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Nick Pivetta’s last throw in Washington was nasty, and he froze Juan Soto right where he was standing. The Red Sox started stepping out of their dugout at Nationals Park a moment before Fielden Culbrith raised his arm to formalize both a 7-5 Red Sox victory and the perfect kickoff to the 2021 MLB playoffs. .
Yankees. Sox. Fenway Park. Tuesday evening.
Win and you stay.
Forty-three years later, we’re starting over. Maybe the circumstances are slightly different – both teams are officially playoff teams this time around as in 78 the loser would go on to take second place silver. But the feeling will be the same. The feeling will be the same.
Win and stay. Lose it and winter is coming much sooner than anyone wants.
Perfect. Just perfect.
“We kept grinding,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said when his side’s 7-5 victory over the fiery Nats was over, after they secured the pitch for the wildcard game, after the The Sox conspired with the Yankees to shut down the poor Blue Jays, who won 91 games in one year while it took 92 to get to the tournament.
“It hasn’t been easy at all,” Aaron Boone had said almost an hour earlier, after the Yankees survived their own challenge, winning their own October installment after surviving a 1- win. 0 against a Tampa Bay. The Rays team who had nothing to play this weekend and still managed to kick the Yankees.
The first reaction is to say that nobody wants to be among the reigning American League champions, that the Rays’ refusal to lose mentality is the last thing anyone wants to face in October. But the truth is, the Rays are the Golden Ticket now. The winner of the hostilities on Tuesday will happily take the Wednesday morning flight to Tampa-St. Rock.
But first.
“It’s going to be a fun game there,” said Aaron Judge of the Yankees, whose ninth inning single scored Tyler Wade, allowing 40,409 people inside Yankee Stadium to expire after 3 hours and 3. minutes of sheer tension and unrelenting anxiety. “They will bring their ‘A’ game and we will bring our ‘A’ game. We are looking forward to it.
The best part about how Tuesday turned out is that in the end it turned out that no team backed the game. By 1978, the Yankees had come back from 14 games behind to catch and pass the Sox in mid-September, but the Sox had to win their last eight games of the year to make their way into the playoff. .
Every game – every pitch – was overloaded with stress. And both teams had to keep winning.
The same has happened here. After stumbling in Baltimore, the Sox had to sweep the Nats and did it; after falling behind 5-1 on Sunday they had to find a way back and they did. The Yankees? The Rays’ refusal to go through a meaningless final weekend (for them) made things more difficult, but they preceded the weekend with a scorching 5-1 tear against the Sox and Jays (a streak that really expanded to eight out of nine).
And even if they weren’t really playing for their season on Sunday – even if they had lost, they would have had the Jays on Monday in a play-in for the play-in – it really felt like they were. Monday meant using Gerrit Cole a day earlier than preferable. Monday meant a dice shot of a match to precede another dice shot. They didn’t want any part of Monday.
Instead, they get Tuesday. They get the Sox, and the Sox get them, and once again they will fight, as great fighters often do, for each other’s championship, an ongoing story dating back to 1949, one that the Yankees had the ‘act, one that the Sox recently kept in storage at Fenway.
They’re two flawed teams that have spent much of this season looking as much like fourth-place teams as they do playoff clubs – but both managed to peak at just the right time.
“We fought every day,” Cora said. “Every game.”
“We’re ready to shoot,” Boone said. “We know we can beat anyone when we’re at our best.”
That hit will come Tuesday night, Fenway Park, one more chapter of a never-ending and timeless baseball saga, Yanks vs. Sox, New York vs. Boston. A game for the season. A game for a flight to Florida. A part. And, man, what a game.
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