Granted, this was not 2003, or anything close. There were no chants of "1918'' reverberating around a one-third full Yankee Stadium, no decades of being the nail to the Yankees' hammer for which to atone.
But still, the Red Sox arrived in the Bronx this weekend with history on their minds.
Not 1978 history, or 2003, or anything nearly as traumatic. But more recent history had not kind to them in New York. They had lost their last 11 games in New York and 15 of the last 16. When there was last a full baseball season before this one, the Yankees had even spanked them unmercifully in London, taking their dominance abroad.
Last season, the Sox were like lions being led to slaughter in New York, offering little resistance. The Sox would throw openers at the Yankees, and the Yankees would, in return, throw haymakers.
Here are some of the final scores from the head-to-head meetings of a year ago: 5-1; 10-3; 11-5. The previous year, when the Sox were at least respectable and competitive, it had been more of the same.
When it came to the Yankees, it was if 2004 and all that followed had never happened. The Red Sox were back to being the scrawny kid on the block, pushed around by the bullies.
The teams had played more than a third of their season this year before the schedule-makers finally gut around to bringing them together in Game No. 57 for the Red Sox.
Right from the start, the Red Sox played like they had something to get off their chest. Five batters in, when Rafael Devers turned on a 96 mph fastball up in the zone, and with a ferocious cut, swatted it deep into the second deck in right field, the Sox looked like a team on a mission.
Last year was over. So was the year before that.
For emphasis, Devers admired his work and then gave the bat a showy flip toward the Sox' dugout on the third-base side.
This was their way of reintroduction. Usually, the exclamation point comes at the end. This one came at the beginning.
That set the tone that the Sox would make again and again. When they needed a big hit later, the slumping Marwin Gonzalez was, improbably, the one to deliver it, drilling a double just inside the third-base line to score two in the sixth. When they needed a double play, starter Nathan Eovaldi induced two of them -- one in the first before the Yankees could even think about responding to the Devers wallop, and again in the sixth, his final inning, to ensure that the lead was preserved.
Eovaldi himself was on the business end of one of the worst Yankee shellings last year, knocked around for eight runs on nine hits in just 5.1 innings. If this night represented any kind of Revenge Tour, he didn't say. But surely, it wasn't entire a coincidence when Eovaldi reached back and fired three consecutive fastballs at 100 mph and 101 mph to Brett Gardner in the outfielder's first plate appearance.
Gardner has been pretty direct with a not-so-subtle verbal swipe at Alex Cora -- owing to the Yanks still smarting over their defeat at the hands of the Astros in the 2017 ALCS -- and it sure seemed Eovaldi was additionally motivated to defend his manager's honor by pumping up the heat.
It wasn't exactly Fisk vs. Munson, but it was hard to ignore that there was something percolating.
Redemption seemed everywhere. In the ninth, Matt Barnes was called upon to protect a three-run lead and attacked the task with a singleness of purpose, pouring a steady mix of fastballs and curves at the final three Yankee hitters of the night.
This was the same Barnes who, in his career, had compiled an 11.77 ERA in Yankee Stadium with a 2.077 WHIP.
Actually, this was not the same Barnes. The 2021 version of Barnes pitches with extreme confidence and disposes of hitters with extreme prejudice. He threw first-pitch strikes, worked quickly and overpowered three consecutive hitters - two swinging, one looking -- to post his 13th save.
Like the rest of those who had been part of the Sox the previous two years, Barnes had some making up to do.
The teams will play 18 more times before the season is over, including 13 times in the next 45 games. Friday night's win is unlikely to impact a crowded division race that figures to be like a stock car race well into September, with as many as four teams bumping off one another and taking turns in the lead.
But for one night, it had to feel good. There had to be some satisfaction in proving that 2020 is, thankfully, history and that 2021 is, well, different.