Bombers punch out hated Kelly
Joe Kelly claims he didn’t hear anything he hadn’t before while warming up in the bullpen on Tuesday night, but the fans at Yankee Stadium definitely made sure to voice their disdain for the Boston reliever when he was summoned into the series opener in the seventh inning. Kelly, who triggered a bench-clearing brawl by drilling Tyler Austin with a fastball at Fenway on April 11, was booed heavily upon entering and then coughed up the go-ahead run on a bases-loaded single by Aaron Judge for a 3-2 Yankees victory and a tie for first place in the AL East. “It was good. It was fine,” Kelly said afterward about the anticipated crowd reaction. “It was probably more like, I’d say, a playoff atmosphere. Any time you pitch in the playoffs, it’s very similar, so it was fun.”
The end result certainly was fun and gratifying for the Yankees, who have won 16 of 17 to fully erase what had been a 7½-game divisional deficit as recently as April 20. Giancarlo Stanton, who had slugged two solo homers off Sox lefty Drew Pomeranz earlier in the game, called scoring the winning run with Kelly on the mound “the perfect script” after “what happened over there” in Boston last month.
“I was inside getting ready to be honest, but I could hear it through the door,” Stanton said of the crowd’s reaction to Kelly’s entrance. “I’m sure it was nice and loud.”
While Red Sox catcher Christian Vazquez had suggested last month that he expected the Bombers to retaliate at some point this season, Yanks manager Aaron Boone said before the game that he didn’t expect any carryover this week.
“No, not at all,” Boone said. “I think obviously we’re getting ready to play a really good team, but I think what happened is behind us and looking forward hopefully to just some really good baseball these next few days.”
Further putting the bad blood aside, Yanks GM Brian Cashman even slapped an “I Heart Phil Nevin” sticker on first-year Boston manager Alex Cora’s back while they were chatting behind the cage during batting practice. Nevin — the Yanks’ third-base coach — and Cora, remember, also had exchanged heated words during the April brawl.
Once Cora realized he’d been pranked, he bearhugged Cashman, as the two shared a laugh.
A few hours later, Boston had forged a 2-2 tie against Luis Severino and David Robertson in the top of the seventh, but the Yanks loaded the bases against Sox reliever Heath Hembree in the bottom half on Neil Walker’s double, a walk to Gleyber Torres, a balk and another walk to Brett Gardner.
Judge then greeted Kelly with a sharp single to left to snap the tie, even if a poor send by Nevin resulted in Andrew Benintendi easily throwing out Torres at the plate for the second out of the inning ultimately didn’t end up costing the Yanks.
“You don’t forget, but you’ve got to move on,” Judge said when asked about last month’s brawl. “You can’t live in the past. There’s nothing you can do about it. It happened. It got resolved and now it’s time to play baseball. But the crowd was rocking all night. They were on their feet and really behind us the whole game. It was a fun atmosphere to play in.”