Can’t Put Champagne Back in the Bottle

When Fox’s Joe Buck showed up Saturday to announce the Boston Red Sox-New York Yankee game, he learned through Major League Baseball that if the Yankees won, they would be the American League East champions, no matter what happened Sunday.

Buck was told that the Yankees would win the title even if they finished with the same record as the Red Sox, because the Yankees had won the season series.

Buck informed his viewing audience of the situation a number of times during the telecast, hoping the information was correct.

“I was certainly relieved when I saw the Yankee players come out of the dugout to celebrate [after their 8-4 victory],” Buck said.

“Then on the way back to the hotel I began to worry, ‘What if they thought they had won the title because they were watching TV in the clubhouse, and I was wrong?’ ”

He wasn’t wrong.

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Trivia time: The NFL Players Assn. went on strike on this day in 1987, with replacement players filling in. How many former UCLA quarterbacks became NFL starters?

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The root of the matter: Buck, who followed his legendary father, Jack, as a St. Louis Cardinal announcer, was on a conference call with reporters Monday when one of them began a question with, “You’ve been through this before ...”

“No,” Buck interrupted, “I’m not rooting for the Cardinals.”

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East Coast bias: New York Post columnist Kevin Kernan pointed out that during Sunday’s game at Fenway Park in Boston one fan held up a sign directed at the Yankees. It read: “There’s no escape. See you in the playoffs.”

Added Kernan: “Count on it.”

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Politically incorrect: Of the chances of the Yankees and Red Sox meeting again in the second round, at least one Yankee is sure it will happen.

“I think it’s inevitable,” Alex Rodriguez was quoted as saying by the Post. “We know that to get where we want to go, we need to go through the Red Sox. And I think the Red Sox know that for them to get where they want to go, they need to go through us.”

Added Post columnist Mike Vaccaro: “It was an impolitic thing to say, of course, because the White Sox and Angels probably feel the road to the end of October may well lead through Chicago and Anaheim.”

That’s a pretty good probability.

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Looking back: On this day in 1927, jockey Johnny Longden, who rode 6,032 winners before retiring at 59 in 1966, won for the first time in a race at Salt Lake City.

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Trivia answer: Four: Steve Bono with the Pittsburgh Steelers, David Norrie with the New York Jets, Rick Neuheisel with the San Diego Chargers and Matt Stevens with the Kansas City Chiefs.

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And finally: Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune called the division series between the Red Sox and White Sox “an old-school fight to the death between the Reversed Curse and the Cursed Worse.”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.