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NEW YORK -- For the Red Sox, these are hardly the times that try men’s souls. Not with an 8 ½-game lead in the American League East and three weeks to play. Even Sox CEO Larry Lucchino, who spent his birthday weekend here, is alleged to have exhaled.

The line of desperation formed to the right, where the New York Yankees have seen both the Cleveland Indians and Baltimore Orioles leapfrog them in the wild-card race in the past couple of days, their bullpen in tatters and the Captain, Derek Jeter, back on the bench with a bad ankle.

So Joe Girardi made an early call for The Great Rivera on Sunday afternoon, asking his 43-year-old closer to give him a two-inning save, something he had asked Mariano Rivera to do just once all season.

But for the second time in four games, the Red Sox had the temerity to treat a first-ballot Hall of Famer like a mop-up man, Will Middlebrooks hitting a home run with one out in the ninth to tie the score.

Thursday night, it had been shortstop Stephen Drew’s broken-bat single that had pinned a blown save on Rivera. Sunday afternoon, Yankees right fielder Ichiro Suzuki broke in on Middlebrooks’ high fly ball, then retreated, farther and farther, until he ran out of room, the ball landing in the seats for Middlebrooks’ 15th home run of the season.

Boston’s euphoria was short-lived. The Yankees avoided a four-game sweep by answering in the bottom of the ninth against Sox reliever Brandon Workman. Suzuki singled, stole second, advanced to third on a fly ball and scored on a wild pitch, catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia unable to glove Workman’s high fastball to Alfonso Soriano.

The Yankees’ 4-3 win, on a day that Sox manager John Farrell rested starters Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino while anxiously awaiting word on Jacoby Ellsbury's injured foot, ended Boston’s five-game winning streak and kept the Sox's magic number for winning the AL East at 12.

NEW YORK -- Some quick hits prior to kickoff in Buffalo (and first pitch in Yankee Stadium).

* Clay Buchholz has been penciled in for a start against the Rays in Tropicana Field Tuesday, when the Sox open a three-game series against Tampa Bay, manager John Farrell said. Buchholz threw a bullpen here Sunday after making three rehab starts.

“Seventy-five to 80 pitches is probably a reasonable number to throw,’’ Farrell said. “We know there will be an increase in intensity, as we look for him to make that first step back.’’

If Buchholz does indeed start Tuesday night in the Trop, it will be 94 days since he made his last start, June 8 against the Angels, in which he was a 7-2 winner and ran his record to 9-0, his ERA at a major-league best 1.71.

“Our goal for the remainder of the month would be not only to stretch him out, but to see if there’s a certain dependability we get from him. We really can’t expect him to come back and pitch to the form that led him to be a 1.7 ERA and the record that he has. But starting on Tuesday, if that’s the day he will begin with, we’re hopeful we get a guy that’s close to what he was prior to the injury and certainly will be an additional lift to this rotation.’’

Farrell said he expects to announce who is being dropped from the rotation after Sunday’s game. He offered a hint at his thinking when he said a “priority is who’s the most effective starter right now.’’

If that is the determinant, left-hander Felix Doubront may be bound for the pen, at least temporarily. Doubront has a 6.58 ERA over his last five starts, and has not made it out of the fourth inning in the last two, going just 3 2/3 innings in Boston’s 12-8 win over the Yankees Friday night, walking 6 while giving up 6 runs.

* Rookie Allen Webster was called up from Triple-A Pawtucket to add bullpen depth. In Boston’s last six games, the Sox have used five or more pitchers five times, including in each of the first three games of the Yankees series.

* Neither Mike Napoli nor Shane Victorino were in Sunday’s Sox starting lineup. The days off were planned, Farrell said; with Monday’s off-day, that will give both players two days. Mike Carp was at first base, and the outfield had Jackie Bradley Jr. in center, flanked by Daniel Nava in right and Jonny Gomes in left.

* Jarrod Saltalamacchia was back behind the plate, after missing the last four games with a sore back.

* Jacoby Ellsbury was scheduled to be examined Sunday in Denver by Dr. Tom Clanton at the Steadman Clinic to determine the severity of the injury to his right foot. Farrell said he hoped to have more information after the game.

