The Home Stretch

There's a lot to be excited about as we head for the last 10 games of the regular season. The AL playoff field is pretty much established: Red Sox, Yankees, Indians, Angels. Although, as you may have heard, the first two teams on that list have been engaging in a life-or-death struggle simply to determine who gets to face which of the latter two teams.
The above-linked article compares the Red Sox situation to that of the '78 team that blew a comfortable lead to the Yankees and then lost it all in a one-game playoff. In a sense, the comparison is valid; the '07 Sox had a quite comfortable lead in the AL East and have seen it dwindle to 1.5 games with 9 games remaining (the Yanks have 10 to play).
But in the realistic sense, this is nothing like '78. The AL East race is an overblown battle of collective egos in New England. It has basically no bearing on the postseason. In '78, the team that lost the race went home in October. This year, the team that loses this particular race will be the Wild Card rather than the AL East Champion. And that is absolutely no big deal.