Five notes

1) Schilling say's he's all ready to start. Forgive me for not immediately believing him when he says he's ready. It's hard to tell from the stats, primarily due to small sample size: 7 IP, 3.86 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 8 K, 0 BB. Looks good, but it becomes a 5.4 ERA against teams not from Tampa Bay; he gave up some big hits; and his last save was very Foulkian (well, not quite, since he didn't give up a 2-R HR), and could've gone the other way. Not sure what to make of his performance so far.

2) Jason Giambi slugged .315 in May. In July, he's slugging 1.017, and is a big part of the Yanks' recent surge. The fawning articles have begun, everyone's talking about his amazing comeback, in which he tackled adversity head-on and worked hard to return to baseball. To this, I say: come on, people. Not six months ago we (fans and media) were kicking ourselves for blissfully ignoring something which was so painfully obvious. Have we forgotten already? Does anyone actually think steroids magically disappeared with this new steroid policy?

3) ESPN.com's transformation to an all-fee site is nearly complete. Its front page is pockmarked with those little orange "in" icons (23 at last count). I might pay the fee, if it weren't for that horrible magazine that comes with it. [Anyone want to go in with me? You can have the mag.]

4) As noted by Andrew, yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the famous A-Rod smackdown. This is widely viewed as the Moment the Season Turned Around, and while I somehow missed that game, it's apparently enough of a Big Event I remember where I was when I heard about the fight and the walkoff HR. However, what's sort of silly is that really wasn't much of a turnaround. Yes, it was a great come-from-behind victory, and the Sox won that series (much nicer than the previous Yankees sweep), and that inning may have planted the seeds for Mariano's troubles in Game 4 of the ALCS. But after the Yanks left town, the Sox went 10-8 their next 18 games (and six of those were against Tampa Bay). The turnaround really happened more than 3 weeks later, on August 16, when the Sox embarked on a ridiculous 20-2 run, including an 8-and-1 thrashing of the three elite teams of AL West, who until then were all fighting for a Wild Card spot. Not like it matters when it happened, of course, and the mouthful-of-catcher's-mitt picture (why does that sound naughty?) remains easily the best photo of the regular season -- it's just funny that something we all Know To Be True probably isn't.

5) The Oakland A's are now in a tie for first in the Wild Card. That is insane -- they were 15 below .500 on May 29. I still say they win the division.