As the ball sailed over the center-field fence on Tuesday, landing 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 as they beat the New York Yankees 6-2 in the American League wild-card game.
Bogaerts and Kyle Schwarber homered off Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, while Nathan Eovaldi took a shutout into the sixth inning in the matchup the Yankees wanted.
The Red Sox were ready.
Photo: AFP
Bogaerts also cut down Aaron Judge at the plate in the sixth inning as Boston advanced to the best-of-five AL Division Series against the Tampa Bay Rays.
“Now we go to the next one, and we’ve just got to be ready to face a great baseball team,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “Coming into the season, everybody talked about them being the best team in the big leagues, and we have a huge challenge, but we’re ready for it.”
The Yankees, who lead the major leagues 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.
Photo: EPA-EFE
And the Red Sox beat them in the post-season for the third straight try.
“Guys are crushed,” New York manager Aaron Boone said. “The ending is really cruel, but there’s nothing better than competing for something meaningful.”
A year after baseball in the US took its post-season into neutral site “bubbles” amid the COVID-19 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 Yankees fans were among them to fuel a raucous back-and-forth of insulting chants.
“The Bogaerts homer in the first inning — I mean, talk about a pop. And, you know, the crowd went nuts, and you feed off that energy,” Schwarber said. “You thrive for that, and Red Sox nation brought it tonight. We needed it, and you can’t say enough about the crowd.”
It was the fifth playoff matchup between the longtime foes, with Boston taking a 3-2 edge.
That does not count the 1978 AL East tiebreaker — technically a regular-season game — which the Yankees won thanks to Bucky Dent’s homer into the net above the Green Monster.
Boone was a New York third baseman when added to the heartbreak with his 11th-inning walk-off homer in Game 7 of the 2003 AL Championship Series.
The Red Sox have not lost to them since.
They got their revenge the next year when they rallied after losing the first three games of the AL Championship Series to eliminate the Yankees, then went on to win their first World Series title in 86 years.
They won three more championships, in 2007, 2013 and in 2018, when they knocked out the Yankees in the divisional round.
Any lingering pain disappeared into the center-field bleachers in the first inning on Tuesday.
Unlike Dent, who barely cleared the left-field wall, Bogaerts drilled a line drive to straightaway center. And unlike Carlton Fisk, who contorted his body to will the ball fair in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, Bogaerts interrupted his home run trot only to flex for the Red Sox dugout.
With Dent in the crowd and Aaron Boone in the Yankees dugout, 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.
Cole said he felt “sick to my stomach.”
“This is the worst feeling in the world,” said the star, who signed a US$324 million, nine-year deal to join the Yankees for the 2019 season.
Eovaldi only allowed two hits through five innings before giving up a solo home run to Anthony Rizzo, which sparked the first excited cheers from the Yankees fans in the crowd.
With Boston leading 3-1, Judge followed with an infield single that finished Eovaldi, and reliever Ryan Brasier gave up a wall single to Giancarlo Stanton.
Mistakenly waved home by third base coach Phil Nevin, Judge was easily thrown out at the plate — 8-6-2 — by the team who led the majors with 43 outfield assists during the season.
“That was better than a homer for me, personally,” Bogaerts said. “I mean, if that run scores, it’s 3-2. Stanton is at second base, the whole momentum is on their side. The dugout is getting pumped up.”
“As Judge was out at home, I saw Stanton was pretty mad. He probably wanted a homer there, but also an RBI, and he didn’t get that, and he probably felt like he didn’t do much because that run didn’t score, but that changed the game,” he said.
In all, Eovaldi allowed one run on four hits in 5-1/3 innings, striking out eight.
Alex Verdugo hit an RBI double in the sixth, driving in a hustling Bogaerts from first, to make it 4-1 and then singled in two more in the seventh to give Boston a 6-1 lead.
Stanton, who singled high off the wall early, hit a solo homer in the ninth to make it 6-2.
Joey Gallo followed with a deep drive to right that was caught at the warning track by Hunter Renfroe.
With one last “Yankees suck” chant echoing through the ballpark, Garrett Whitlock got Gleyber Torres to pop up to center to end it.
The Red Sox poured out of their dugout and bullpen to celebrate at the pitcher’s mound as Dirty Water played on the speakers.
A few Yankees stood in the dugout and watched.
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