SportsNation doubts the Yankees

Well, it is officially on. As you can see by the lovely ESPN map reproduced above — and if you want a better view, just click on it — the rest of the country doubts the Yankees. In state after state, from Maine to Alaska, the only people who think the Yanks will make the playoffs are those of us who live in New York and New Jersey.

It’s time to show the everyone else. It’s time to show to the 80 percent of delusional Red Sox fans who don’t think the Yankees will make the playoffs that they are flat-out wrong. Roger Clemens, who had a no-hitter going until David Ortiz met the Upper Deck, did his part tonight while Kyle Farnsworth made us all wish that the Joba Rules, which shouldn’t be lifted, weren’t in place.

Alex Rodriguez, on his march toward a showdown with the Yanks over his contract, did his job. He delivered a home run off Josh Beckett that cleared the fence and gave the Yanks the breathing room they needed. Mariano Rivera did his job plus one more out, bailing out Kyle Farnsworth for the umpteeth time. He made the Red Sox look bad. Three of the four outs were dribblers that didn’t even make it past the mound. The other out was a routine groundball to A-Rod.

So now the Yanks are six not-insurmountable games out against the Red Sox. But the Sox play the Tampa Bay Bad News Bears a few times too many this month while the Yanks play the Orioles, their 2007 bugaboo who have yet to win with Dave Trombley in as their permanent manager.

The nation doubts us even the Wild Card of which we share in the lead right now. They doubt us a playoff spot in October. They doubt the hottest team since June and the best franchise of all time. We’ll show them.

And hey, we can always take solace in the graph below the nifty new more tag (Hint: It doesn’t load a new page) the jump (We disabled the problematic More tag for now). We Yankee fans may be the most obnoxious, but the Red Sox are quickly gaining ground. To vote, head to this terrible Jim Caple column, but don’t read it. It’s really bad.