April 26, 1726: Lord Stirling Is Born

April 26, 1726, 300 years ago: William Alexander is born in Manhattan. He held a claim to be the male heir to the Scottish title of Earl of Stirling, through Scottish lineage, being the senior male descendant of the paternal grandfather of an earlier William Alexander, the 1st Earl of Stirling, who had died in 1640, and he sought the title sometime after 1756. The goal was vast land holdings in America that the holder of the title was to enjoy.

His claim was initially granted by a Scottish court in 1759. But in 1762, Britain's House of Lords overruled the court, and denied him the title. He continued to refer to himself "Lord Stirling" regardless. Officially, the British government considers the title of Earl of Stirling to have tied out with Henry Alexander, the 5th Earl, in 1739.

He inherited a large fortune from his father, dabbled in mining and agriculture, and lived a life filled with the trappings befitting a Scottish lord. This was an expensive lifestyle, and he eventually went into debt to finance it.

In 1747, he married Sarah Livingston (1725–1805), daughter of Philip Livingston and sister of Governor William Livingston. They had a son, William; and 2 daughters, Mary and Catherine.

The elder William began building a grand estate in the Basking Ridge section of Bernards Township, Somerset County, New Jersey. Upon its completion, sold his house in New York and moved there. George Washington was a guest there on several occasions during the War of the American Revolution, and gave away Catherine at her wedding to Continental Congressman William Duer.

He was commissioned a Major General in the Continental Army, and commanded a brigade at the Battle of Long Island in Brooklyn, where his rearguard action resulted in his capture, but allowed the main body of the army to escape. He was later returned by prisoner exchange, received a promotion, and continued to serve with distinction throughout the war. Trusted by Washington, in 1778 he commanded troops at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in Manalapan, New Jersey, and exposed the Conway Cabal. He was with Washington when he accepted the British surrender at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.

By that point, he was suffering from gout and rheumatism, and his heavy drinking didn't help. He died on January 15, 1783 in Albany, New York, and did not live to see the official end of the war, with the Treaty of Paris.

His grandson, William Alexander Duer, served as President of Columbia University, which was built on land owned by the Livingston family. He was also an ancestor of General Philip Kearny Sr. and General Philip Kearny Jr.

Stirling Township in Somerset County, near his home in Basking Ridge, and Sterling, Massachusetts were named for him. So were a middle school built on land once occupied by the Long Island battlefield, in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn; and an elementary school in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he had once been stationed.

April 25, 1976: Rick Monday Saves an American Flag from Being Burned

April 25, 1976, 50 years ago: Rick Monday, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps in the Vietnam War era, is playing center field for the Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. He notices two people in left-centerfield, preparing to burn the American flag. He ran over and grabbed the flag from them.

"I was angry when I saw them start to do something like that to the flag," he said.

Later in 1976, Dodgers executive Al Campanis gave the flag to Monday. He still has it. "I know the people were very pleased to see Monday take the flag away from those guys," Manny Mota, who played with Monday, said. "I know Rick has done a lot of good things as a player and as a person. But what he did for his country, he will be remembered for the rest of his life as an American hero."

The actual flag has faded. The story has not.

Rick Monday didn't do a damn thing for his country by saving that flag. If anything, he interfered with two people who, however misguided and offensive, were exercising their constitutional rights. It was, literally, the least American thing he could have done.

This was 20 days after the event that became known as "the Soiling of Old Glory," in which a racist taunted a black man with a flag at City Hall in Boston. Has anybody ever asked Monday about that?

As for the game: The Dodgers beat the Cubs, 5-4. Ron Cey singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning.

The Dodgers acquired Monday before the next season, fitting in with their heavily-promoted All-American image. Actually, the Los Angeles Dodgers are the quintessential American sports team: They abandoned the people from whence they came, not for a better life but for more money, and stole land from the people who were already at their destination.

Then they issued lies and platitudes about themselves, all the while hiding some great evils. Sure, their Brooklyn forebears had ended baseball's segregation, but Campanis himself exposed his own racial bigotry, and manager Tommy Lasorda was exposed as homophobic. And then there was their paragon of virtue, Steve Garvey... 

A 2-time All-Star, Monday reached the postseason with the Oakland Athletics before being traded to the Cubs, and won the 1981 World Series with the Dodgers, having hit a Pennant-clinching home run in the National League Championship Series against the Montreal Expos. He retired after the 1984 season, with a .264 lifetime batting average and 241 home runs.

He became a broadcaster for the Dodgers, and still has the flag. He claims he has been offered $1 million for it, but won't sell it. 

A Fenway Sweep, Yankees On a 6-Game Streak

The fear: The Yankees would go into their 1st Fenway Park series of the season having scored too many runs in the series right before it that they wouldn't score enough in the little green pinball machine in the Back Bay, and the Red Sox would capitalize on this.

The reality: The Yankees' pitching dominated The Scum, and we got just enough runs.

On Tuesday night, Luis Gil shook off his 1st 2 poor starts of the season coming off the Injured List, and took a 2-hit shutout into the 7th inning. Brent Hendrick finished the 7th, Tim Hill pitched the 8th, and David Bednar pitched the 9th. It shouldn't take 4 men to pitch a 4-hit shutout, not even in Boston. But I'll take it.

I'll also take a 4-0 win, with Giancarlo Stanton hitting a tremendous solo home run in the 2nd inning, and a double off the wall for 2 more in the 6th.

On Wednesday night, Amed Rosario hit a home run to get the Yankees out to a 3-0 lead before the Sox could even come to bat. He drove in another run with a sacrifice fly in the 3rd inning. Max Fried pitched 8 innings of 3-hit shutout ball. Hendrick allowed a run in the 9th. Yankees 4, Red Sox 1.

