TOM WAITS INTERVIEWS HIMSELF, which is predictably a bit self-involved, but at least it’s more interesting than your usual music magazine article.

Q: What’s wrong with the world?

A: We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. Leona Helmsley’s dog made $12 million last year . . . and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio, made $30,000. It’s just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains. We are monkeys with money and guns.

IT AIN’T OVER UNTIL IT’S OVER, and then sometimes it’s not over even after that. The last two games against the Toronto Blue Jays each had do-overs. The first one featured a walkoff win, complete with dress rehearsal:

Few things are more embarrassing than premature exhilaration. That’s what the Red Sox were guilty of last night at the Fens when they came storming out of their dugout to celebrate another apparent walkoff win, only to have plate umpire Sam Holbrook stop them short when he signaled that Jed Lowrie was out at home, the left leg of Toronto catcher Rod Barajas blocking Lowrie from his destination in the bottom of the ninth.

Instead of being in the vortex of a swirling bunch of delirious teammates, Lowrie was staring at a monitor in the runway behind the Sox dugout, watching a replay of the throw from Blue Jays center fielder Vernon Wells that deprived Brandon Moss of a game-winning hit.

“I got done with my clip, and on live TV [Jason] Varitek was hitting the ball,” the Sox rookie said.

The following night was less dramatic, but just as silly:

No ninth-inning thunder last night. . . . But there were fireworks – after an apparent game-ending fly ball by Coco Crisp was nullified by second base umpire Bruce Dreckman, who called a balk on closer B.J. Ryan before he threw the pitch. The umpire ruled that Ryan had not come to a stop before throwing plateward.

“We saw it,” Sox manager Terry Francona said of Dreckman’s call. “He threw his arms up and we knew it was going to take a second.”

With the crowd already headed for the exits and the Jays lining up for postgame high-fives, Jays manager John Gibbons, who had already begun strolling onto the field to slap some hands, flew into a rage when informed of Dreckman’s call. He confronted the umpire, and was ejected.

“Their whole team was on the field,” Sox catcher Kevin Cash said. “It was kind of like us [Wednesday] night, when we all ran out and Jed [Lowrie] was thrown out at the plate.”

AND, OH YEAH, can we have more of these, please?:

The start of the game was delayed 15 minutes by rain but it lasted just two hours, 18 minutes, Boston’s shortest game of the year.

“Great pitching on both sides is what it came down to,” Toronto manager John Gibbons said.

AS MUCH HARD LUCK AS THE RED SOX recently had with great pitching but tough losses, Roy Halladay had worse:

It was Halladay’s fourth straight complete game. He’s lost the last three.

But then again, Pedroia was there to make sure everyone knew the Sox earned the win:

Lester allowed just one hit in eight innings, a clean single on Lyle Overbay’s liner in the fifth over second baseman Pedroia’s head. But Pedroia kept the game scoreless in the ninth when he dove to his right and nabbed Wells’ grounder after Scott Rolen had doubled off Jonathan Papelbon (1-0) with two outs.

Pedroia gloved the ball and threw out Wells.

“Anybody’s diving for any balls in that situation,” Pedroia said. “It definitely got the crowd involved. It’s a little bit of momentum. They could have had a run and it gets taken away.”

Wells wanted to hit the ball up the middle.

“I saw it get by the mound,” he said, “and I saw Superman at second base.”

That play also earned Pedroia Baseball Tonight’s number one Web Gem, by the way.

THE SCIENCE OF BASEBALL sometimes includes mad scientists. Sure, there’s the famous shift – often employed against Big Papi – where the field is stacked on the right, leaving the entire third base side wide open. But then there’s craziness like this:

Braves manager Bobby Cox was desperate, and he was plotting an ingenious plan. He was nearly out of right-handed pitchers, and players can’t re-enter a game after they’ve been removed. If Mr. Resop, a righty, could play the outfield, that would allow Mr. Cox to replace him on the mound temporarily — and use a lefty specialist to pitch to Adam LaRoche — without losing him entirely. So after Mr. Resop pitched to three batters in the top of the 10th inning, Mr. Cox had him go to left field. When Mr. Resop returned to the pitcher’s mound one batter later, it marked the first time a pitcher had pitched, played the field and pitched again in the same game since Jeff Nelson of the Seattle Mariners in 1993, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

But if Mr. Melvin had his way, the Brewers organization might be even more progressive. He has another counterintuitive idea: using relievers to start the game, and delaying the “starting” pitcher’s entrance until the third inning or so. The thinking is that starters are typically among a team’s best pitchers, yet nowadays they often pitch only through the fifth or sixth inning, well before many games are decided. By having them pitch later, they’d be around for the higher-leverage innings.

The idea would need to be tested first in the minor leagues, Mr. Melvin says. The only problem, it appears, is that it’s too unconventional. “I can’t get anybody to do it,” he says.

ON A NIGHT WHEN BECKETT, VARITEK, LOWELL, CORA AND CRISP are all unavailable, this is a pretty great sentence to be able to read:

Jacoby Ellsbury hit two solo homers and Kevin Youkilis added a two-run shot for Boston, while Pedroia went 4-for-5 with three doubles and a single.

It’s their sixth straight win and third late-inning comeback.

TURNS OUT THE HEX WASN’T A HOAX, but did it actually become a pox on the Sox, and not a prank on the Yanks? It may have seemed like a great idea to bury a Red Sox jersey underneath the new Yankee Stadium as a curse on the Yankees, but the symbolism never really made sense to me. Turns out the jersey buried in concrete bore the name of one Mr. David Ortiz, whose .070 average and 3 for 43 slump definitely borders on the supernatural, but in a bad way. Looks like the construction worker’s well-meaning curse may have backfired. Oops. Now that the Yanks have excavated the jersey, let’s see if Papi gets his mojo back.