The Rain in Spain...

Between the raindrops, the Yanks win a laugher, 11-3, against the Orioles at Camden Yards. The Unit gets his 16th win with six innings of shutout ball. The Yankees carried the shutout into the ninth...but we'll get to that in a second. Jason Giambi hit his 31st, a comforting shot after the back troubles that have slowed him lately. Will Carroll believes that those back problems are related to some of the erratic throws that Giambi has had to take from Jeter of late--and from the fact that Sheffield is occupying the DH slot, which forces Giambi to play the field. Alex Rodriguez matched Giambi with 3 RBI, Jeter had 2 RBI of his own.

The Red Sox were less lucky than the Yankees with the weather. Their matchup with the Blue Jays at Fenway was rained out, and now they have a doubleheader scheduled for Tuesday.

This is big on a few levels: first, by winning while the Sox sit, the Yanks have put themselves a half game up; second, the Sox have no days off the rest of the way, and plenty of incentive to keep pace with the New Yorkers, which puts pressure on them; and third, maybe it messes up the Red Sox rotation for the weekend series against the Yanks. Schilling would have to pitch on short rest to keep his date with Randy Johnson on Saturday. More likely, the Unit and Tim Wakefield reprise their epic Sept. 11 matchup, because Wakefield's more likely to do well on short rest. That's a shame, because the Schill/Unit matchup was somewhat momentous--supposedly, the two greats had never faced each other in major league careers stretching back to the 80's.

The plot thickens.

****

After watching the Orioles get three runs off of him, in a garbagetime 9th tonight, I have to ask: can we just declare the Alan Embree Experiment over?

He sucked all year in Boston, he was released, he came to the Yankees, and he's continued to suck. This is supposed to miraculously change? There is no tomorrow for Alan Embree. If the Yanks want a lefty reliever, they have only a few days left to find him.