OK, here’s where I admit that I had almost completely written the Yankees off somewhere near the end of the seventh; here’s where I also admit that I may have caused damage to both my sofa and the floor beneath it with all the jumping up and down that I did in the bottom of the eighth. What an unbelievable game, and what an even more unbelievable end. (Mariano Rivera pitching three complete innings for the first time since April of 1996!?! A walkoff home run from Aaron Boone!?!) I have to admit a bit of sadness for the Red Sox — since I’m always a sucker for the underdog, and now that I live here, I also have a bunch of friends that are going to be horribly sad for the next few weeks — but I also have to exult at the Yanks making the to Fall Classic.

A few last notes before heading off to bed:

• The choice of Rivera as the ALCS MVP was just obvious, and well-deserved.
• It’s a shame that Pedro stuck around for the eighth; in the blink of a managerial eye, a masterful Pedro victory turned into an unfortunate afterthought. (Well, we’ll see how much of an afterthought it is in the Boston press tomorrow.)
• Hey, Tim McCarver — could you possibly have been more annoying about whether or not it was going to be the end of Roger Clemens’ career? I’m pretty sure that we all got it the first twelve times you said it; we probably didn’t need the other fifteen hundred.