The greatest rivalry in sports reignited tonight
Sox vs. Yanks in do-or-die Wild Card game
Everyone has a Red SoxYankees story.
Gerrit Cole, Nathan Eovaldi and Kyle Schwarber — some of the key figures of the next chapter of the storied rivalry tonight — may have just been in middle school when Aaron Boone took Tim Wakefield deep to win the 2003 ALCS, or when the Red Sox made history a year later. But they certainly remember.
None of the players were alive in 1978, the last time the Red Sox and Yankees played a winner-take-all game at Fenway Park. But being part of the rivalry now, they know.
“Bucky Dent, right?” Cole said Monday at Fenway Park. “As a kid growing up watching Pedro (Martinez) and Roger (Clemens) duke it out, I didn’t quite catch Roger at the beginning when he was here, or (Andy) Pettitte against Pedro, Pettitte against any big-time Red Sox guys, what a fantastic game to watch.
“You’re dreaming about putting yourself in that position and coming through for your team and here we are.”
Cole doesn’t have to dream anymore. It’s reality.
For the first time since Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, the Red Sox and Yankees will engage in a do-or-die playoff game. It’ll be the type of theater they grew up watching, even if the rivalry isn’t quite what it used to be.
Schwarber has only been with the Red Sox for two months, and he grew up in the midwest. But this rivalry was at the roots of his baseball foundation, all the way back to when Jason Varitek and Alex Rodriguez started that famous brawl in July 2004.
“I always felt like when you flipped on ESPN on Sunday night, it was Yankees/ Red Sox,” Schwarber said. “Being able to grow up watching games like this and see the hard-fought battles that they had. You know, I think the most memorable one for guys kind of my age is the Varitek/A-Rod shoving match. That’s the memorable one for us.”
What happened in 1978 is in the distant past. Even Cora was just 3 years old when Dent hit a homer to the screen above the Green Monster to help catapult the Yankees over the Red Sox. As a player, he didn’t join the rivalry until 2005, but he knows what made it so dramatic and memorable.
“It was more about the characters, the players, bigger-than-life personas, like Manny (Ramirez) and David (Ortiz),” Cora said.
“Even David now, he’s retiring, he’s Big Papi. Obviously (Derek) Jeter and (Jorge) Posada and the names at that point, it was like, wow, these guys are unbelievable players.
“We have great players. We have some good players. … They used to fight, too, back in the day, Jason and Alex, so I think that gave it a little bit more for the fan base.”
There aren’t as many characters nowadays, but the stakes are just as high. tonight has the recipe for an epic matchup. It will pit a pair of aces, Eovaldi vs. Cole, in a high-stakes, electric environment of Fenway. But the two teams won’t need any extra drama.
A report Sunday — before the final games of the season began — that if the day resulted in a four-way tie for the two AL Wild Card spots, that the Yankees would have chosen to play the Red Sox in Boston instead of the Blue Jays in Toronto in a tiebreaker game. It made sense, given complicated protocols for teams crossing the border to Canada, but also because of the Yankees’ recent success against the Red Sox. They’ve won the last six games, including a sweep at Fenway last weekend.
But Cora isn’t putting that on a bulletin board inside their clubhouse.
“We don’t need that,” Cora said. “What we want to do is play in Tampa in a few days. If we need something like that, we’re not as good as we think we are. That’s part of the process.”
For Boone, forever a Red Sox villain after his 2003 heroics, he’s not totally sure if the Yankees’ recent success will play a factor tonight. He’s been involved in this rivalry long enough to know nothing is guaranteed.
“Whenever I’ve been asked about momentum in baseball, I never knew what to answer until 2003, coming over here and being a part of that team, playing against a great Red Sox team,” the Yankees manager said. “I used to hear that all the time, we’d win a game and take the momentum and then they’d beat the crap out of us the next day and I’m like, ‘OK, I don’t know what any of it means.’”
The history will only matter so much between the lines tonight, but it will make what unfolds at Fenway that much more compelling. Someone, some way, will write the next great chapter and next great story in this storied rivalry.
“I think there will be some tension, electricity, everything you could hope for for a winner-take-all game in the playoffs and two outstanding franchises and teams,” Boone said.