Bronx, N.Y., May 26, 2002 — One-hit wonder group Animotion didn’t begin to get to the bottom of that condition with their 1982 smash hit. And it will go some way to explaining how obsessed and potentially deluded I can get when you hear that I had decided I had a plausible scenario for how tonight’s game would play out once I had read the morning papers.

Anticipating a booming visit from the “Bronx Bombers” who have been making their presence felt often this season, I was initially taken by what happened on this day in 1996, as the White Sox became the 16th team in major league history to hit four homers in an inning. Robin Ventura, you see, hit the third one. But it gets better.

Forty-three years ago today Harvey Haddix famously lost in 13 after throwing perfect baseball for 12 innings. The Ventura connection? Robin is famous for his “grand slam single” in 1999 in the playoffs for the Mets when he was mobbed after hitting his bases-loaded game-winner. And Joe Adcock, who made Harvey a loser, was credited with a double on May 26, 1959, when he hit a homer, because he passed Hank Aaron on the basepaths as Hank stopped and left the field after Felix Mantilla had scored the game-winner (or loser, if you were Harvey).

Searching further, I ignored the fact that “Star Wars” debuted in theaters on this day in 1977, that Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley were married today in 1994, that it was John Wayne’s birthday (1907). But the selection of this day in 1990 by the Phillies to retire the number of another slugging third baseman, Mike Schmidt, and the fact that Ty Cobb became the first ball player to amass 1,000 extra base hits on May 26, 1923, were both accepted as good omens of what was to come.

Imagine my chagrin that I had neglected that Joe would be sitting Robin against the lefty today, and then that the opposing third baseman would hit the second dinger in a back-to-back Red Sox second inning. But I refused to be daunted by the in-game events, even when the ESPN commentators virtually ignored the fact that their own graphic clearly showed that home-plate ump Hollowell had punched out Alfonso in the third on a pitch that was four to six inches high and one or two inside.

Of course you know the rest. We did go homer crazy. We only hit three in the fifth, but it was our third baseman who hit the third of them. And after we had the Red Sox team, front office and all of New England wondering how they would manage to play winning baseball once their starters revert to form and only go five or six innings per start, we marched Mr. Ventura out there anyway to throw a couple of exclamation marks into tomorrow’s coverage.

And Moose was a lot better than the totals might indicate. Yes, he notched 50 pitches in the first two innings, but only 51 more got him through the next four. And the only thing I’ll say about the three-run glitch in the fifth is that no wood hit a ball hard after Baerga’s lead-off liner, and the Red Sox should be aware that this is a game of bounces. They had soft flares, high hoppers and weak grounders going their way all weekend (Rickey’s lead-off base hit in the 11th Friday night, for instance), and those things have a way of balancing out over time.

And then there’s the one impressive fact that I have to thank ESPN for, the fact that we hit the most homers ever by a Yank team in Fenway on Memorial Day Weekend in 1961 (May 30, actually). Of the seven bombs, Yogi hit one, and the M&M boys accounted for two apiece. The other two? A guy named Bill Skowron, nicknamed Moose. Has a nice ring, don’t you think?

BTW,TYW

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!