Yankees' patience at plate wears down Red Sox pitchers
It sure is. Butt-boggling, too, if you're sitting there watching.
It's exhausting to everybody. Boston starter David Wells, after throwing ball four to Abreu in the fourth inning -- six-pitch at-bat -- of what would become a 2-1 loss Monday, screamed, "G-- dammit!" so loudly that he could be heard clearly all the way upstairs in the Fenway Park press box.
Yes, these Yankees right now are dialed in and bloodthirsty, yet leave it to the old killjoy himself, Derek Jeter, to put things in perspective.
Here the Yankees laid a five-game sweep on Boston for the first time since 1951, stretched their lead over the Red Sox in the AL East to 6½ games with only 39 to play (the Red Sox have just 38 left), and do you know what Jeter said when asked about the 5-for-5 weekend here?
"We haven't accomplished anything," he said. "We're not going to sit around and party because we won five in Boston."
Meanwhile, over in the other clubhouse, slugger David Ortiz broke the stunned silence.
"As long as I've been here, I never saw anything like that," Ortiz declared.
It was like standing in line at the DMV. This wasn't a series, it was an endurance test.
And by the end of it, Boston's season pretty much was through the shredder.
"We're good at taking it one day at a time," Jeter said. "But this all seemed like one long day.
"One long day with five games."
Me, I'm not complaining about spending 43 of the past 79 hours at the ballpark. Where else would I be? The opera? I like being here.
I'm simply saying. If you're planning on attending a Yankees game, from here through the playoffs, packing flare lights would be an excellent way to go, too.
Because you're going to be gone for awhile, so long that your wife and kids probably are going to forget where you are, and after your daughter graduates from both high school and college, they're going to need to find you when she gets engaged and its time for the wedding invitations to be mailed.
And when Abreu is batting and it's still the sixth inning, maybe you can wander out to the parking lot after a second-pitch fastball to send up the flares and remind them of where you are.
Then you can come back inside the stadium and catch the rest of the at-bat.
