Let's not kid ourselves: It's Boston we must beat

O sun! O moon! O boy! Make a joyful noise across thy lands! Damn... Last night sure was fun, taking scrunched-up Uncle Buck - who more resembles the Gerbil every year - down to the panic room for an old-style, leather dominatrix butt-whuppin.' I never get tired of watching that little man-rat grouse around the dugout. It's like licking ice cream. 

You know what? I whine about the Yankees relying too heavily on homers, but last night, it just didn't feel so bad. Somehow, I endured the solo shots and that awful eight-run lead, without an urge to kick in the widescreen. Tonight, we might see an improved Baltimore, but I'm sorry: The 2017 Orioles do not frighten me. They look too much like the Overbay-Pronk Yankees of the recent dark age.

Seriously, does anyone here NOT think Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo are two hernias past their sell dates? Schoops always kills us, and Machado continues to audition for pinstripes, but after that, Baltimore looks like a city with the crabs - and no crab cakes. They made a brief run in April and - I swear I'll say this even if they kick our asses tonight - they are doing what they've done for the last five sad, slogging years: Chasing the one-game away berth wild card knockout.  

Trouble is, that leaves Boston, who'll play three in the Bronx starting Tuesday. The Redsocks are now in second place, four losses behind us, though still leading the AL East in smug. 

My Redsock-leaning friends - including a few whose birth certificates say Yankee fan, and thus should not be allowed to take a dump in a comfortable rest room in North Carolina - remain as hateful as a bug-zapped rattlesnake. In their lizard alien minds, Boston has been merely playing rope-a-dope with us, it's not even June 1, and we have already shot our grease-gun onto the garage floor. They see us having failed to separate from the division, while they have survived without David Price. (Of course, Little Papi, Dustin Pedroia, may be leaving for a while.) Simply put, they think we are a House of Cards - not the Netflix series, but a paper tent ready to implode, once it meets the great Babe Benintendi. 

Me? I dunno. As a team, Boston has clearly underachieved. They have only 48 home runs this season - that's one more than Aaron Judge, Matt Holliday, Brett Gardner and Aaron Hicks have hit. The Babe himself stands at an Ellsbury-ish .272. The great Jackie Bradley Jr., who tanked in the second half of 2016, remains tanked at .214. And Pablo Sanduval, the Disneyesque feel-good comeback story of March, remains at .213, well below his undefined weight.

Still, they're like Trump was last June 1: They keep stepping in their own crap, yet somehow, they're still standing. They should be fourth, behind Tampa, but here we are, still looking over our shoulders. 

On this site, we are often accused - and rightfully so - of being Chicken Grady Littles. In part, that's because we don't claim to be "experts" - the lie of most Yankee sites. We are just fans, subject to the roller coaster elation and misery of every win and loss. And wearing that tattered fan hat, I say this: 

It's been a great season. We have much to celebrate. But Boston remains the team to beat in the AL East.