NEW YORK -- Not even the alarming news that Jacoby Ellsbury may have sustained the most significant September injury by a Red Sox outfielder since a future Hall of Famer named Jim Rice broke his wrist in 1975 could keep the Sox from their appointed rounds Saturday afternoon, which in this case meant another beatdown of the New York Yankees and one step closer to a division title.

With Ellsbury on a plane to Denver for a second opinion regarding a possible fractured navicular bone in his right foot -- the same bone that shortened Dustin Pedroia's season to 75 games in 2010 -- the Sox won their third straight over the Yankees, 13-9, before a sellout crowd of 49,046 in Yankee Stadium.

The Sox made it five straight wins overall and eight of their last nine to go 30 games over .500 (87-57) for the first time this season. The magic number to winning the AL East title is 13, and could shrink further if the Tampa Bay Rays lose again in Seattle.

On Aug. 24, the Red Sox and Rays were tied for the AL East lead. Since then, the Sox have won 11 of 13 while the Rays have lost 10 of 13, not including their game against the Mariners Saturday night. Talk about two roads diverging in a yellow wood.

Finally, the heavens opened for Red Sox pitcher John Lackey and runs rained down, which must have been as disorienting as a monsoon in the desert, because Lackey gave seven of them back in his worst outing of the season.

Sox rookie shortstop Xander Bogaerts, the Promised Child, made his first big league home run one to remember, hitting it over the visitors’ bullpen, 443 feet away, as calculated by the home run trackers at ESPN Stats & Info.

Jonny Gomes and Mike Napoli homered in consecutive innings. We’d tell you the order, but since Gomes says even his kids can’t tell them apart, we won’t hazard a guess which came first. (A check of the box score says Napoli went deep with a runner on in the second inning, and Gomes followed an inning later with two aboard.)

Then Napoli did it again in the ninth, his 21st of the season and fourth in four games, and kids throughout New England were asking their mothers if they could trick or treat on Halloween as a Soggy Bottom boy (Game 7 of the World Series, by the way, falling on Halloween this year).

The Red Sox, who scored 20 runs in the course of one night against the Tigers last Wednesday, put another 21 on the board against the Yankees in the span of eight innings spread over two nights. Nine runs in the seventh and eighth innings Friday, a dozen more (2 in the second, 3 in the third, 5 in the fourth, 2 in the fifth) in the first five innings Saturday.

"Right now they’re not missing pitches," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said.

The Yankees, who needed a reliever [David Huff] to make his first start of the season and were one step away from recruiting ushers to work out of the bullpen after setup men Boone Logan and David Robertson both got hurt Friday night, had little answer to a Sox offense that has 17 home runs in the last four games and had hits from every batter in the order by the end of the fourth inning Saturday.

It wasn’t much later that Roger Angell, the elegant bard of baseball just 12 days shy of his 93rd birthday, slipped out of the press box, perhaps having surmised that if it was a football score he wanted, he could have just stayed at home and flipped on his television, rather than watching this one. The Yankees have used a franchise-record 53 players this season and the vast majority of them will never make the cut for Yankee hagiography.

To the Yankees’ credit, they gamely battled back, knocking Lackey out in the sixth (5.2 IP, 8 H, 7 ER) and drawing to within three of the Sox before Napoli, who had hit a 3-0 pitch off Huff for his second-inning home run, connected again off Brett Marshall.

NEW YORK -- The Boston Red Sox will be without center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury for the foreseeable future.

An industry source said Saturday that doctors are trying to determine whether Ellsbury has a deep bone bruise or fracture in his right foot, the result of fouling a ball off his foot Aug. 28 in a game at Fenway Park.

Ellsbury aggravated the injury Thursday night when he stole second base in the 10th inning of Boston's 9-8 win over the New York Yankees and did not respond to treatment Friday, according to manager John Farrell.

Ellsbury returned to Boston and underwent an examination and MRI Saturday morning and was scheduled for additional testing, Farrell said. He also is scheduled to go to Denver to see Dr. Thomas Clanton of the Steadman Clinic for a second opinion.

"I don't think we're looking at something that is just day to day here," Farrell said Saturday.

The injury involves the navicular bone, the same bone that Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia fractured in his left foot with a foul ball in San Francisco in 2010. Pedroia was placed on the disabled list the next day, June 26, returned to play two games in August before returning to the DL for the rest of the season. He had surgery in the offseason in which a screw was inserted to promote healing.

