Making the death blow as painful as possible

I won’t front like I watched yesterday’s game. After Matsui drove in the game’s initial run, I was disconnected, not to reconnect until 8 p.m. when I saw the ticker display a 9-3 win for the Yanks. Coupled by a 3-1 Boston loss to Anaheim, and we’re all the sudden back in good shape. Not that we were ever in bad shape; five games (now four) behind a suddenly inconsistent team is nothing to fret about. All we have to do is gain one game over the next seven and we can tie the division at home against Boston. Strangely, that’s not how I’d like it to go.

You may think I’m crazy, but there’s nothing I’d love more than to finish the day on August 30 one game behind Boston. That means we need to gain three games over the next two weeks — though that’s much tougher than it seems. I want Boston to leave the city knowing that we’re literally right on their heels. One slip up and we take first. However, I don’t want that slip-up to happen quite yet.

Over the two weeks following the Red Sox trip to the Stadium, the Yanks play Tampa Bay, Seattle, Kansas City, and Toronto. I’d like to gain one game during that stretch, tying the division as we head up to Fenway for a weekend series on September 14th. And that, like last year, is where I want to see the death blow dealt. Sweeping them and putting them three games behind with just two weeks left in the season would be the ultimate fist-pump moment.

It won’t be an easy ride to the end, not with two series against Baltimore following the Boston set. But by that point, I’d think the Yanks would be on enough of a roll to sustain a three-game lead.

All of this, of course, is just my ideal scenario; I’ll take the division any way we can get it. It’s just that I’d like to twist the Boston knife as much as possible. They were all so smug early in the season, with their constant response of “14 games” whenever you tried to talk to one of them about baseball. It’s all coming back to them now, and I’d like it to be as painful as possible.

And if we’re going to win the division this year, is it too much to as for Seattle to overtake Boston in the process? Or am I just getting greedy here?

What about you guys? What’s your ideal scenario for overtaking Boston?