Everything was going just divinely for the Yankees. They had lost just once in three weeks, a surge that carried them to the best record in baseball. And for two consecutive nights, they had set somnambulant Yankee Stadium rocking with late-game conquests of the Boston Red Sox.
Then on Thursday night, that old lightning rod, Alex Rodriguez, showed up — his girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, in tow.
And just like that, with J-Rod taking in the game from a suite above the third-base dugout, the skies opened up, the Yankees ran out of late-game magic, and a 5-4 loss to the Red Sox ensued.