The Red Sox recalled rookie Jackie Bradley Jr. from Triple-A Pawtucket and will start him in center field for Saturday's game against the Yankees.

Ellsbury, who leads the majors with 52 stolen bases, was batting .299 with a .355 on-base percentage. The speedster was batting .320 (24 for 75) in his last 17 games, with eight stolen bases in that span.

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NEW YORK -- This is the week the Red Sox crossed over the threshold from rational to irrational, from fact to fiction, from things that can be explained to things that go bump in the night.

Our humble suggestion: Just accept that this is a baseball odyssey like very few others, and grab on with both hands for the ride. And if you’re able to grow a beard -- or a single whisker, which was about all that separated Mike Napoli's magical grand slam from being just another fly ball to right field in Yankee Stadium Friday night -- so much the better.

As the great Ned Martin said in a broadcast long ago during another wildly improbable saga with words that surely echoed in the memories of longtime Sox fans: "If you’ve just turned your radio on, it’s happened again."

A franchise that began the year bent on winning back New England hearts and minds can not only declare mission accomplished, but can lay claim to reviving a message that once inflamed the imagination of an entire generation of Sox fans.

Did you say impossible? Tell that to Yaz and Rico and Gentleman Jim, and try slipping that by the Soggy Bottom Boys of Napoli and Gomes, Victorino and Ross, Carp and Pedroia. Good luck with that.

A night after blowing a 7-2, seventh-inning lead to the Yankees, the Sox rallied from an 8-3 deficit to tie the score on Napoli’s slam, a fly ball which hit the top of the right-field wall, just 335 feet away from home plate and clearing Ichiro Suzuki’s glove by the length of his beard. Shane Victorino, the accidental right-handed slugger who won Thursday night’s game with a 10th-inning single, then broke the tie with a two-run home run in the eighth, and the Sox tacked on another two runs to win 12-8 before a crowd of 44,117. A gathering that surely preferred those days when the Yankees were the ones inflicting constant sorrow on their visitors, rather than being on the receiving end of misery, from a team now just 19 games away from a finish line that looks increasingly like a welcome mat to October.

Nine runs in the last three innings Friday night. A game-tying, broken-bat hit off The Great Rivera who had them one strike away from defeat the night before. A record-tying eight home runs the night before that in Fenway Park. A grinding 2-1 win over a pitcher who had lost only once all season the night before that.

Mind-bending feats compressed into four nights, when they could easily have filled a season’s worth of highlight reels. These guys are real -- just ask a crestfallen Joe Girardi -- but they have a knack for summoning ghosts, too.

Here’s one: Napoli’s grand slam was his third this season. Only one Sox player has hit more in one summer: Babe Ruth. And he did it in 1919, his last year in a Boston uniform. Witches can be right, giants can be good, curses can become blessings.

NEW YORK -- Some quick hits from Yankee Stadium prior to the second game of this four-game set between the Red Sox and Yankees:

-- Jacoby Ellsbury, who singled and stole second base in advance of Shane Victorino’s game-winning hit in the 10th inning Thursday night, was experiencing soreness in the right foot he injured several days ago when he fouled a ball off it, manager John Farrell said. Ellsbury underwent treatment and was staying off his feet, Farrell said. No additional X-rays were taken, but Ellsbury sat Friday night, with Shane Victorino playing center field.

-- Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who took early hitting Friday and participated in other drills, is sufficiently recovered from his lower back pain to resume playing soon, Farrell said. "Tomorrow is a real possibility," he said.

-- The day after Clay Buchholz made his third and last rehab assignment, Farrell said he has not yet changed the starting rotation to include his undefeated ace. "Clay went to Boston, will join us tomorrow and throw a bullpen here Sunday," Farrell said. "We’re making sure we go through every step physically before making any adjustments."

Farrell said that Buchholz threw with power consistent with the way he was throwing earlier in the season before being shut down with shoulder bursitis. "I spoke to him live this afternoon and he feels good physically," Farrell said. "He had increased command of all of his pitches, and is in a pretty good place from a mental standpoint in addition to being physically sound."

Farrell has suggested that Buchholz could rejoin the rotation Tuesday in Tropicana Field against the Tampa Bay Rays, but has held off on making that a definite. Ryan Dempster, whose turn would fall on Tuesday, said he is preparing to make that start and has yet to be told otherwise.

