READY TO RUMBLE!
Yanks, Sox will fight it out in 5-game series Happ, Sale set to square off in Game 1
BOSTON — Think of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry this way.
Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fight 19 times across six months then in a best-offive affair in October for a chance at the heavyweight title.
The hatred is there for 19 bouts and seeps out of every pore in each man’s skin. Yet when the title is on the line, they will clutch, stick thumbs in each other’s eyes and hit below the belt because anything goes against a blood rival.
Now that the Red Sox and Yankees are postseason foes for the first time since the memorable 2004 ALCS in which Boston lost the first three games and won the next four to get to the World Series, the emotions will be hard to check for teams that dislike each other and brawled on Fenway Park’s hallowed ground on May 11 after Joe Kelly hit Tyler Austin.
It wasn’t Pedro Martinez tossing Don Zimmer to the same turf in 2003, but it showed the level of dislike the teams have for each other, which in today’s homogenized game is a pleasure to see.
Game 1 of the best-of-five ALDS is Fri- day night at Fenway and will feature lefty starters Chris Sale for the Red Sox and J.A. Happ for the Yankees. Game 2 is Saturday evening with David Price opposing Masahiro Tanaka.
Watching the Yankees beat the A’s, 7-2, Wednesday in the AL wild-card game Wednesday, Sale clearly understood everyone outside of Oakland was salivating for this matchup.
“I mean, what else do you want?’’ Sale said Thursday before the Red Sox worked out in New England’s living room. “You got the Yankees and the Red Sox in the
playoffs playing against each other. One of the biggest rivalries in sports ever. It’s what we signed up for.’’
Sale was a teenager when the rivalry was at its peak in 2003 and 2004 and recalled what it looked like.
“Obviously, looking back, it’s a lot of heated rivalries. You know that is part of the buildup to this,’’ Sale said. “I know you guys like to make a big deal of it and everything because of what has happened in the past, obviously earlier this year and all that. You got two big-time teams that played really good baseball throughout the regular season about to go head-tohead [in] the most important time of the year. If you can’t get excited, I think you are doing the wrong thing.’’
Everything being even, Sale would be considered the better left-handed starter in Game 1, and that takes nothing away from Happ, who went 7-0 with a 2.69 ERA in 11 starts after being acquired from the Blue Jays in late July. However, everything isn’t even.
Due to a left shoulder issue, the Red Sox ace worked just a dozen innings in four outings after Aug. 12, and when he pitched late in the season, his velocity dropped from 98 mph to the 92-93 mph range.
Sale, who was 12-4 with a 2.11 ERA in 27 starts, isn’t going to offer a health excuse if he doesn’t pitch well against the Yankees, against whom he went 2-0 with a 0.69 ERA in two starts this year.
“If I take the mound, I expect to win. I don’t care what I have on a given day,’’ Sale said when asked if he could be effective throwing with diminished velocity. “I should be able to find a way with whatever I have.’’
Dellin Betances’ two outstanding innings of relief in the middle of the wild-card game played a big part of the Yankees reaching the ALDS, where they found themselves painted as the underdog, which isn’t the view the right-handed reliever has.
“I don’t see ourselves as an underdog. Obviously Boston had a tremendous season. We respect them and they respect us as well,’’ Betances said.
While respect runs both ways, so does dislike. In a five-game series between teams that have never stopped hating each other, even if it isn’t 2003 and 2004, those hard feelings are bound to surface.