Call me anything you want but don’t call me late for my Lunchtime Link. I know how to tell time, but if my lunch doesn’t coincide with yours, then just put this between two slices of bread tomorrow…

It seems like such a distant time when the Yanks were stinking up the House That Ruth Built, swept in humliating fashion by the Red Sox while scoring four runs over a lost weekend. But a 6-0 week that included a sweep of Hudson-Mulder-Zito (and that less-heralded trio Anderson-Villacis-Affeldt) has banished many of those bad memories to the dustbin. Five or more wins in a row always impresses me, as it usually means that a team went through the rotation once without any starter blowing them out of a game — each Yankee starter pitched six innings or more this time around. That’s a pretty good definition of “firing on all cylinders” in this sport.

This time through the Yanks got solid turnarounds from previously awful Jose Contreras and Mike Mussina, plus a nice lift from fresh-off-the-DL Jon Lieber, who finally debuted as a Yanks some fifteen months after signing with them. Combine the Yankee six-pack with what is now a four-game Sox skid (swept by Texas!), and the Yanks are a mere one game out of first in the AL East, holding a 14-11 record. The panic of seven days ago seems so last week!

Fortunately the great Roger Angell set down a few of his thoughts in the most recent New Yorker. It’s not a full-length article, just one of those “Talk of the Town” pieces, but it’s a tasty little morsel even if the author can barely disguse his glee at watching the Yanks falter:

Red Sox fans and local Yankee haters (there are a lot of these) exulted but also shook their heads: geez, what’s wrong with those guys? You could blame injuries (Bernie had missed most of spring training) or age (the Yanks are the oldest team in the majors) or jet lag from the season-opening series against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays that was played in Tokyo, but it was the beautiful and eloquent unpredictability of baseball itself that was making this happen: the sport once again showing us that statistical unlikelihood can come in bursts and bunches, a virus from nowhere, and for a time sever the game and its players from all expectation. Think of Mel Gibson taking up the harp, President Bush being late for a Cabinet meeting while he finishes “The Ambassadors”: this was better.

Thanks to Twins Fan Dan for calling my attention to the piece, and for fellow WCW (will you guys get a friggin’ name already) blogger Ken Arneson for hitting the nail on the head when it comes to Angell’s genius as a classic prose stylist.