Call it a myth, call it a legend. Call it both and you probably wouldn't be too far off. The story goes that Larry Lucchino walked into the Sox clubhouse on a Saturday night late in July, just as the sun was going down, with one thing on his mind. "Thank you," he said to Jason Varitek as he shook his hand.

"For what?" the burly catcher asked.

"For waking us up," Lucchino replied.

This, of course, was the now infamous brawl game. THE game. The game in which 35,000 lucky Red Sox fans witnessed two of the greatest moments of the 2004 season: Varitek's hand in ARod's face after ARod refused to take 1st on a HBP and Billy Mueller's walk-off game winning homerun off none other than Mariano Rivera. Since that holy grail of baseball games, the Sox have gone 28-10, which is even more impressive when compared to their mediocre pre-brawl record of 52-44.

These days, it's wonderful to be a Red Sox fan. They're coming off a 3-game series against wild card contenders in which Ortiz and Damon missed time, the Sox bats suddenly went limp with RISP, and they managed only 2 hits against a AAA pitcher. Yet still, somehow, the Sox took the series 2-1 and maintained their 2.5 game deficit on the Yankees.

Meanwhile, it's been a slightly different picture in the Bronx. They've gone 23-17 since ARod's impromptu nose job, and their once secure division lead has withered away. With 6 games remaining between the two teams, the division is still completely up in the air. Road crews are working quickly to fix the George Steinbrenner-shaped hole in the dirty Bronx street just below the Yankees' offices, and Brian Cashman is packing an overnight bag in case he has to make a quick getaway in the middle of the night.

Yes, these Red Sox have been awakened. And they're fully-rested and ready to pull an all-nighter.

_________________

On Friday night I took in the Sox/Rangers game from a bar in Dallas. I had been looking forward to it all week: good beer, great pizza, a big screen, a table full of friends, and a bar full of Rangers fans. Or so I thought.

In the last couple of weeks, the Rangers fell to 6 games behind Oakland in the race for the division lead, the same division lead that they owned not so long ago. The overpowering offense that had masked the flawks in their starting pitching for three quarters of the season seemed to be coming back down to Earth. The most overacheiving team in baseball was finally running out of gas. And so, in typical Dallas fashion, the sports "fans" moved their attention to something that might be more rewarding, the next big thing: football season. Dallas is a winner's town: if you're not winning, they're not interested. And so, unfortunately, there were only a handful of Rangers fans left in the bar Friday night, and by the time the 9th inning rolled around and the Sox rolled on for another victory, that number was most likely cut in half.

I think back to the disappointing weekend in May that I spent at the Ballpark in Arlington, watching a struggling Sox team get swept by the Rangers. I think about all the Rangers fans who took such joy in taunting us, reminding us of the year 1918 and how the Sox wouldnever win a World Series. I think of the Rangers fans who brought their brooms to Sunday's game, and waved them wildly over their heads for 9 full innings.

I wonder what these once-cocky Rangers fans would say to me now, given our teams' current situations. Oh, I know...

"Go Cowboys."

_________________

Of course, there was other baseball news this weekend. HUGE baseball news if you live in a city named New York or Boston. Karma is a bitch, so while I don't want to get too excited about this, I'll just say, "He broke his hand how?? Oh, that's too bad."