First off let me say that I like the Blue Jays. I think they have a phenomenal line-up and if Burnett and Halladay stay healthy, the pitching staff ain’t all that bad, either.

That said, after watching this weekend’s festivities at Fenway, I gotta believe that anyone who thinks that the Battle for the Planet of the Apes isn’t gonna come down to the Sox and Yankees is living on the moon. Watching these teams tussle is like watching Arnold and Robert Patrick square off in Terminator 2. Blow off my head? Hell, I’ll just grow another one. Knock down Jeter? Well, here’s Abreu, A-Rod and Giambi for you to deal with. They just keep. coming. back. and every game comes down to the very last out.

While Friday night’s game was the most dramatic, last night’s was the bigger nailbiter. In the first couple innings, the Sox squandered some opportunities while the Yankees put up a deuce, and suddenly I’m thinking that it could become a classic case of a rookie pitcher handcuffing our line-up. But then the bottom of the third arrives and the game turns into a Tarantino flick as the Sox offense did everything but bring out the gimp to brutalize Chase Wright.

First Manny goes deep over the Monster(and, man, it looks like he spent the offseason working on his standing and admiring game. He clocked in at about thirty seconds of “look at that one go” last week at the Rogers Centre and this one was equally impressive), then Drew knocks one out the other way, clearing the bullpen. Then one from Lowell that literally left the Park in about five seconds, followed by a V-Tek smash that sent the crowd into a frenzy the likes of which I don’t think I’ve seen since the Roberts steal.

It was a robust pummeling, so bad I almost expected to see Tavarez run out to the mound and kick Wright in the nuts and steal his bicycle. Because, really, that’s pretty much all that was left to be done at that point.

All told, the best thing about this weekend series was that it turned into a coming-out party for those guys we’ve been not-so-patiently waiting on. Coco spearheading Friday night’s comeback. Varitek pushing us into the record books with that fourth consecutive home run. Pedroia belting a couple hits and making key plays. Manny showing signs of being Manny. And Lowell — who had two home runs and four RBI last night — becoming every bit the offensive machine he was at the beginning of last season.

Okay, it wasn’t the sharpest outing from Matsuzaka, but he managed to keep Abreu hitless and struck out 7 when the dust had cleared. And, he gets the all-important W.

With an impending trip to the Bronx later this week, I wanted this game. Because the pressure will be on the Yanks to return the favor, meaning if we win just one of those games, we’ll prevent it from happening. Sure, that’s setting the bar low, but right now, at this stage of the season, I’ll happily take “we swept you on our turf, but you couldn’t sweep us on yours.” That said, I’ll certainly pocket as many Ws as the guys can pull together, as I remember all too clearly how the 2005 end-of-the-season-standings stalemate went to the Yanks based on our head-to-head season record.

Oh, and best reaction to the Sox’ four-homers-in-a-row goes to Theo:

And these guys:

Peace.