From M.Urban: They got solid pitching from their starter. They ran hard and smart on the basepaths. They turned double plays. They got yet another eye-popping catch from Eric Byrnes. They got three brilliant innings from the bullpen.

"That's the formula for a win," said manager Ken Macha.

"I feel bad," said a downcast Dotel, who suffered his third blown save in nine chances. "Today we had a chance to win, and I didn't do my job."

"Street was tremendous, and Kielty's play there was very, very intelligent," Macha said. "I was feeling pretty good about us at that point."

"Excellent work by Ricky," Macha said.

"I have to be careful with all of them," Dotel said when asked if he was pitching around Ortiz. "They're pretty good hitters. ... All of them."

"I was trying to throw that pitch away, but it came back [over the plate]," Dotel said. "I tried to hit my spots, but I didn't do it today."

"We played great ball," said Macha

"We did a lot of things right," added Byrnes.

And yet ...

"You really never know what's next in baseball," said Saarloos.

Said Street: "It was just that one pitch."

Where is the pain? Where is the anger? Where is the determination?  What I hear is resignation to their fate in facing another difficult (like in Cleveland last year) loss. [Not so incidently Mecir won a game tonight for Florida.] What I take from all of these quotes is a Team and Manager that was expecting to lose, but is happy with playing "great ball"; doing "a lot of things right"; never knowing what is next in baseball (translation: never knowing what is the new way of losing); and pleased with the "excellent work by Ricky".

Gee guys, it almosts sounds as if we won.

All I can add is that if getting 3 hits is "great ball" as far as Macha is concerned, what will he think if we are down to 2 hits tomorrow...."we had an off night, but hit some balls hard, but right at somebody?"