-- Dempster took the "6" subway train and transferred to the "4" for the trip into Yankee Stadium on Friday afternoon. A crew from MLB Productions tagged along. Dempster said he often rides the subway to the ballpark in New York -- he took the "7" train to Flushing when he was with the Marlins and Cubs and had to play the Mets -- and said he has taken the BART from San Francisco to Oakland on occasion. As a Cub, he walked to Wrigley Field from the Lakeview neighborhood in which he lived, and also walks to Fenway.

-- The "Yes" Network, which televises Yankees games, had a great shot of David Ross, Mike Carp and other Sox players howling in laughter when Drew dug up a divot and made a sprawling catch of a foul popup by Curtis Granderson in the fourth inning. What did Ross say to Drew? "Nice route, Magellan," the catcher said.

So, Ross had paid attention in his high school history class? "I crushed high school history," he said.

-- Pedro Martinez was a pregame visitor to the Sox clubhouse, drawing a laugh when he spotted Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy and yelled, "Shaughnessy, you evil maniac." Martinez came in with a shopping bag for David Ortiz and shook hands with everyone in sight, sharing hugs with many of the call-ups he had seen in Pawtucket.

Now that the 2013 minor league regular season is over, here’s a look at the statistical leaders from the Red Sox system. Stats are cumulative for all minor league levels within the organization, but do not include major league stats. Minimums for rate stats are 250 plate appearances or 80 innings pitched.

Every day between now and the end of the regular season, we'll check in on where things stand in the playoff race.

• Red Sox record: 85-57

• Games left: 20

• Lead in AL East: 6½ games over Tampa Bay (77-62)

• Magic number to win division: 16

• What does magic number mean?: If Tampa Bay wins all 23 of its remaining games, Boston would have to win 16 to win the division.

• How to calculate magic number: You calculate your magic number by looking at the number of games remaining in the season and assuming that your nearest competitor will win all of their remaining games. Then you see how many games you still need to win to ensure the division title even with your nearest competitor winning all of their remaining games.

• Overall ranking in league (important for determining home field in playoffs): First, 3 games ahead of Detroit, 3½ games ahead of Texas

• If season ended today, teams in playoffs: Red Sox, Tigers, Rangers, Athletics, Rays.

• What about the Yankees?: Rallied from a five-run deficit only to give up the lead in the ninth and lose in the 10th to the Red Sox, 9-8. They remain 2½ games out of a wild-card spot.

• Who’s hot?: In the 23 games he has played since returning from Triple-A Pawtucket, third baseman Will Middlebrooks has posted a slash line of .347/.412/.560/.972, with 4 home runs and 14 RBIs. In his last 8 at-bats, Middlebrooks has 5 hits, including 2 home runs, driven in 5 runs and scored 4 times.

• Who’s not?: Rays ace David Price lost for the second straight time on this disastrous West Coast swing, giving up 11 hits in the first three innings to the Angels. The Rays lost to a pitcher, Jerome Williams, who had been 0-8 with a 6.15 ERA since June 12.

• Red Sox latest outcome: Beat the Yankees, 9-8, in 10 innings on Thursday.

• Rays latest outcome: Lost to the Angels 6-2 on Thursday.

• Notable: Terry Francona’s Indians have yet to rekindle Cleveland’s passion for baseball -- there were just over 9,000 in Progressive Field Tuesday -- but they’re hanging around in the playoff race, three games out of a wild card spot. And the Tribe has a soft schedule the rest of the way: 6 games against the White Sox, 4 games against the Astros, 2 games against the Mets. Average record of opponent the rest of the way: 60-78.

• Playoff format: AL wild-card play-in game on Wednesday, Oct. 2. AL best-of-five division series begins Friday, Oct. 4.

It looks like the Red Sox rotation can expect to get another boost in the near future.

Clay Buchholz made his third and presumably final rehab start Thursday night, pitching for the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox in a playoff game at the Rochester Red Wings, and he appears to be in line to make his next start for Boston.

After pitching three scoreless frames to begin the game, Buchholz gave up two runs in the bottom of the fourth inning, exiting with two outs and a 5-2 lead. He threw 71 pitches (52 strikes) in all over 3 2/3 innings, striking out five, walking two and allowing four hits and the two runs.

