Up here in Boston, if you are not a Red Sox fan, then there is one other spectator sport to take part in, and that is watching the incredible annual soap opera that is Red Sox Nation. This soap opera is one of the most angst- and irony-laden productions ever mounted, and it never ends. Hey, they finally even made a movie out of it, called "Still We Believe", in which filmakers followed not only the team through 2003, but eight or so diehards. The filmakers knew that the drama that is on the field can sometimes pale next to the tale of the fans and their Fate to be saddled to the rollercoaster that is the Red Sox.

We have a phrase that describes the predictable and repeated activity that takes place whenever the Yankees beat the Red Sox: "Wailing and Gnashing." Don't forget the rending of clothes, the tearing of hair, etc... but these actions don't translate as well on talk radio or in newspaper columns as wailing and gnashing, which perhaps I should make an acronym for, given that I am going to have to type it a bunch of times... let's call it WAG.

This week the WAG started on Monday, the off day BEFORE the Red Sox were due to go to New York for a three game series. In the previous two meetings between these teams in 2004, the Red Sox had won 3 of 4 in Fenway, and swept all 3 in the Bronx, including a game when Pedro Martinez outpitched Javier Vazquez 2-0. At the time when the Red Sox had beaten them 6 out of 7, the Yankees were 4.5 games back from the first place Boston Red Sox. Going into this week, the Sox had been playing mediocre baseball for two full months, and the Yankees had climbed to the best record in baseball. Since being swept in the Bronx, the Yankees had gone 42-15. This with starting pitchers Mike Mussina and Kevin Brown suffering injuries and a rookie lefty named Brad Halsey (he was only drafted in 2002, f'g'dsake) in the rotation, Jason Giambi downed with an intestinal parasite, A-rod in a slump, Posada cooled off... you get the idea.

But on Monday, you didn't hear commentators or talk show callers here in Boston make the point that if the Sox could sweep three from New York, they would suddenly climb from 5.5 games back, to only 2.5 out. No. What you heard was die-hards of all ages and stripes say, "Holy crap, if we lose all three, we'll be more than eight games out! Forget the Yankees, we'll just concentrate on the wild card." In other words, on the day before the series was even played, there were fans who--in a feeble attempt to protect their own bruised emotional states--were ready to hand first place to the Yankees. Or maybe they were just being sensible--the Red Sox are a team that has the second highest payroll in baseball, but has been under .500 since May 1st. The Texas Rangers and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have both done better than that by a wide margin in that same span. So why have any expectation that the Sox can go into New York and get hot?

The matchups for the three game series featured three Sox starters who have, sometimes, done very well against the Yankees. Derek Lowe has been hot of late. After a rough stretch, he had three starts in a row where he barely gave up a run. Tim Wakefield would be in game two, and none of the Yankees like facing that knuckleball--I think Reggie Jackson was the last man in pinstripes who liked to hit the floater. And Pedro Martinez, well, he's Pedro Martinez, and he would be facing the rookie Halsey, whom the Mets had battered around five days before. And let's face it, this is a Red Sox lineup that once they get mashing, hardly ever stop. A friend of mine who is a huge Giants fan went to see the series in San Francisco, and on the first night the Sox bats were working. "How do you deal with it?" he asked me. "They just keep hitting and hitting and hitting!" Yet, two days later the Giants' Jason Schmidt one hit them. Feast or famine.

I said that this is a soap opera full of angst and irony. The angst part I think you've heard now. But the ironies came fast and thick. In the pregame show on WEEI on Tuesday night, three different interviewees, including manager Terry Francona, said that the key to beating the Yankees was to "play clean baseball." Jim Kaat warned, "You can't afford to give the Yankees extra outs." Unfortunately for the Red Sox, they are pretty much at the bottom of the barrel defensively. Ascribing to the Billy-Beane school of sabremetrics, which says that on-base and slugging percentage win games, not Gold Gloves and sacrifice bunts, the Red Sox have been without a strong defensive first baseman all year. First base is the most important defensive position (well, not counting the pitcher). A couple of years ago, the Red Sox had Tony Clark on their roster, the former "Tony the Tiger," with expectations that he could have a monster year in a park where he had always hit well. Clark actually turned out to be pretty much a bust in Boston, though, and was let go.

The Yankees invited Clark to spring training this year, though there wasn't much chance he was going to make the club, what with Travis Lee also in camp and the likely candidate to be Jason Giambi's backup at first base. But Lee hurt his shoulder, and Clark, for his part, worked in the cage every morning with hitting coach Don Mattingly for a half an hour, trying to get his long limbs and complicated swing--from both sides, no less--into shape. Clark ended up getting the job.

