Riddle me this: When does a win feel like a loss?

The Red Sox won the series finale at Oakland on Thursday, avoiding the sweep and ending a four game skid, but it barely feels that way. Not with Curt Schilling taking a no-hitter into the ninth and retiring the first two batters before giving up a hard single to Shannon Stewart. The actual outcome ran a distant second to Curt's climb up baseball's Mt. Everest, but if you don't plant the flag at the summit it sort of feels like a wasted trip.

That's not to discount Schilling's performance. He was brilliant. 100 pitches. 71 strikes. Longest losing streak of the season: over. That's what your ace is supposed to do. Still, in the story-length season, it would've been nice to end this particular early-June sentence with an exclamation point, not a period.

Would it have erased all memories of the recent mini-swoon? No. Would it have changed the fact that the Yankees took two out of three over the weekend? No. Would it have obscured the fact that Schilling probably needed to pitch a near no-hitter thanks to the Sox one run on four hits (and a slight seven runs over the four-game series)? Probably.

That's the difference between a no-hitter and a one-hitter. Not what it accomplishes but how it feels. But that same line is blurred considerably when you lose it with one out.