The PawSox went on to win 7-2, evening their best-of-five playoff series at one game apiece. The action shifts from Frontier Field to McCoy Stadium for Game 3, but Buchholz's contributions to the PawSox's playoff cause have likely come to an end.

The Red Sox have not yet made his return to Boston official, but after Thursday's outing he indicated to reporters in Rochester that he feels ready to rejoin his big league teammates for their playoff push. They are expected to activate Buchholz in time to start Tuesday’s game in Tampa against the Rays.

NEW YORK -- All season, the Red Sox have shown an uncanny capacity to quickly recover from whatever setback they might suffer, whether it was losing an ace, a closer (or two), or blowing a big lead, the way they did in Anaheim in July, coughing up a four-run ninth-inning lead in an extra-inning loss to the Angels.

That quality was put to its biggest test yet, after what looked to be a pedestrian night in the Bronx -- the Sox taking a 7-2 lead before a disgruntled gathering of 40,481 in the Bronx -- suddenly went all Heisenberg on them, the Yankees scoring six runs in the seventh inning to seize an 8-7 advantage.

But down to their final three outs, against the Great Rivera, Red Sox resilience enjoyed perhaps its finest hour -- though it took a Dave Roberts wannabe, a last-out single by hitless Stephen Drew, and Shane Victorino knocking in the winning run after umpire Joe West issued a dubious reprieve for the Sox to emerge with a 9-8, 10-inning win over the mortally wounded Bombers.

The Sox have 20 games left. They have won 10 of their last 12 games. They are 28 games over .500 for the first time all season. They already have won 16 more games than the Class of 2012, the biggest one-year improvement since the ’67 Impossible Dreamers were 20 games better than their predecessors.

The Rays, playing in Anaheim Thursday night knowing the Sox won yet again, are running out of time.

And so are the Yankees, who could ill afford to lose any more ground in the AL East. They showed just how much they meant business Thursday night when Joe Girardi called on Mariano Rivera for the last three outs, only the second time all season the 43-year-old closer has pitched in three consecutive games, and the first time he has pitched the night after being asked to get four outs.

Rivera quickly retired David Ortiz and Daniel Nava, but Mike Napoli lined a single to center and was replaced by pinch runner Quintin Berry, recruited by Sox general manager Ben Cherington -- who got him in a minor league deal from the Royals in late August -- to reprise the role of base-stealing legend Roberts, should the opportunity present itself.

Berry’s audition went spectacularly Thursday night, as he stole second and continued to third when catcher Austin Romine’s throw went into center field. Drew then lined a single to right, and after Craig Breslow picked off Alfonso Soriano in the bottom of the ninth -- Soriano picked off second after avoiding a similar fate when he broke early from first, only to have Breslow bounce his throw -- the Sox staged their winning rally in the 10th.

Jacoby Ellsbury singled with one out off Joba Chamberlain, the seventh Yankees pitcher, and stole second. Victorino, who appeared to have gone around on a two-strike slider from Chamberlain but was spared by first-base ump West’s no-swing call, lined the next pitch to right field for a single. Ichiro Suzuki came up throwing and beat Ellsbury to the plate with a bullet to the plate, but catcher Romine couldn’t handle the short hop and Ellsbury slide safely in.

After Chamberlain was taken out of the game, he directed some choice words at West from the dugout, and was ejected.

The Sox then placed the game in the hands of closer Koji Uehara, who wrapped them around Yankees throats, striking out Lyle Overbay on a 12-pitch at-bat, then striking out Ichiro Suzuki to end it.

The Sox, who for the better part of three weeks have been playing some of their best baseball of the season, have seldom looked worse than they did during Thursday night’s bullpen implosion in the seventh, which began with manager John Farrell’s decision to send Jake Peavy out to start the inning even though his pitch count through six was at 105.

Suzuki worked an eight-pitch walk, Vernon Wells followed with a pinch single, and the comeback was on. Lefty Matt Thornton gave up a flared RBI single, a walk and a force play, then gave way to Junichi Tazawa. Alfonso Soriano singled through an overshifted infield for one run, Curtis Granderson doubled home another, and Overbay, whom the Red Sox deemed expendable in March, finally extracted his pound of flesh, delivering a two-run single that gave the Bombers the lead.

