There are so many variables. These numbers mean nothing when they're announced.

This is the biggest yet of the Red Sox-Yankees series in the three years that I've been here. Even bigger than Opening Day this year, when we had the ring ceremony.

Theo appreciates the support, but of course he will not be attending. We were all surprised to see the media coverage this good-natured exchange generated.

[It's one of the great enduring absurdities of baseball: As much as the game is ruled by numbers and endlessly deconstructed by statisticians, most ball clubs don't have any reliable method for determining how far a batted ball has traveled once it leaves the field of play. When they aren't making crude geometric calculations on scratch paper or just purely guessing, team officials rely on survey diagrams that are nearly 20 years old or even send out members of the grounds crew to clamber around the outfield with spools of measuring tape. Accuracy has become such a problem that some teams have stopped trying to estimate distances entirely.] There are so many variables, ... These numbers mean nothing when they're announced.

We're going to do a couple of smaller things to accommodate more people, but we're not going into all-out Division Series mode. It's hard for us, but it's harder, unfortunately, for the people who we had to explain we can't accommodate. You're trying to get as many people in as you can, but you're also trying to maintain a working environment where people can get their jobs done.

We selected a course of action that we thought was appropriate and enforceable.