O P I N I O N
NOT THAT PROFOUND
By Nathan Graziano
On Sunday, when it was finalized that the Red Sox would be playing the New York Yankees in a three-game AL Wild Card series this week, I put on my game face, and the game face will remain plastered to my mug until Thursday, at the latest.
You see, I didn’t expect the 2025 Red Sox to make the postseason, especially after they dealt Rafael Devers to San Francisco for a bag of baseballs, and now if they eliminate that reviled organization from The Bronx, this season will have been a booming success, in my opinion.
The Red Sox could get swept out in the ALDS by either Toronto or Seattle, and I will still sleep contentedly through the winter. Make no bones about it: This three-game series is more important to me than winning the World Series.
For starters, I don’t care what anyone else says, the Red Sox/Yankees is still the greatest rivalry in all of sports.
While the rivalry certainly doesn’t possess the intensity that it had in 2004 when Jason Varitek fed A-Rod a face full of catcher’s mitt, it would’ve been impossible to maintain that level of intensity. When the self-proclaimed Idiots overcame a 0-3 deficit to New York in the ALCS—the 2004 Yankees are still the only team in baseball history to choke up a three-game lead in a playoff series—on their way to the first World Series title in 86 years, the rivalry reached its zenith.
But it is still heated—with the teams’ fans, at least.
This will be the sixth time that the two teams have faced-off in the postseason since 1999. Before the MLB introduced the Wild Card in 1995, there were only two divsisions, and the Red Sox and Yankees played in the same division (The American League East), making a postseason showdown impossible. And before the MLB expansion in 1969, there was only a National and an American League, and no playoffs, only a pennant.
The Red Sox have won the last three postseason series against the Yankees in 2004, 2018, 2021, going on to win the World Series in 2004 and 2018. To this day, I still watch ESPN’s “30 for 30: Four Days in October” about the improbable 2004 comeback in place of taking Zoloft.
Now, there is another opportunity to make more memories rooted in the schadenfreude I experience watching Yankee fans suffer. While I enjoy watching the Red Sox win, I enjoy watching the Yankees lose a whole lot more, and if they lose in a way that embarrases the franchise, that is even better.
However, there is also this pain in the ass about having to work during the Wild Card Series.
I understand that the games are scheduled for 6:08 p.m., which does afford most of us enough time to get home from work and get settled before first pitch, but that is simply not good enough for me.
Starting tomorrow, my sole focus on this earth is going to be supporting the Red Sox. I don’t have the time or the mental energy to worry about work, or anything else.
Therefore, I suggest we approach the next three days the same way we approached the pandemic, only without the masks and quarantines. For the next three days in New England, only essential workers should be required—meaning only cable technicians, bar employees and beer distributors.
The rest of us need to be supporting the Red Sox in their plight to defeat The Evil Empire.
I have always loved postseason baseball, but this…this is special. So, in the words of Mr. Thomas Edward Partick Brady Jr., Let’s go!
You can reach Award-Winning Ink Link columnist Nathan Graziano at grazio5@yahoo.com