NEW YORK -- A few hits from New York prior to the first game of this four-game set between the Red Sox and Yankees:

-- Yankees manager Joe Girardi said the series probably means more to the Yankees than it does the Sox, who began the night 5 ½ games ahead of Tampa Bay in the AL East, while the Bombers are 2 ½ games out of a wild-card spot.

“It means a lot -- it probably means more to us because of where we are in the standings,’’ Girardi said. “They (the Sox) got a little cushion. If you’re in their shoes, you’re fighting for home-field advantage.’’

-- The Yankees are 7-3 since the Sunday night game in Fenway (Aug. 25) in which Sox starter Ryan Dempster hit Alex Rodriguez with a pitch, for which Dempster was slapped with a five-game suspension.

Girardi, asked if it was plausible to credit an incident like that for banding a team closer together, didn’t seem too sold on the idea. “I don’t know. Maybe you can. It fired the team up a little bit, not that we weren’t fired up.

“Sometimes an incident like that can change things. I’m not saying it did, but it can.’’

-- Red Sox manager John Farrell said he had not been approached by MLB officials or the umpiring crew cautioning against a resumption of hostilities. “We haven’t heard anything to date,’’ Farrell said. “If something is said at the plate, we’ll find out prior to game time.’’

Asked if he expected any retaliation, Farrell said: “If there is to be retaliation -- I don’t think there will be -- but you never know. This game has a way of taking care of itself. If that is to be the case, we’ll play the game.’’

-- Farrell confirmed what has been obvious for some time, that Clay Buchholz will be inserted into the starting rotation next week, assuming his third rehab start Thursday night for Triple-A Pawtucket proceeds without a hitch. He insisted the club has not met internally to discuss who would come out of the rotation, nor has he had any discussions with any of the team’s starters about who might be dropped. Beginning next week, the Sox will have three consecutive Mondays as off-days, giving Farrell the option of shortening the rotation even more should he choose to do so.

-- Sox reliever Andrew Miller, who has shed his crutches and gets around on his own with his surgically repaired left foot in a boot, said he is at a point where he can begin rehabbing the injury. The most encouraging thing, Miller said, is that he should be able to fully participate when spring training opens next season.

Miller said he spoke with Daniel Bard, his teammate at the University of North Carolina before the pair was reunited with the Sox, and said Bard was excited about going to the Chicago Cubs and a chance for a fresh start. Miller said that the spotlight should be much less acute on Bard with the Cubs than it was with the Red Sox, where even his minor league appearances drew a media crowd, making it that much harder to hit the reset button. The attention was understandable, Miller said, given the success Bard had with the Sox in previous years. With the Cubs, Miller added, Bard won’t attract anywhere near the same degree of interest as he makes his way back. “He’s healthy, he feels good,’’ Miller said.

-- The Sox tied an AL record when seven different players combined to hit eight home runs in Wednesday night’s 20-4 win over the Detroit Tigers.

-- Men of La Mancha: The Sox have already won 15 more games than last year (69-93). That’s the biggest improvement in a non-strike year since the “Impossible Dream” Sox of ’67 went 92-70, a swing of 20 games from the previous year (72-90).

-- With Mariano Rivera recording a four-out save Wednesday for his 41st save, one night after notching save No. 40, Girardi said he wasn’t certain Rivera would be available Thursday night.

-- The Red Sox have not been caught stealing since Jacoby Ellsbury was picked off first in the first inning by Royals pitcher Bruce Chen on Aug. 8 in Kansas City. The Sox have stolen 24 bases in 24 games since. The breakdown: Ellsbury 11, Shane Victorino 5, Dustin Pedroia 2, Will Middlebrooks 2, Stephen Drew 1, Jarrod Saltalamacchia 1, Jonny Gomes 1, Mike Carp 1.

-- Saltalamacchia is still receiving treatment on his back but was able to throw Friday and is expected to catch at some point this weekend, Farrell said.

Every day between now and the end of the regular season, we'll check in on where things stand in the playoff race.

• Red Sox record: 84-57.

• Games left: 21

• Lead in AL East: 5½ games over Tampa Bay (77-61)

• Magic number to win division: 18

• What does magic number mean? If Tampa Bay wins all 25 of its remaining games, Boston would have to win 18 to win the division.