Lately, Tony Clark has been seeing a lot of playing time. Jason Giambi had a bit of a hot streak for a while, but he was losing weight and feeling listless, his reactions were slowed... after a month of struggling, he finally hit bottom and went to the doctor, only to be diagnosed with an internal parasite. Lisa Olson in the New York Daily News probably made the most graphic reference to the malady, speculating that it could be "one of those 15-foot creatures producing 200,000 eggs a day, or tiny larvae insidiously burrowing through his intestinal wall and feeding on his blood." And how's this for an interesting revelation: Kevin Brown, who had been losing weight, too, turns out also to have a parasite. Doctors speculate that both players may have picked up their hitchhikers in Japan when the Yankees played their opening series there. (I suppose Lou Piniella and his Devil Rays had better see their doctors, too...) Giambi finally got on antibiotics a few days ago, but is still weak as water.

Hence, Tony Clark, the Bust In Boston, was at first base for the opening game of the series. For Boston there was Kevin Millar. Now, I like Kevin Millar--the guy who coined the term "cowboy up" and convinced the guys to shave their heads last October; he IS "rally karaoke guy"--as a nice guy with a positive attitude who mashed the ball well for the Sox last year, at least early in the year. This year, he hasn't been doing as well, and the vociferous talk radio callers have been calling for his head, saying he should be sent down (through waivers) and Brian Daubach, who is playing at Triple A Pawtucket, should be brought up to replace him. On Monday I was saying p'shaw to those folks. Daubach, the original Streakiest Hitter ever? But well, maybe these folks had a point.

On the very first play of the game on Tuesday, Kenny Lofton reached on an error as Nomar, who has been out most of the year with a heel injury, threw wild. Now, these same vociferous wailers and gnashers, when Nomar was doing his rehab stint in Pawtucket, were demanding that he ought to just come up and play in Boston. "We understand he didn't get spring training, we understand he's going to go oh-for-four, so why not go oh-fer up here instead of down there?" they cried. There were fans who felt that Nomar somehow owed it to them to do his rehab in the majors, and that by getting in shape in Triple A, he was somehow "sticking it" to the team for talking about trading him during the offseason. So, Nomar came up. He hit a home run his first day back. But apparently no one really considered the fact that his defense might need work.

Lofton reached on a ball that Nomar didn't throw well, but that a better first baseman probably picks. He was stranded, but when he came around again the next time... instant replay. Nomar threw in the dirt and Millar could not come up with it. This time the Yankees made it hurt, as Tony Clark, the previously mentioned Bust in Boston, hit a two-run home run--into the black batter's eye in deep center. At the time, the Red Sox were already up 2-0, because Johnny Damon had hit the first pitch of the game for a home run. The next time he came up, Javier Vazquez got to throw--I think--all of TWO pitches before Damon went deep. So you can see how we might have been thinking, uh oh, the mashers came to town... but with the momentum swing that Tony Clark's long, complicated swing gave, Yankees fans began to feel that confident feeling. So confident, in fact, that in the sports bar in Brookline, MA (The Coolidge Corner Clubhouse) where we saw the game, someone at the bar chanted "19-18! 19-18!" And the game was only tied.

Well, that guy was right. The Yankees pretty much rolled after that, taking advantage of the Boston defensive weakness, not just errors but also not-turned double plays. So much for "playing clean baseball." The end result, the Yankees won the game 11-3. Without the errors and near-errors, they probably would have won it 5-3 anyway, but who knows? At the very least, the WAG would have been lessened if they had played a good game. The next day, Boston Herald columnist Steve Buckley, speaking on WEEI, said that the Sox clubhouse after the game reminded him of the way it was after Game Seven of the ALCS last year. Glen Ordway, the radio host, couldn't believe it. "It couldn't be as bad as Game Seven was it?"

"Well," Buckley continued, "it was similar. Guys sitting in front of their lockers, quiet, with not a lot to say." They knew they really fell on their faces.

The next night, Wakefield versus Jon Lieber, and a new first baseman for the Sox, David Ortiz. Lieber has been shaky lately, struggling with his control, even though he has walked only four men all year and hit only one. Well, in this game he walked one and hit one, and threw sixty pitches in the first few innings... while meanwhile the Yankees just could not touch Tim Wakefield's knuckler. Lieber wriggled out of jams, but gave up two runs, on three line drives in the first inning, and a solo shot by Ortiz, who is probably the only real candidate for AL MVP this year. Ortiz is now leading the AL in home runs, and is on pace to drive in 160 runs!

