pass it off as Yankees manager Joe Girardi getting a bit frustrated [...]

Now comes an Alex Rodriguez biography of sorts, written by Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts, that reports on the Yankee third baseman’s steroid habit, along with some of the loutish behavior he exhibited towards his ex-wife and others, including waitresses at Hooter’s who never received more than the standard 15 percent tip from the fabulously rich [...]