The Rivalry is back… sort of.
We’ll never replicate the glory of the 2003 and 2004 editions of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. But on Sunday night with a packed house at Fenway Park — a sellout crowd of 36,718, the second in as many nights — it did feel like a little bit of a blast to the past.
Baseball’s greatest rivalry was back. For a night or two, at least.
Sunday night rivalry. #DirtyWater #RepBX pic.twitter.com/bwT7jsr0IU
— Gethin Coolbaugh (@GethinCoolbaugh) June 16, 2024
The conditions were ripe for a temporary revival. After getting spanked 8-1 in the series opener, the Sox responded with an 8-4 win on Saturday to force a rubber match in a nationally televised Sunday Night Baseball game on ESPN.
As I took a midgame stroll outside the press box, I was impressed by the atmosphere. It was a true standing-room-only crowd, and everybody was into it.
A constant knock this season has been the split crowd, sometimes 50-50 — if not more, between Red Sox and visiting fans. To no one’s surprise, there were plenty of Yankees fans in the house — but to my surprise, they weren’t able to drown out the Fenway faithful on Sunday night.
With Juan Soto at the plate and doing his best to taunt Sox starter Kutter Crawford with his antics — Soto slide and all — a “let’s go Yankees” chant started to form. It was quickly and thoroughly drowned out by boos, and eventually turned into the classic “Yankees suck!” chants.
And the game itself was a classic tight Sox-Yanks affair. Boston’s 4-1 lead after three innings shrunk to a 4-3 advantage through five and a half innings. There was plenty of trademarked drama, too, as New York loaded the bases with nobody out in the top of the seventh after another error by Dominic Smith.
The Sox turned to Zack Kelly in a precarious spot, and the right-hander delivered. Kelly got Gleyber Torres and Jose Trevino, who had already homered in the sixth, to strike out swinging before coaxing an inning-ending fly out to center by DJ LeMahieu.
The crowd erupted, and Kelly let his emotions loose walking off the mound and back to the dugout.
An inning later, Rafael Devers delivered an insurance run with a one-out RBI single and celebrated like he had just hit a grand slam while running down to first.
The fans weren’t the only ones who were into it, clearly.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” pic.twitter.com/UcLfkF7LsT
— Red Sox (@RedSox) June 17, 2024
Connor Wong followed with a bases-clearing triple to make it a four-run game, and that was all she wrote…
The lowly Red Sox had beaten the mighty Yankees in their first series meeting of the season.
“Like I always said, you know, we gonna battle, we gonna make mistakes and we gonna win games,” Alex Cora said. “But that was good baseball, tonight. Expect that from us. We gonna push the envelope.”
It certainly felt more like the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry that I and we grew up with than I was expecting from this series. I guess it goes to show that, even if one team comes to town with a 13-game lead in the division in mid-June, there’s still going to be juice between these two bitter rivals.
Not as much juice, but enough to grab the attention of the town for a couple of nights over a weekend…
Stealing a win
You could say the Red Sox stole one against the Yankees on Sunday.
But that wouldn't be inaccurate, because in reality the Sox stole not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven, not eight… but a whopping nine bases in their series-clinching victory.
That’s a franchise record, at that. The last time the Sox had that many stolen bases in a game was when they swiped seven… on Sept. 29, 1940 against the Philadelphia Athletics.
Please enjoy all 9 (yes, NINE) stolen bases from tonight. pic.twitter.com/IH5ek7R4Os
— Red Sox (@RedSox) June 17, 2024
David Hamilton did the heavy lifting, totaling four steals, while Jarren Duran contributed a pair himself.
“It just kinda shows if we run the bases like we can, it does a lot for the team,” Duran said. “It puts us in a good spot, so I’m really proud of the team for being able to make that accomplishment.”
Boston hasn’t exactly been a team known for its base-running skills in recent years. But the Sox are following suit on Cora’s “we’re gonna kick your ass” mentality and were extremely aggressive on the base paths.
Don’t look now, but the Red Sox are now a top-five team in baseball -- and first in the American League -- in stolen bases with 69...
They’ve got the speed to make teams pay, but up until now it had felt like more of a raw skillset — kind of like when a lanky Giannis Antetokounmpo entered the NBA and looked like a deer flopping around in the headlights (pun intended). Now, the Sox’s speed is starting to resemble a beefed up LeBron James and could become a real weapon moving forward…
Kutter finds his groove again
Kutter Crawford is looking like Kutter Crawford again, and he picked a great time to do it.
After giving up only two earned runs in a six-inning start against the Phillies last week, Crawford pitched masterfully in the finale against New York with six innings of three-run ball and nine strikeouts.
“It feels good,” Crawford said. “Obviously, two of the better teams in the league right now. Got good lineups. But you know, it’s progress for me in the right direction.”
He coughed up a pair of homers — a solo shot to Aaron Judge (but he does that to everybody) and another to Trevino — but the bounce back from his first homer to his second at-bat against Judge was astonishing.