But the Red Sox loaded the bases in the seventh inning with no outs and it looked like they might blow the game open. Instead, Felix Heredia, a lefty reliever who has been so bad this year that Yankees fans cringe when his name is announced, came in, got a force out at home, a pop fly to short left that was too short to allow catcher Doug Mirabelli to tag and score, and then struck out the aforementioned RBI machine Ortiz to turn back the Red Sox tide.

Talk about a momentum shift. It being the middle of the seventh inning then, the Yankees had their traditional pause for Kate Smith's "God Bless America." As a caller to the Ted Nation show wailed that very night, "We heard the fat lady sing! So we knew it was ovah! Ovah!" He was right. It was over. The Yankees came to bat. Wakefield let two runners on, and Francona went to the bullpen. But here is more of that irony and fate. Trot Nixon, another important cog in last year's Red Sox offensive juggernaut, had been out all year, and recently returned. But for some reason he wasn't healthy enough to play in that game and was a late scratch. So Millar, who had such a brutal night at first, was moved to right, and Ortiz, who had been slated to DH, was put at first.

With the bases loaded, Tony Clark--remember him?--came to the plate, and hit what players on both teams characterized as "a bullet." A bullet that tore right through Ortiz' glove at first base. Through--the webbing wasn't torn, the Sox equipment man laster said, but the ball literally went through it. The play looked remarkably Buckner-esque. Two runs scored, the Yankees had tied the game.

They went ahead in the eighth, when another Nomar error set the stage for one of the epic at bats of the season. Gary Sheffield is hurt. He has a hurt thumb, and now he has a shoulder problem he says will need surgery after the season, but that it really only hurts when he swings and misses. Well, he doesn't miss often. He faced Mike Timlin. The count never even got to 3-2, as Sheffield stalled it at 2-2 with eight consecutive foul balls. Jerry Trupiano, Red Sox Radio broadcaster, lamented at the time, "It's too bad Timlin doesn't have a change up. Everything he throws is hard." Fans in the third base seats were cowering from the number of line shots that nearly killed. Eventually Sheff straightened one out, a double, and the Yankees took the lead. All that remained was for Mariano Rivera, who hadn't pitched in a week, to come in and ice the cake. He struck out the side.

So they had won a blow out 11-3, and a come-from-behind close one, 4-2, their 30th CFB win of the season. What could they do to top that? Act Three would be even more full of twists, turns, and ironies that the whole previous season combined. And it being the third game, the Sox tried yet a third candidate at first base, David McCarty.

It was Pedro against the rookie, a seeming mismatch that had Sox fans cautiously predicting a win and Yankees fans saying "who cares? we'll still be 6.5 games up... but we'll probably find a way to beat Pedro anyway..." The reason Sox fans are so cautious is not just the fear that overconfidence will lead to emotional pain in the case of a loss, but the fact that Pedro is pretty much a .500 pitcher against the Yankees, and in the many games where he has not gotten a decision in his starts against them, the team is .500, too. This trend goes back ever since the "best pitcher in baseball" (and I say that without irony) came to the Red Sox . The only "sure thing" about Pedro facing the Yankees is that there is a 50% chance to win. Or lose.

This time it started out simple. In the second, Pedro walked Jorge Posada, and Tony Clark--still playing because Giambi is still fighting the alien infection--hit a two run home run. Posada himself went deep his next time up. 3-0 Yankees. Halsey, meanwhile, was fairly efficient in handling the Red Sox until the sixth, when Ortiz doubled and then Manny hit a home run. 3-2 Yankees. In came Paul Quantrill, but in the seventh inning, the Red Sox scored a third run, on a double play, no less!

From there, it became one of the most see-saw nail-biting heavyweight bouts in the history of the rivalry. Keith "That's All" Foulke, one of the Red Sox two big offseason acquisitions, pitched a perfect eighth inning, but then the Yankees loaded the bases in the ninth... but Foulke escaped and the game went to extra innings.

Mariano pitched the tenth and the Yankees got A-rod to third in the bottom of the inning, but stranded him there. Then in the eleventh, the Red Sox almost got to Mo on singles from Manny and Ortiz, a throwing error by Bubba Crosby, and an intentional walk to Jason Varitek. V-tek has been awful lately--striking out in six straight at bats coming into the game--but who wants to take a chance that this is the moment he breaks the slump? Bases loaded, nobody out. As Mark Feinsand reported it on MLB.com, "Rivera needed a miracle to get out of the inning. He got one." Millar smoked a ball third, which A-rod dove for, touched third for the force, and then from his position still on his knees after the dive, threw a perfect lob over the runner Gabe Kapler to get the double play. (Then Alex asked for the ball back, and tagged Manny Ramirez with it, thinking for a moment that he had turned a triple play, only to realize that Manny was the runner he had already gotten out with the force at third.) One harmless fly ball later, and the Yankees were out of the inning.

