The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bogaerts, Red Sox dent Cole, beat Yankees in wild card
As the ball sailed over the center-field fence, landing 427 feet from the plate in a horde of happy Red Sox fans, Xander Bogaerts turned to the Boston dugout to flex his muscles before resuming his home run trot.
This is the matchup the Yankees wanted. And the Red Sox were ready.
Bogaerts and Kyle Schwarber homered off Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, and Nathan Eovaldi took a shutout into the sixth inning in the AL wild-card game to help the Red Sox beat New York 6-2 on Tuesday night. Bogaerts also cut down Aaron Judge at the plate in the sixth as Boston advanced to the best-of-five AL Division Series against the Rays. Game 1 is tonight in St. Petersburg, Florida.
The Yankees, who lead the majors with 27 World Series championships, have not won it all since 2009. After angling for a matchup with the Red Sox in a potential tiebreaker, the Yankees wound up in Boston for the wild-card game instead. And the Red Sox beat them in the postseason for the third straight try.
“Guys are crushed,” New York manager Aaron Boone said.
A year after baseball took its postseason into neutral site bubbles to protect against the pandemic, a sellout crowd of 38,324 — the biggest at Fenway Park since the 2018 World Series — filled the old yard to rekindle one of the sport’s most passionate rivalries. Enough Yankee fans were among them to fuel a raucous back-andforth of insulting chants. “The Bogaerts homer in the first inning — I mean, talk about a pop . ... The crowd went nuts, and you feed off that energy,” Schwarber said.
It was the fifth playoff matchup between the longtime foes, with Boston taking a 3-2 edge. That doesn’t count the 1978 AL East tiebreaker — technically regular season Game No. 163 — that the Yankees won with Bucky Dent’s homer.
Boone was a New York third baseman who added to the heartbreak with his 11th-inning walk-off homer in Game 7 of the 2003 AL Championship Series. The Red Sox haven’t lost to them in the playoffs since.
In the first inning Tuesday, Bogaerts drilled a line drive 427 feet to straightaway center. The Red Sox chased Cole in the third after he allowed Schwarber’s solo shot and put two more men on with nobody out. In all, he was charged with three runs on four hits and two walks, striking out three in two-plus innings.
Eovaldi only allowed two hits through five innings before giving up a solo home run to Anthony Rizzo. Judge followed with an infield single that finished Eovaldi, and reliever Ryan Brasier gave up a wall single to Giancarlo Stanton. Waved home by third base coach Phil Nevin, Judge was thrown out at the plate.
In all, Eovaldi allowed one run on four hits in 5⅓ innings, striking out eight.
Alex Verdugo hit an RBI double in the sixth and then singled in two more in the seventh to give Boston a 6-1 lead. Stanton’s solo homer in the ninth made it 6-2.