Touch 'Em All: Yankees, Red Sox wrap up marathon in Boston

Breaking news: The Yankees and Red Sox have wrapped up their three-game series. That's right - for the first time in modern memory, Boston and New York are not playing each other.

OK, we exaggerate. But not by much. The three-game series took 11 hours, 36 minutes to complete, with the Bombers taking the series, two games to one, with a 4-2 win at Fenway that took 4 hours, 21 minutes on Thursday. (Comparison: On Monday, the Yanks put away the Orioles, 3-2, in a tidy 2:32.)

The first two games of the series went 3:59 and 3:16, respectively. None were extra-inning affairs, just very slow.

Boston's Jon Lester, who threw 43 pitches in the first inning and took Thursday's loss, called Yankee games "a grind."

Or do the perennial rivals simply like each other's company?

No surprise here: Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano is finished for the season, with Chicago announcing he will not be brought back after his 30-day suspension ends on Sept. 11.

The club said they'll pay the mercurial righthander after the suspension, but lack time to get him to get ready to pitch.

Zambrano cleaned out his locker and talked about retiring after giving up five homers, buzzing two pitches past Chipper Jones, and being ejected during a loss to Atlanta on Aug. 12.

Despite cutting veterans Aaron Rowand and Miguel Tejada, the battered San Francisco Giants are talking as if they are not really running up the white flag and still plan to catch the Arizona Diamondbacks, who come into AT&T Park on Friday riding a nine-game winning streak (and whose starters have a 1.05 ERA during said streak).

Outfielder Pat Burrell is even channeling Bluto Blutarsky: "I think this team responds better when all the chips are out on the table. There's no secret, these guys are coming in and they've proven they deserve to be where they're at. . . . And we've slipped, no doubt about it. But it isn't over. We're going to fight this thing out." (Look for this speech on SanFran-a-vision in the late innings, Giants fans!)

(Hey, now that Jim Thome has gone to Cleveland, how about bringing fan favorite Rowand back to the Phillies? He did once run into a wall at Citizens Bank Park.)

They saved the best for last. The U.S. Postal Service has announced that Ted Williams will be the fourth face on its Major League Baseball All-Stars set of "forever" stamps, joining Joe DiMaggio, Larry Doby and Willie Stargell.

Williams is a natural for the honor, not just for that 1941 season (.406, 37 HRs, 120 RBIs), or his career marks (.344, 521 HRs, 2,654 hits). What makes him one of the greats is this: he could have had more, but missed five years of his prime as a pilot during World War II and in Korea (39 combat missions).