Afternoon Baseball

And not just from Chien-Ming Wang and Paul Byrd (and Mariano Rivera, who has given up no runs in his last 10 appearances with 5 saves and 2 wins to show for).
The man in the shadows, the almost-unnoticed Robinson Cano, was the hero, which I love to see. It's also nice to see him hit a home run or two as his slugging has been weak this year.

But if you were looking for good pitching elsewhere, by golly, tonight was your night. Kenny Rogers struck out nine(!) in eight innings, dominating the hapless Devil Rays. Roy Halladay lowered his ERA to 2.75, giving up but a solo homer to Miguel Tejada (people rip on A-Rod for meaningless RBI and don't look at this guy) in a 7-1 complete-game win.
Santana and Schilling dueled it out for eight each, and Chris Carpenter pitched seven shutout frames, with 13Ks, to beat Oliver Perez's rare quality outing.

It's a good day for baseball when these things happen. There wasn't a shortage of offense today around the leagues, nor a lack of dramatic moments. But aces were aces, for the most part, and a few others, like Wang and Byrd, showed their mettle.