The next time Judge came to the plate, Crawford struck him out on three pitches — all swings and misses.
Kutter Crawford screams walking off the mound after striking out Aaron Judge.
— Tyler Milliken ⚾️ (@tylermilliken_) June 17, 2024
Red Sox still holding on with a 4-3 lead. pic.twitter.com/CXBGEnzyhh
“I think we were just kind of in between,” Judge said of New York’s approach against Crawford. “After in the first inning getting the one run, I think guys just got a little in between on his pitches and expanded out of the zone, and you know, he in big spots made some great pitches.”
It seems Crawford has found his way out of his slump, which is going to be huge for the Red Sox if they plan to keep up their status as an elite starting rotation as we start to enter the heart of the season.
Casas steals the show (on TV)
Triston Casas might have a future as a broadcaster…
Although he wasn’t in uniform, Casas was at the center of the nationally televised broadcast when the ESPN crew gave him a microphone in the dugout during the fourth inning with the Sox leading 3-1.
Casas’ personality was on full display for the nation, with the up-and-coming first baseman telling a wild Father’s Day story about his dad getting arrested during one of his little league games, interviewing teammates Dom Smith and Brayan Bello — in Spanish, and even nearly having his microphone stolen by fellow Sox up-and-comer Ceddanne Rafaela.
This story Triston Casas tells about his dad 😅 pic.twitter.com/VW2R8kklCX
— ESPN (@espn) June 17, 2024
Boston fans know full well that Casas walks to the beat of his own drum, but his endearing traits were born for everyone to see during the series of fun interactions that went viral on social media.
It goes to show that A) Casas is indeed a marketable player who, if his actual talent lines up with his billing, could become one of the starts of the game nationwide and B) that this Red Sox team really does care about one another and is enjoying the journey — even if that isn’t always the case for us from the outside looking in.
Every Dugie has its day
Alex Verdugo didn’t get a hero’s welcome in his return to Fenway Park as a clean-shaven, pinstripe-wearing villain. Not that anyone really expected him to.
Ever since being traded to the Yankees before the season, Verdugo has distanced himself from Red Sox nation with several comments about his former team’s culture and how New York is a much better fit for him.
After getting booed before his first at-bat in Friday’s opener, Verdugo backed that sentiment up by blasting a two-run shot off Bello and screaming at the Yankees dugout as he rounded the bases.
Alex Verdugo was HYPED after homering on his first pitch back at Fenway Park. pic.twitter.com/48dKjpoZ8f
— MLB (@MLB) June 14, 2024
Verdugo’s passionate reaction was enough to elicit former Sox champions Jonathan Papelbon and Will Middlebrooks to call for him to get plunked, but I had no problem with what went down — Verdugo was celebrating with his teammates, not barking at Bello or showing up the Sox.
After all, it was the Sox who traded him, and not the other way around…
Verdugo’s demeanor in his first series back in Boston earned the praise of forever Sox villain and (still inexplicably) Yankees manager Aaron Boone, who played for six teams in his major league career and knows a thing or two about returning to face his former teams.
“I’ve been there where you go back and play (your former team), and from my experience it’s odd, it’s hard to normalize things,” Boone said. “You know, he was very calm before the game. I almost felt like, in my mind, maybe he was a little nervous, and he came right out and delivered a punch on the first pitch and didn’t stop.”
Verdugo finished that game 3 for 5 with four RBIs after tacking on an RBI double and an RBI single later in the game. On Saturday, he fell back to earth with an 0-for-5 performance (surprisingly without any strikeouts mixed in), and in the finale, he went 1 for 4 with a strikeout.
A tale of two (big) series
A week ago, a split of their six-game homestand against the National League-leading Phillies and American League-leading Yankees would have felt like a victory for this Red Sox team.
But, to their credit, they went to work and rose the bar.
Going 4-2 on this homestand is a big deal. Maybe not in the short term, where the Red Sox are now back to two games over .500 at 37-35. But in the longterm, their ability to not only hang with the best of the best, but also beat the best of the best, is an encouraging development that is hard to ignore.
Boston doesn’t figure to be catching New York or Baltimore any time soon (although the two are set to square off in a series that could help the Red Sox one way or another…), but as it stands on Monday morning, the Sox are now the top team on the outside of the AL wild-card picture looking in, three games back of Minnesota.
If Cora’s team wants to prove they’re the talented underdog fighters he claims they are, now would be a great time to prove it. Boston is about to enter a nine-game stretch against two teams — facing division rival Toronto six times home and away — that are currently under .500.
The Jays are fourth in the AL East at 35-36, and the Reds are 34-37 and in third in the NL Central.
Is this finally it? Is this the turnaround we’ve been waiting for? We’ll see, as it’s getting past time for the rubber to hit the road. No more spinning their wheels in place for this Red Sox team is they plan to be a playoff team.
90 more to go…
Gethin Coolbaugh is a columnist for Boston Sports Journal. Follow him @GethinCoolbaugh on X/Twitter.