RIP UP THE SCRIPT
Best Sox-Yankees fun is organic variety
If the Red Sox have any sense of decency, or, if nothing else, a sense of humor, a pregame ceremony will be held tonight at Fenway Park to honor the dearly departed Tyler Austin.
We must always remember that it was Austin who teamed up with Fightin’ Joe Kelly earlier this season to accomplish something that proved beyond the reach of sports columnists, talk-show hosts and, especially, television network executives: Make Red Sox-Yankees Great Again.
It was on the night of April 11 that Kelly drilled Austin in the ribs, whereupon the rugged first baseman charged the mound as in days of old. By the time the fracas was over we had 1) a really cool photo that made it seem as though Kelly was flailing at Austin like Rocky in the last round, and 2) renewed hostilities between the Sox and Yankees even before we knew both teams were going to be really, really good. (The Red Sox were 9-1 at the start of business that night, the Yankees only 5-6.)
Alas, the Yanks made a deadline deal the other day that sent Austin to the Minnesota Twins for something they needed more than moxie: pitching. So Lance Lynn is in, and Tyler Austin . . . well, Tyler, we hardly knew ye. But thanks for everything. As the Sox and Yankees open a four-game series tonight at Fenway Park, he remains part of the reason baseball fans everywhere will be following what happens at America’s Most Beloved Ballpark (© Larry Lucchino 2004) over the next four days.
A lot has transpired since April 11. The two teams are among the best in the game, creating a divisional race of history-making significance. Had commissioner Rob Manfred wanted to fix all the games in order to create a regularseason competition that’s white hot to the touch, this is what he would have come up with.
This summertime AL East thunderstorm, coupled with the April showers of a bench-clearing dustup, have taught us something we should have known all along: In order for a Red Sox-Yankees game to mean anything, the circumstances leading up to it must be organic.
Austin-vs.-Kelly? That was organic. Each team on pace to win 100plus games? That, too, is organic. Everything else has been so much Marketing 101, such as all nationally televised Sox-Yankees games opening with a well-intentioned highlight reel of Fisk vs. Piniella, Pedro vs. Zimmer, Tek vs. A-Rod, etc. It’s always fun for the folks at home, but it’s doubtful anybody in either clubhouse ever watched one of those openings and then bashed his forehead through a wall like Ray Nitschke in “The Longest Yard.”
Such are the stakes here — the AL East winner will proceed to a best-of-five Division Series, the second-place finisher will go home to play a one-and-done wild card game — that the Yankees and Red Sox have made moves to shore up their rosters. The Yankees did it with starting pitching (Lynn, lefty J.A. Happ) and bullpen help (Zach Britton), and the Red Sox went with starting pitching (Nathan Eovaldi) and a second baseman they hope can do what Dustin Pedroia used to do (Ian Kinsler).
Will that be enough? With the Yankees, the continued worry will be whether they have enough starting pitching. With the Red Sox, we’re back to resurrecting the old stories about how president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has never met a bullpen he didn’t overestimate. Will it haunt the Red Sox if Dombrowski doesn’t add another reliever? We likely won’t have an answer to that question this weekend, and, anyway, relievers frequently do the limbo under the waiver wire in August and September, so stay tuned on that.
The bigger subplot in the resumption of Red Sox-Yankees will be injuries. Sox ace Chris Sale is on the disabled list with what the team is calling “mild shoulder inflammation” but what you are calling “oh oh.” Additionally, there’s some wait-and-see going on with Xander Bogaerts, who took a 99mph fastball from the Phillies’ Seranthony Dominguez off his right hand Tuesday night. Yankees fans, meanwhile, especially Yankees fans who have turned the right field bleachers at Yankee Stadium into a make-pretend courtroom, are hoping Aaron Judge will be his old, slugging self when he returns from the DL after being diagnosed with a fracture in his right wrist last week following a plunking by the Royals’ Jake Junis.
But guess what: Not only are injuries “part of the game,” as sportswriters have been reminding us since the days of Old Hoss Radbourn, they are — wait for it, wait for it — organic.
Nothing that’s happened with the Red Sox and Yankees this season has been in accordance with a script. As such, nobody will need a grainy replay of Carlton Fisk and Lou Piniella rolling around in the dirt to get excited about this series; blessedly, the anticipation of what hasn’t happened yet is enough.