Bad blood between Yankees, Red Sox is good for baseball
The NBA set its playoff field on Wednesday, and the NFL draft will soon be upon us. Few things move the sports conversation like global celebrities on the court or a new generation of franchise quarterbacks. But baseball is trying.
Right on time, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox belted out a roar of relevance from rowdy Fenway Park on Wednesday night. Commissioner Rob Manfred didn’t script it this way — if he had, the game would have been 90 minutes shorter — but his two glamour franchises were rolling around on the grass, in a game televised by MLB Network. Well, it was a beautiful sight for business.
“It’s Red Sox-Yankees,” Boston’s David Price said. “That’s what everybody wants. That’s what they got.”
The Colorado Rockies and the San Diego Padres also fought on Wednesday, with one of the game’s best players, Nolan Arenado, at the center of the fray. The combatants at Fenway were bit players — the Yankees’ Tyler Austin charged the Red Sox’ Joe Kelly — but the uniforms mattered most. You’ll be seeing Austin’s primal bat slam and Kelly’s flying fists for a long time, as symbols of the feud between these rivals.
It’s nice to know the new kids still
feel the loathing. The rosters have turned over completely since the heyday of 2003 and 2004, with all the one-name wonders — Jeter, Papi and A-Rod; Pedro, Roger and Curt; Manny, Mo and Tek — long gone. The personalities may never be as familiar and vibrant again, but these teams are worthy heirs.
Consider everything we have seen in this series: grand slams from Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez, overpowering heat from Chris Sale and Aroldis Chapman, home runs from Gary Sanchez, defensive wizardry from Didi Gregorius, 10 combined hits in the first two games from Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.
In other words, the superstars have done superstar things. Yes, the games have been long; these teams know no other way. But the talent is undeniable. You won’t find zany clubhouse characters like Johnny Damon or Kevin Millar, but the play on the field is still sublime — and feisty.
The benches actually cleared twice on Wednesday, in the third and seventh innings. Austin slid into second base in the third and spiked shortstop Brock Holt’s lower calf. Holt just stood there, telling Austin what he thought about it. Austin got a little closer, and suddenly 50 players had swarmed the field. Nothing much happened, though.
“I thought it was over,” Holt said. “We’re not trying to fight those guys over there. They’re big. I wasn’t expecting anything to happen, something did happen, and it escalated quickly.”
Since we’re using “Anchorman” terms, after Kelly drilled Austin in the seventh, the teams were throwing down in fisticuffs — a Cliff Johnson here, a Troy O’Leary there (or something like that). Kelly, naturally, insisted the pitch got away from him. Give the guy credit, at least, for selfdeprecating supporting evidence.
“I walk a batter per inning,” Kelly said, “so it’s not like I have Greg Maddux command.”
Catcher Christian Vazquez said he expected the Yankees to retaliate, either on Thursday or when the teams meet again May 8-10 in the Bronx.
“They feel like us,” Vazquez said. “The clubhouse is our home. Let’s protect our home. There will be something soon. If not this series, maybe in New York.”
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, who has seen decades of this rivalry, defended Austin for charging Kelly after the obvious purpose pitch.
“In the heat of the moment, it’s hard to control your emotions,” Cashman said. “There’s two competitive teams going at it and stuff happens and sometimes stuff shouldn’t happen.”
Aaron Boone, the Yankees’ manager, mentioned the incident last April between the Red Sox and Manny Machado, the Baltimore Orioles star who injured Dustin Pedroia with a hard slide. That sparked an awkward followup in which Boston’s Matt Barnes threw behind Machado, only to have Pedroia tell Machado, from the dugout, that he had nothing to do with it.
The Red Sox went on to win the division, of course, but the ordeal underscored at least some level of dysfunction or absence of
leadership. That does not seem to be an issue anymore. In the code of the clubhouse, Kelly protected his teammate, and Holt liked what it suggested.
“It shows how close-knit we are in here,” Holt said, “and the same goes for them, how closeknit they are.”
Had the Red Sox been playing another team, the incident might have played out the same way; a spike to the calf hurts just as much from a Mariner as it does from a Yankee. But when a Yankee does it at Fenway, there are layers of historical resonance.
“Bench-clearing brawls are bench-clearing brawls,” Holt said. “I think Red Sox-Yankees makes it bigger for people outside of the Red Sox and Yankees — fans and media and stuff like that, I think that’s a big part of it. But I don’t think it’s any different for us.”