Do or die adds to drama of MLB’s greatest rivalry
As Pedro Martinez once famously said, wake up the Bambino. Have him dust off the Bucky Dent footage, get ready to re-live 2003 and 2004 all over again in the span of a few hours, and tell your loved ones on the other side of the rivalry that you’ll talk to them on Wednesday when the skirmish is over.
“You can feel that Yankees-Red Sox is a little different,” first-year Yankee Jameson Taillon said in anticipation of the game. “I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’m sure this will be a crazy game.”
Tonight brings exactly what the league office wants — and surely some of the sicker fans across New England and the five boroughs — in the form of a winner-take-all game between the Yankees and Red Sox. The victorious side marches deeper into the playoffs while the loser gets nothing more than a Wild Card game participation trophy, a piddly consolation prize for clubs like the Yankees and Red Sox who expect greatness at every turn.
Aaron Boone, already the author of one of the most seminal moments in Yankee-Red Sox history, could hardly let himself enjoy Sunday’s win before shifting back into work mode. But he’s cognizant and appreciative of the fact that just getting to this point has been a tremendous ordeal. His team had basically everything thrown at them over the course of 162 games, and to see it end before the playoffs would have been crushing beyond belief.
“It’s relief, it’s joy,” Boone described of reaching this point. “There’s some joy to the ride we’ve been on. It hasn’t been easy. At all.”
A one-game playoff against a 92-win team, for the right to play a 100-win team at the next stage, is but another herculean task for the Yankees. The last time they squared off with Boston in the postseason, the Red Sox doused an extra coat of vinegar on the rivalry with a 16-1 win at Yankee Stadium in Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS, taking control of that first-round series and steering them toward a World Series parade.
The Rays look like the American League’s immovable object in this postseason, and the Astros and White Sox will be tough outs as well if the Yankees can get past the Wild Card round to upset the Rays, but a sport that’s seen an 83-78 team win a championship cannot rule out any of its playoff participants.
“I know it took us a while to get going, but we’ve got a spot in the playoffs,” said Aaron Judge, who stoked the fires in that 2018 Red Sox series by blasting “New York, New York” on a portable speaker as he left Fenway Park after Game 2. “All you’ve got to do is just get in.”
For really the entire 21st century, the Red Sox have claimed the Yankees’ mantle as the historic AL East team that plays deep into October regularly. Since the Yankees lost to Arizona in 2001, the Red Sox have double the World Series appearances (four to the Bombers’ two) and more importantly, have won all four of those. The bad blood — along with really the entire sport — has cooled off in the last 15 years, and there absolutely will not be a beanball war or dugout-clearing brawl that ends with an elderly coach being thrown to the ground by an opposing player.
But baseball is still baseball, and the stakes are never higher than they are when these two teams share a field with postseason bragging rights on the line.
“This point of the year there’s no holding anything back,” Taillon said. “I’m a guy who’s never been on a team like this, never been in the playoffs. It’s going to be exciting, and there’s no one I’d rather have on the mound than Gerrit Cole.”
Cole and Nathan Eovaldi are on a collision course for their third matchup of the year. Cole and the Yankees took the first two meetings between these flamethrowing pitchers, which one would imagine is only making the Red Sox hungrier.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” Yankee reliever Chad Green visualized. “That’s not an easy place to play. We were in some must-win games last time we were there. I think we enjoy that. It should be a good one.”
Good one or not, tonight’s American League Wild Card game is the highest version of sports as theater. The backstories run over 110 years into the past, and after the years they’ve had, both teams will be clamoring for a signature win over their biggest haters. Pure entertainment distilled into nine innings, or perhaps more, with a simple reward dangling in front of both teams like a hanging curveball.
If you win, you get to keep chasing this high.