Serves me right for abandoning the endless Sunday night football postmortems even for a second. I went fluttering by ESPN and there were the Red Sox, stealing four bases in an inning and taking a 3-2 lead on Mariano Rivera in a game in which Daisuke Matsuzaka had earlier looked like he was worth every damn yen they'd paid for him. Clutch at-bats from Ryan Kalish and Bill Hall and even Mike Lowell, who deserves the day they're going to give him this week, even though the whole thing is rather weird.

(And, as an aside, watching Jorge Posada throw a ball about 32 feet down the third-base line while vainly trying to nail Hall makes me think that the Tampa Bay Rays are going to have an awful lot of fun with him. Game One of that series may never end.)

And then, well, then Jonathan Papelbon came in and brought us all back to the Land Of Mordor one more time. Was he squeezed? Yes. Does it matter? No. One groundball and he's out of the inning. Meanwhile, upper echelons continue to be convinced that Daniel Bard is made of candyglass and cannot be expected to pitch on two consecutive nights the way that rock, Hideki Okajima, is. Bard's the closer. Now. This minute. And until he burns out or whatever else. I knew I never should have turned away from those shows where guys talk about nickel packages and dime schemes and other monetary metaphors.