Greetings from 1:10 in the morning 

Posted 1:11 AM by Sean
It's late here in Dallas, but it's so ridiculously nice to actually win a close game that a quick post is called for. In essence, the lefties did, in fact, do pretty well against Jason Johnson, keeping the Angels in it when Lackey stumbled in the sixth. And then Shields was good, Rodriguez tottered and stumbled but didn't fall down, and Escobar was golden for three innings, long enough to bring around an inning that included a Guerrero single, an error, a sacrifice bunt, and a little single by Robb Quinlan through a drawn-in infield to win it. And so the Angels go back up by a game, with fifteen to play.

The A's, meanwhile, lost in the bottom of the tenth in Fenway, when Keiichi Yabu plunked Manny Ramirez with the bases loaded to force in a run. See, they suck too!

The Angels' win tonight was their 82nd of the year, guaranteeing them a second straight winning season. This is only the fourth time in team history they've had back-to-back winning seasons; the others occured in 1997-98, 1985-86, and 1978-79. They've never had three consecutive winning seasons, though they did finish exactly at .500 in 1984.