• How to calculate magic number: You calculate your magic number by looking at the number of games remaining in the season and assuming that your nearest competitor will win all of their remaining games. Then you see how many games you still need to win to ensure the division title even with your nearest competitor winning all of their remaining games.

• Overall ranking in league (important for determining home field in playoffs): First, 2½ games ahead of Detroit, 3 games ahead of Texas and Oakland

• If season ended today, teams in playoffs: Sox, Tigers, Rangers, Athletics, Rays.

• What about the Yankees? Finished three-game sweep of White Sox, 2½ games out of a wild-card spot, about to play the Red Sox four in New York, before coming to Boston next weekend for three more.

• Who’s hot?: The Red Sox became the first team to hit eight home runs in a game since the Blue Jays hit eight in a 17-11 win over the Rays in Rogers Centre on Aug. 7, 2010. It was the 21st time in major league history a team has hit eight or more home runs. The Blue Jays hit a record 10 in a 18-3 win over the Orioles on Sept. 14, 1987, in Exhibition Stadium. The Jays were managed by Jimy Williams, who 10 years later managed the Red Sox.

• Who’s not?: Yankees pitcher Hiroki Kuroda, scheduled to face Jon Lester and the Red Sox on Sunday, is 0-3 with a 7.43 ERA in his last four starts, and has given up six home runs in 20 innings.

• Red Sox latest outcome: Beat the Tigers 20-4 on Wednesday.

• Rays latest outcome: Beat the Angels 3-1 on Wednesday.

• Notable: If the season ended today, Red Sox closer Koji Uehara would be the greatest strike-thrower since 2000 (min. 850 pitches). He is at 73.17 percent. Uehara has never thrown fewer than 69 percent of his pitches for strikes since coming to the big leagues in 2009.

• Playoff format: AL wild-card play-in game on Wednesday, Oct. 2. AL best-of-five division series begins Friday, Oct. 4.

On this week's "State of the Nation", Gordon Edes and Joe McDonald discuss the stretch run, including the return of Clay Buchholz.

BOSTON -- In the midst of an explosive offensive night for the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday night at Fenway Park, veteran designated hitter David Ortiz reached a milestone.

Ortiz collected his 2,000th career hit with an RBI double to center field in the bottom of the sixth inning of a 20-4 blowout of the Detroit Tigers. He finished the night 3-for-5 with a double, two home runs and four RBIs, and becomes one of three active players with at least 2,000 hits, 400 HRs and 1,400 RBIs, along with the Angels’ Albert Pujols and the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez.

The anticipation had been building over the last week as Ortiz inched closer to the milestone. In fact, the in-game production crew at Fenway Park had a special playlist ready to go.

When Ortiz collected his 1,999th hit with a home run in the fourth inning Wednesday night, Prince’s “1999” blared from the speakers. When he finally collected No. 2,000 with an RBI double to center off Tigers reliever Al Alburquerque, Ortiz stood on second base as the theme to Robert Redford’s movie “The Natural” played.

And as Ortiz rounded the bases during his second home run of the night, the theme to “2001: A Space Odyssey” was playing.

“Big night for David. Obviously a milestone for him,” Red Sox manager John Farrell said. “Great career and great to see the reception, the ovation that he received and rightly so.”

Ironically, earlier in the week Ortiz was contemplating whether he should appeal to Major League Baseball for a scoring change on an error in Saturday’s game against the Chicago White Sox. In the bottom of the first in that game, he smoked a line drive down the first-base line that Chicago first baseman Paul Konerko couldn’t handle. It was scored an error, and after the game Ortiz was livid, saying he would appeal.

He didn’t appeal. But if he had and he was given a hit, No. 2,000 would have been his fourth-inning homer on Wednesday, which would have been a fitting way to accomplish the feat. Either way, he received his curtain call from the fans and was appreciative of the gesture.

“It means a lot,” he said. “My life, I’ve been built up around this organization, this city and these fans. I think the best thing to ever happen to me was to come to play here in Boston because what I see every day when I get to the field is pretty much what I saw growing up. In my country, people love baseball, people live for baseball and as a player it gets you going. There’s no way there’s a day you don’t feel like coming in and trying to get it done.

“Our fans support this ball club better than anyone else I have seen and getting this done, especially here at home, it was one of those things you will never forget. I will always keep in my mind when I saw everybody on their feet when I got the 2,000th hit.

