A win today would shut up some big, fat mouths

In the long run, a win today cannot matter much. There's 134 games left, countless gonads to tweak, hammies to pluck, Tommy Johns to erupt, maybe even an outbreak of chlamydia. Good grief, in the long run, the universe will stop expanding, and time will reverse itself, causing Andy Hawkins to throw his no-hitter backwards and thus win the game. In the long run, we're dead, and there never was a Yankees, and two games ago, that was fine with me.

But in the short run - like, tonight - we have Boston. In the short run, we have Buchholtz and Blake Swihart, Workman and Matt Barnes, and all the can't miss prospects with lavish ESPN brown-nosing, but who turn into Zolio Almonte. Generally, Boston scares me the way Florida does: At any time, a sinkhole could open with a Burmese python at the bottom of it. (Nothing sexual in that image, eh?) Still, what if their long-awaited resurgence - Betts, Bogartes and Bradely - turn out to be their version of the Killer B's? 

They've already pissed away $72 million on Rusney Castillo, $95 million on Pablo Sandoval and $88 million on Hanley Ramirez. What if they also just frittered $217 million down the sinkhole named David Price? Could it happen? (By the way, this is no way justifies the Yankees being cheap. Plenty of players perform to their contracts, and the Steinbrenners don't need to collect bottle deposits on this franchise.) 

But what if Boston crumbles for one more, eency-weency year? Wouldn't it be delicious? Misery loves company. The best part of a rivalry is not necessary playing your enemy. It's following them every day, pushing stickpins into their likeness, cheering their DWI arrests, marital yeast infections and fines for overdue library books - channeling all your evil negativity into positive things, like flat tires and tax audits. Seriously, isn't following Curt Schilling starting to become one of our favorite pastimes?

Tonight, we can exacerbate one of the Fenway Nation's greatest fears: They own their own versions of Beltran, Ellsbury and Headley. With a Yankee win tonight, they can find themselves at the bottom of that sinkhole, staring at the python. And there'll be nothing sexual about it.