The Red Sox threatened again in the eleventh, against Tanyon Sturtze. Sturtze is not a guy that Yankees fans have huge amounts of confidence in, yet. He has had some good outings, and he has stunk a few times, and it will be a while--if ever--before he shakes the image in the fans' minds as a guy whom even the Devil Rays wouldn't keep. But he throws 94 mph, which explains why he keeps hanging around the big leagues. The Sox put men on second and third. With one out, Sturtze got Mark Bellhorn to pop to second for the second out, and the runners had to hold. Then came Trot Nixon, a guy who has had a lot of home runs in Yankee Stadium in a short few years. Sturtze fooled him though, getting him to swing at an outside pitch, resulting in a little dunker that looked like it might fall just fair down the left field line. It would have, and scored two, if Derek Jeter had not raced all the way to the line, caught the ball, and then flown headlong into the stands.

We've seen Jeter do a similar thing before, in Game Five of the ALDS in 2001, when the A's were threatening. That time the pop would have been foul had he not caught it, but why give a dangerous hitter one more swing? He and Scott Brosius raced for the ball and Jeter got there, and then flipped end over end into the photographers' box. Gene Monahan, the team trainer, later said that Jeter looked and felt like he had been in a car accident. He was so banged up, it probably affected his play for the rest of the postseason.

This time, it was face first at full speed, and then all you saw was Alex Rodriguez peering into the mass of bodies and chairs and waiving with his glove for the trainer to come over. Jeter was slow to get up, and when he did, he had the ball in his glove. Of course he did. he also had a black eye, was bleeding from a cut on his chin, and--we later learned--had a badly bruised shoulder as well. (Still haven't heard which shoulder.) Gene Monahan helped him off the field, holding a bandage to his chin. As Jeter was about to walk down the dugout steps, he took the ball which he was still holding, and flipped it to a fan. He was taken to Columbia Presbyterian for X-rays to make sure he hadn't broken anything like, oh, his eye socket. (Negative, though he did have stitches in his chin. Maybe now he will have a rakish scar like Giambi's.)

In case you missed it in all the excitement, that was the third out of the inning, and the Yankees once more grabbed the momentum. Miguel Cairo, who you would not have really heard of unless you follow MLB pretty closely, was now in the game at second base, and batting ninth--the slot and position that he shares with Enrique Wilson. Cairo faced Curtis Leskanic, the last reliever left in the Sox pen. He led off the inning with a triple. A triple! Hey, a few feet more and it would have been a game-winning homer, but that would have been too easy. Yes, once again there was a man on third who could score on an out. Neither team had been able to cash one of them in yet. The Sox made some maneuvers, bringing Kevin Millar in from right to act as an extra infielder.

But Jeter was due up. He was on his way to the hospital. At this point, Joe Torre had only two players left on his bench, Jason Giambi and John Flaherty. He sent Giambi up to pinch hit, knowing he was too weak to play the field, but knowing that if Leskanic left a ball even slightly over the plate, Giambi would not miss it. Just a fly ball anywhere could win the game. Unfortunately, Leskanic was up to the task. He throws some kind of a sinker that breaks down and in to the lefty batters, and Giambi could not lay off of it. Still, after he struck out, that still gave the Yankees one more chance to score Cairo on an out, and two more to cash him in with a hit... But Leskanic hit Gary Sheffield--the second time Sheff had been drilled in the game, the first time by Pedro in the first inning. Despite warnings having been issued, Leskanic was not ejected and unlike when Pedro hit him, Sheff did not seem angry. (He later said he and Leskanic are friends, and that Leskanic's brother installed a swimming pool for him...) Instead, Torre was angry, but to no avail. Leskanic stayed in the game.

Francona then elected to intentionally walk A-rod, to face Bubba Crosby and set up the force play at any base. More infield-outfield shuffling and trading of gloves as Millar and McCarty moved around. Crosby battled but ultimately grounded a ball right to Pokey Reese--the Sox' only real defensive star in the game since Nomar couldn't get loose and so was scratched and arguably with three errors in two games might have been a defensive liability. Pokey got the easy force at home. Leskanic then got Bernie to swing at those same down-and-in pitches that Giambi couldn't resist, and was out of the inning in another dramatic momentum shift.

Now it was the Yankees' turn to move players around, as with Jeter gone, A-rod had to move to short, Sheffield to third, and Bernie into the outfield, losing the designated hitter. Sturtze went back to work, but faced Manny Ramirez, who has hit seven home runs off the pitcher in his career. Make that eight. But despite a wide throw from Sheff, who made a nice backhand stop of a ball at third but who got overexcited about it--I guess--and overthrew first, Manny's run was all the Sox would get.