“Fans being through the bad times and the good times, our fans deserve that more than anyone else, especially after the season we had last year. What makes it more special is not only getting it done at home, is the situation that we are at. We’re pretty much walking into the playoffs and that’s something our fans have been missing for a while.”

The always-jovial Ortiz was all business during his 10-minute postgame press conference. He only broke into his vintage Big Papi smile once. He spoke about his dedication to the team concept and not personal achievements, saying he comes to the ballpark every day and tries to do something, anything to help the Red Sox win.

“But it’s great getting to that milestone and accomplished numbers that at some point when you’re not playing baseball is when you look at them and thank God for giving you a nice career,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz recorded his first major league hit on Sept. 3, 1997 while a member of the Minnesota Twins. He was a September callup, and it was his second game in the big leagues when he doubled off Chicago Cubs pitcher Mark Pisciotta.

It took Ortiz until the 2009 season to reach 1,000 hits. When asked which was tougher, the first thousand or second thousand, he answered, “Getting the next thousand is a bitch. I saw a couple of guys getting 3,000 hits in a game I was in and trust me that’s a special case.”

Because of his raw power to pull the ball as a left-handed hitter, opposing teams routinely play overshifts against Ortiz, which has robbed him of hundreds of hits during his career.

“The way they play me when I hit, I could have done this five, six years ago,” he said with a laugh. “It’s hard to get through [the shift] so it is what it is. When it comes, you’ve got to appreciate it. It’s something that’s not easy to do but when you do it, it’s always welcomed.”

During his 17-year career in the majors, Ortiz has accomplished quite a bit. He’s a nine-time All-Star. He’s won the Silver Slugger award five times. He’s been named the Sox’s MVP three times. He received the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award in 2011, which is given annually to the major leaguer who best represents the game of baseball through positive contributions on and off the field.

Oh, and he has two World Series titles, too.

At the conclusion of the 2012 season, Red Sox GM Ben Cherington said it was a priority to re-sign Ortiz and he wanted him to end his career in Boston. The sides agreed on a two-year deal worth $26 million.

After Wednesday’s game, Farrell said he couldn’t imagine managing his first season in Boston without Ortiz in the lineup.

“And I say that from a bigger-picture standpoint and what he’s meant from this organization, this city and being involved in two World Series -- already,” Farrell said. “The fixture he’s been for a number of years in the middle of the lineup, and more than anything, it was a matter of health, not production or projection what this year would have been. It was just a matter of him getting healthy, and obviously he has.”

Ortiz has been healthy and putting up some impressive numbers since he returned to the lineup full-time on April 20 after dealing with an Achilles injury that forced him to miss 71 of the final 72 games of the 2012 season.

He’s played a total of 117 games this season and owns a .313 average with 26 homers and 89 RBIs.

As the Red Sox were packing their bags and getting ready to leave for their road trip to New York to face the Yankees in a four-game set this weekend, former Red Sox catcher and current Tiger Victor Martinez poked his head in the door with a message for Ortiz.

“Two-thousand hits, to me that means you’re getting old.”

We know Jim Leyland's stay in Boston didn't end the way he would have wanted. But apparently the Red Sox's 20-4 win on Wednesday wasn't the only thing that left him with a bad taste in his mouth.

Leyland also was less than enamored with the accommodations at Fenway Park, according to this report from Tom Gage of the Detroit News:

When Tigers manager Jim Leyland was asked about the recent comments the mayor of Boston made about the city of Detroit to the New York Times Magazine -- in which Mayor Tom Menino said “I’d blow up the place and start all over” -- he had one reply and one reply only.

“He ought to be more worried about fixing up the visiting clubhouse at Fenway Park,” Leyland said. “That’s my response to his comment.”

Long considered the most cramped clubhouse in the American League, and probably in the majors as well, the visitors’ clubhouse at Fenway has no direction in which to expand because of the age and size of the ballpark.

Interior improvements appear to be minimal, as well.

“Maybe they took a toilet out and put another one in,” Leyland said. “Look, I was in the minors for 18 years, so when I say this, I say it tongue-in-cheek, but it’s not very good.

“I’ve stubbed my toe three times already on the chair the batting practice pitcher uses because it sticks out of the corner.”