Granted, that is an immature thought. But late last night a Red Sox fan e-mailed me for the sheer purpose of gloating after the Red Sox’s dramatic, come-from-behind victory against the Yanks at Fenway Park last night. And that, of course—or some equivalent—is what I felt like saying.

But I held my tongue. We Yankee fans would never be so ungracious.

That said, it was a terrific game, and congrats to the Sox and all that for coming back against Mariano Rivera (who did serve up a pretty fat pitch that wound up in the left-center seats).

But…I’m not sure how much comfort Sox fans can take from the game. Their team has been playing incredibly well, winning seven straight. The Yanks have been kind of…eh. Mediocre. Definitely not playing up to potential. Last night, they went 0-for-219 with men in scoring position, Joba Chamberlain wasn’t pitching particularly well, their closer uncharacteristically blew a save, their best hitter is absent, they were playing in Fenway, and it still took a near-miracle for the Red Sox to win.

(Some pretty nifty defense by Dustin Pedroia and Jason Varitek, too. But what a wimp J.D. Drew is—he totally chickened out on Derek Jeter’s fly ball near the wall in right. No reason he shouldn’t have caught that ball.)

I was watching David Ortiz carefully, and one thing I noticed is how his body has changed in the time since MLB started instituting meaningful drug testing. Before that, he’d about doubled in size from his scrawny early days. Now, he’s still big, but he doesn’t look bulky anymore, just fat. And slow. Ortiz has a distinct potbelly that I don’t recall him having before—he used to have sort of a barrel chest—and that sense of barely-contained power that he used to have, it just isn’t there any more. Hmmm. Wonder why?

Still and all, it was an amazing game and it hardly felt like April baseball. These two are going to go at it 17 more times in the regular season. What a pleasure this rivalry is.