Somehow, the home run streak continues.

I don’t intend to make myself the focus of this journal, but I may as well continue a story I started yesterday. After Gary Sheffield’s homer in Tampa Bay tonight, my Beat the Streak home run total has been extended to 3. At first, I thought I had picked Alex Rodriguez, and celebrated after his mammoth shot roughly 100 feet above the center field wall. His bomb actually hit a Tropicana Field catwalk, causing A-Rod, who was unsure what had happened to his ball, to slide into third base. After I noticed that I had actually predicted a Sheffield homer, I anxiously watched his at-bats until he delivered in the seventh inning. Mariano Rivera overcame some early trouble in ninth inning, and the Yankees parleyed a strong start from long-injured Jaret Wright to win 5-2. Meanwhile, the Curt Schilling experiment took a hit in Detroit, where the Tigers rallied off the recently anointed closer to beat the Boston Red Sox 7-6.

I once racked up a 9-game hitting streak on the original version of Beat the Streak, which was impressive seeing as I made multiple predictions before going on vacation, and was out of touch with who was actually playing on a given day. However, great shakes compared to the nearly 40-game streak that another user attained without surpassing the requisite 56 (equal to the all-time hitting streak set by Joe DiMaggio). Obviously, the home run edition makes it far more difficult to put together long runs: the reward for a 9-game run (the all-time consecutive homer streak is 8) is $10,000 cash. While I don’t intend to get rich playing BTS, it adds a little extra fun to the game I love.

If no one gets to nine before the end of the season, someone can still win tickets to the 2006 All-Star game, so long as they have the longest streak that’s seven or higher. Incidentally, the guys who came up with the Home Run Edition have some serious lawyerly advice on their side. Check out this excerpt from the Official Rules:

“The Released Parties (as defined below) will not be responsible for Acts of God, acts of terrorism, civil disturbances, work stoppage or any other natural disaster outside their control, that may cause the cancellation of the 2006 MLB All-Star game.”

I don’t know about you, but seeing this rained on my parade. I might actually string together that many lucky predictions, beat other users on a tie-breaker (such as the number of runs batted in that accompanied the homers), and still not be able to attend the Midsummer Classic to which I so richly deserve tickets? Is there no order in the universe? Can we make any sense of its inscrutable methods?

Suddenly, I realized what it must have felt like to win an NHL contest.

baseball