my girl lisa olson's back and spinning her dewy spiderwebs about what else? the rivalry.

There is a community on Martha's Vineyard, a row of gingerbread houses that in the 1930s served as a religious campground but is now summer home to people like Paul Harris and Meta Scheuelin. Meta, from Cambridge, Mass., is a Sox fan by decree, her allegiance passed down like a precious amulet from her grandfather; Paul, from Weston, Conn., grew up in West Hartford in a mostly Red Sox house but became a Yankee fan in 1977 when he watched Reggie Jackson hit three home runs against the Dodgers in Game 6 of the World Series. "I had never seen anything like that," he says. His conversion was prophetic timing considering the next year would bring great rapture off Dent's bat.

The Martha's Vineyard houses are clustered together, the rituals timeless. In the morning, neighbors gather around the porches and sip coffee and relive the game from the previous night. Most everyone who takes the ferryboat over wears a Red Sox cap, but not all. Paul has been coming here for 43 years, always armed with the same jokes. How can you tell it's Columbus Day? Everyone comes to close their house and put away the Red Sox for the season.

One day three summers ago, Meta woke to find odd etchings — NY 4, Bos 3, she thinks it was — written in chalk on the pavement outside her cottage. They were simple and clean numbers, like you'd find in a box score. Soon she was retaliating, sometimes crawling on her hands and knees to print her own score. Now each night numbers appear, almost as if they're scrawled by magic. Even Paul's girls, Caroline, 11, and Charlotte, 8, began adding their artistic flourishes to the street scene, continuing the game for a new generation.

"It's become pretty serious the last two years with us trying to outwit each other and seeing who can get it done without being caught," says Meta.

"This," says Paul, "is going to be a very humble summer."