Leskanic came out to throw the bottom of the thirteenth. Meanwhile Jon Lieber, the Yankees' only pitcher who can sort of hit, started limbering up in case he needed to be used. Leskanic got two fairly quick outs.

Where was I when all this was going on? Well, I had started listening to the game at home, but around 8:30 we had gone down to Trum Field in Somerville to watch the municipal fireworks. I had brought a transistor radio to listen to the game with, but it turns out the radio has flaked out and I couldn't keep the station. Ah well. At the time when I lost my signal for good, the Yankees were leading 3-2 and I was sanguine about the results. So we saw the fireworks and forgot about the game for a while. Then we went to eat. As we were walking out of Wang's Fast Food (the best dumplings in the Boston area) to head back to our car, we ran into a guy in a Yankees hat and jersey (#11, no name, on the back). Some girls coming out of a bar next to Wang's made a snide comment about his hat (they hadn't seen mine yet), and he said "yeah, uh huh, you guys lost again tonight, didn't you?" And they replied, "No, man, it's still tied." Tied!

corwin and I immediately went into the bar to see what was going on. Of course the game was on every TV in the place, and we found an empty couch near the pool tables and settled in to watch, just after A-rod had made the double-play back in the eleventh.

Now, with two outs in the thirteenth, the guys playing pool started giving us grief. "Oh my gawd, don't tell me you're rooting for the Yankees!" That kind of stuff. Good natured, if bitter. Then Ruben Sierra got a hit, and all of a sudden the guys lost interest in us. It was like they could see what was coming.

And here came Miguel Cairo, again. This time, instead of a triple, he hit a double that shot the gap and went to the wall. Sierra scored all the way from first. Some engineer at NESN was so frustrated, he hit the control board too hard, and the score briefly read Red Sox 4, Yankees 5, but then it reverted back to the tie score, 4-4. But maybe that control room guy knew what was coming, too. Here we were back to the leadoff slot, with Sturtze due up, and Torre went to the last guy on the bench, backup catcher John Flaherty.

Flaherty hit a shot that for a oment looked like it was going to sail into the seats in the same spot that Aaron Boone's did--you know the one I mean. But it ank and instead bounced off the wall, over the head of Manny Ramirez. Cairo scored, and Flash was pounded heartily by his teammates for his game winning hit. As he later put it in the clubhouse to reporters, "When you're hitting .150, you don't get mobbed too often." On Fox Sports radio that night, the scoreboard recaps began with the line "The sincerest form of Flaherty..." and "Flaherty will get you everwhere..."

You rarely see the Yankees so excited by anything not in October. There was leaping up and down, and tipping of caps, and flushed, maniacally grinning faces. They had just won a game that without doubt qualified as an instant classic. Jorge Posada described it in the Daily News as "one of those games where if you lose, it's an ugly game, and if you win, it's the best game ever." After the game, the players watched the highlights on television together, whooping and hollering for each highlight, and groaning for the replay of Jeter's crash into the stands. In the New York Times, Alex Rodriguez called it "the greatest game I've ever watched, played or been in the ballpark for. It was an unbelievable war."

Even Pedro was stunned into admiration by the fight of both teams. On Fox Sports radio they played a clip of him after the game. "I can tell you that this was one of the best games I've ever seen,'' he said. "Even counting the playoffs. It was one of the best-played games I've ever seen.''

Mike Lupica said in his Daily News column the next day that "It was that kind of night at the Stadium. You didn't care what month it was or what year, just that it was the Yankees and the Red Sox, and the Yankees giving you another amazing ending, in a season filled with them already." He also said something that brought my own recent writing to mind, when he wrote, "everybody knew they were witnessing one of those games, the kind you talk about forever." Was it one of the 50 Greatest Yankees Games of all time? Certainly in the scheme of Red Sox/Yankees, the game has to be considered an important chapter--the whole three game series building up to this July moment.

As corwin and I stood up from our couch to walk out of the bar, the pool players shook their heads and shouted, "Yeah! Get out of here, you!" But they were smiling. I saluted them on our way out and they waved back. Red Sox Nation. I don't even know the name of the sports bar we were in, and it doesn't matter--the scene would have been the same just about anywhere, from Cape Cod to Maine. For every wailer and gnasher, there is a guy shrugging his shoulders at a pool table, shaking his head in disbelief and waiting, just waiting, for the day when the Yankees don't come out on top.

It'll happen someday. And when it does, watching Red Sox Nation will still be one of the great spectator sports of all time.