holy cow!

after tonight's win against the A's, the indians are tied for the most victories in the AL. they have the best winning percentage in the league (because they still have one game left to make up). they are #1 (for the first time) in espn's based-on-nothing power rankings. our front office personal keep getting mentioned as GM potentials for other teams. we swept detroit! we are now 7-1/2 games up on them. joe borowski has not gien up a run in his last seven outing ( 7.0 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 6K, 4 SV, 1 W ). c.c. and fausto both have 18 W's. rafael bentacourt has been one of the best and most consistent set up men in the entire league. rafael perez has come out of nowhere and been awesome. as has jansen lewis. we have beaten johan 6 times, and have given justin v half of his 6 losses. victor has 40 doubles, 20 plus homers, and over 100 RBI; and has thrown out baserunners at a very respectable rate.

i like it!

we did it, as planned. and both games were great.

history was made in the pale hose game. we only stayed for minnesota's half of it though. the score was tied at 4 when the twins came to bat in the 9th. they scored 6 runs, then we left. chicago manged to duplicate the feat in their half of the 9th, sending the game into extra innings. this had never happened before. the white sox wound up winning in the 13th.

in wrigglyville in prior day, andre ethier clubbed a 9th inning shot to defeat the cubbies and almost set up a 3 way tie the following day for 1st in the NL central.

'If Cleveland goes 9-8 the rest of the way, Detroit needs to finish 15-1 to force a first-place tie in the AL Central. If the Yankees play .500 ball down the stretch, the Tigers have to go 12-4 to tie for the wild card. In short, the math looks grim for Jim Leyland's team. '

we lost today, but i found this comforting bit of trivia. we lost today, playing our 23rd consecutive day. tomorrow we rest. wedge gave both pronk and jhonny days off today so that they had two games off, instead of just one. a luxury permissible because of the above statistic. barfield started today, and his 'rust' hurt us. he was caught stealing. he made an error on a groundball that could have been two. instead, no outs were made. thome takes advantage with a 2 run single. konerko followed with an RBI single. three runs scored, none should have. at least josh had an RBI single.

but that is ok. yeah, detroit did win also. our lead is down to 5-1/2. now we have an off day, finally. then KC at the jake. with c.c. to start things off. and more importantly, we went 17-6 in those 23 consecutive games. down the stretch, we are winning (so far) when it matters the most. it was during this stretch that we stretched our division lead to a season high 7 games going into anaheim. they have been playing well, winning some games in their final AB's. in a week, they made up 1-1/2 games. at that rate, they could overtake us in 5-6 weeks. good news for us, we only have approximately 2 weeks left in the season. we do have one 3 game series left with them. it is at the jake.

oh yeah, i now see why our brass was correct in handing laffey the 5th spot in the rotation, and not to cliff lee as i hoped. there is always next year cliff. but even he has to like what is going on with the team, to this point.

we swept the twins. what a series! what a streak! what a great time for it! now on to the AL west division leadeing angels, who happens to hold the best home winning percentage in the majors. bring it on!

i am going to chi-town, in a couple of hours.

i have to be at the airport at 05:00, at the latest. i plan on getting up at 03:30. although it sucks, that was the only way to catch a cubbies game before they take off for the weekend. fri we will check out the enemies crib to watch the pale hose take on the twinkies. two ballparks to cross off the 'never been too' list. also, the cubs are playing the dodgers. i do not recall ever seeing the dodgers play. only a small handfull of teams remain that i have not seen play.