Red Sox-Yankees peaked 17 years ago. Can a winner-take-all AL wild-card game jolt the rivalry?
Gabe Lacques
USA TODAY
BOSTON – Kyle Schwarber was an 11-year-old slugger in Middletown, Ohio, when Alex Rodriguez turned toward Jason Varitek, uttered a few choice words and dared the Boston Red Sox catcher to brawl, Varitek only too happy to comply. He’s never forgotten it.
Gerrit Cole, perhaps already realizing his destiny as a burly, dominant, right-handed pitcher, watched raptly whenever Roger Clemens or Pedro Martinez “duked it out,” as Cole put it, in perhaps the most compelling chapters of this rivalry.
Alex Cora? He was just 3 years old, and “walking around with a big yellow Wiffle bat,” in Puerto Rico, as he put it, when Bucky Dent popped a division-clinching home run over the Green Monster, the first and only one-game playoff in the history of the Boston Red Sox-New York Yankees rivalry