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Bucky Dent was in the stadium, according to the schedule in October, and each team needed to win to keep their season alive. It had been 43 years since Dent’s famous home run helped the Yankees win the final elimination game between these legendary rivals at Fenway Park, and nearly half a century later, Boston finally secured a small rematch. for this particular game.
This time, Xander Bogaerts and Kyle Schwarber beat out Gerrit Cole, as the Red Sox beat the Yankees, 6-2, in the American League wildcard game. Boston moves on to an AL Division series against the Tampa Bay Rays, the AL’s top team during the regular season.
The Yankees and Red Sox were both vying for the AL East title this year, but neither could survive the Rays, who have won 100 games, and their search for opportunities over the past few weeks has meant that they will would face in Tuesday’s one-game playoffs. , two imperfect teams in the hope of fighting.
In 1978, they were both power plants.
Boston changed the nature of rivalry in the 21st century, taking real revenge for 1978 by stunning the Yankees in the 2004 American League championship series. But for older Red Sox fans, there was still some way to go. unfinished. The memory of Dent’s home run still stings, and Tuesday’s game may have provided a long-awaited balm for the old injury.
Cole, the Yankees’ nominal ace who has had a patchy season, failed to come out of the third inning and will likely hear a lot about it next year. He signed a nine-year, $ 324 million contract ahead of the 2020 season, in part because he was supposed to win that kind of game. But he yielded a two-run home run to Bogaerts in the first set and a stunning solo shot to Schwarber in the third.
Two hitters later, Cole made Rafael Devers walk, and Aaron Boone, the Yankees manager, came out of the dugout and pulled him out. As Cole watched nervously from the bench, right-handed reliever Clay Holmes escaped the jam, with two men on goal, removing Bogaerts and inducing a double ball from Alex Verdugo.
Cole’s season has been defined by a combination of controversy and inconsistent performances, which may have been linked. He almost admitted that he used Spider Tack on balls to gain an unfair advantage through artificially improved grip, just days before the sticky substance was banned from the game. After that, whenever Cole fell below it. Of his abilities, observers wondered if it was because he did not have the adhesive, and those doubts might continue into the future.
Perhaps more importantly, Cole injured his left thigh in a start against the Toronto Blue Jays on September 7. His earned run average over his next four regular season starts was 6.35, and his problems continued on Tuesday.
His Boston counterpart, Nathan Eovaldi, dominated the Yankees in five innings, but with a sixth putout, Anthony Rizzo hit a massive home run that wrapped around the foul post in right field. Then Aaron Judge hit the base with a blow across the field, which knocked Boston manager Alex Cora out of the dugout.
Eovaldi had only allowed two harsh blows – one from Giancarlo Stanton’s Green Monster in the first and Rizzo’s home run – and the Red Sox’s box has been uneven, at best, for most of the season. But Boston’s relief corps had improved over the past few weeks, and Cora brought in Ryan Brasier, one of the team’s most reliable relievers on the home stretch.
Blaze’s first mission was to confront Stanton, who unleashed another shot from the Green Monster. Yankees third baseman Phil Nevin aggressively sent Judge home, but Enrique Hernandez lined up the ball cleanly and quickly threw to Bogaerts, whose throw to wide receiver Kevin Plawecki was perfectly on target for second. withdrawal.
Brasier brought in Joey Gallo for the final. Late in the round, Boston regained their three-point lead on a double from Verdugo who scored Bogaerts before the game.
Tuesday night marked the fifth time the Yankees and Red Sox have played in an elimination game, in which the winner advanced and the loser’s season ended. The first was in 1949 when the Yankees won a regular season tiebreaker. Then came the 1978 tiebreaker in Game 163. In Game 7 of the 2003 AL Championship Series, Boone, then the Yankees third baseman, hit a winning homer in the 11th inning against Tim Wakefield.
But in 2004, the Red Sox drastically changed the storyline, coming back from a 0-3 deficit to win that series in seven games. Since then, the nature of the rivalry has changed, and Boston has won four World Series titles, while the Yankees won one, in 2009.
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