Of course, the New York media wasn't talking about the Yankees shutting their arch-rivals down in their little Back Bay bandbox. They were talking first about the Mets having a 12-game losing streak, their worst in 24 years; then, on this night, breaking it by beating the Minnesota Twins at Citi Field.

Last night, Sox starter Payton Tolle struck out the 1st 5 Yankee batters. Not a good sign. And the Sox took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the 2nd. It turned out to be a sign of nothing: Jazz Chisholm led off the top of the 5th with his 1st home run of the season. The Sox took the lead back in the bottom of the 5th, but in the 7th, the Yankees got singles from Trent Grisham, Chisholm, José Caballero, Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge -- his only RBI of the series, surprisingly -- to tak a 4-2 lead.

Cam Schlittler, a native of Weymouth, Massachusetts and a graduate of Boston University, showed where his loyalties lie by pitching 8 innings, allowing 2 runs on 4 hits and 1 walk, striking out 5. Bednar pitched a perfect 9th. Yankees 4, Red Sox 2.

A sweep of The Scum at Fenway, and a 6-game winning streak. The Yankees lead the American League Eastern Division by 2 1/2 games over the Tampa Bay Rays, 4 over the Baltimore Orioles, 5 1/2 over the Toronto Blue Jays, and 7 over the Sox.

On to Houston, to play the Astros, the Chicken Fried Cheats, the Red Sox South. Bring 'em on. We'll muss 'em up. We'll show those idiot Met fans what "a little league park" really looks like.

Well, maybe not. We only scored 12 runs in 3 games at Fenway. But it was enough.

April 24, 25 and 26, 1901: The American League's 1st Games

April 24, 1901, 125 years ago: The American League plays its 1st games. The National League had been playing this season's regular-season games since April 18, but the AL was now making its debut.

The AL had offered the NL a deal: Accept us as a full major league, and we will respect your contracts, and not take any of your players. The NL refused to accept them, and so, the AL "declared war." On January 27, Hugh Duffy "jumped" from the Boston Beaneaters to the Milwaukee Brewers. On February 8, Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, Charles "Chick" Fraser and Bill Bernhard jumped from the Philadelphia Phillies to the Philadelphia Athletics.

On March 2, Jimmy Collins jumped from the Beaneaters to the Boston Americans. Sometime before March 11, John McGraw signed to manage, and play 3rd base, for an AL team with the same name as his now-defunct former NL team, the Baltimore Orioles. On March 19, Cy Young jumped from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Americans.

(Baseball-Reference.com says McGraw signed with the AL Orioles "Before 1901 Season." Nor does Wikipedia provide a definitive date. The reason we know it was before March 11, 1901 is that it has been established that, on that date, he signed Charlie Grant, a black player, and attempted to pass him off as a Cherokee Indian named Charlie Tokohoma. But, that day, the Orioles played a Spring Training game against the Chicago White Sox, whose owner, Charlie Comiskey, the AL's co-founder with League President Ban Johnson, and a former star 1st baseman for the team that became the Cardinals, recognized Grant, and told McGraw that he'd blow the whistle on him if he didn't dump Grant. McGraw guessed that Comiskey wasn't bluffing, which was probably true, and released Grant.)

The 1st AL game was played at South Side Park, at 38th Street and Princeton Avenue, in Chicago, about 4 blocks south of where the home team from that game would play for most of the 20th Century, and about 3 blocks south of where it plays now. The Chicago White Sox defeated the Cleveland Blues, 8-2. Attendance was listed as 9,000, at a ballpark that seated about 15,000.

The White Sox were managed by Clark Griffith, who was still an active pitcher. He had been an ace for the previous team known as the Chicago White Stockings, in the NL.

According to the account written many years later, in the visiting team's hometown newspaper, The Plain Dealer: 

The date was April 24, in Chicago's White Sox park, when Ollie Pickering stepped to the plate for the Cleveland Blues. Pickering, an outfielder, hit the second pitch from Chicago White Sox right-hander Roy Patterson to center field. William Hoy, a deaf-mute who was cruelly nicknamed Dummy, caught the routine fly, and with that the American League was officially underway.

Hoy, whose batting, baserunning and fielding skills have led later observers to suggest that he should be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, was long erroneously credited with being the source for umpires using their left hands to call balls and their right hands to call strikes, because he couldn't hear their verbal calls. Pickering is correctly credited with coining the term "Texas leaguer," a looping hit that falls between the infielders and the outfielders.

The White Sox scored 2 runs in the 1st inning, and 5 in the 2nd, and coasted the rest of the way, and won the game on this Wednesday, 8-2.

The next day, the White Sox beat the Blues again, 7-3. Erve Beck of the Blues hit the AL's 1st home run. In 1902, the Blues acquired star 2nd baseman Napoleon Lajoie, and named him their manager. For the 1903 season, they changed their name to honor him: The Cleveland Naps.

He left after the 1914 season, when the World Series was won by the Boston Braves. They'd used the Native American nickname for only 3 seasons. So the Naps then changed their name to the Cleveland Indians, and used that name until 2021, then becoming the Cleveland Guardians. The stories that they'd been named the Indians after tribesmen living on the shore of Lake Erie, and that they'd been named after the 1st Native American player in the majors, former Cleveland Spiders star Louis Sockalexis, have been proven incorrect.

One other game was played on Thursday, April 25: The Detroit Tigers beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 14-13 at Bennett Park in Detroit. The Brewers led 7-0 after just 3 innings, and 13-4 going into the bottom of the 9th. But the Tigers scored 10 runs to win it. And they did it without the benefit of a home run. (This was the Dead Ball Era.)

In 1912, a new ballpark would open on the site of Bennett Park, named Navin Field. It would be expanded and renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938, and renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.

The Brewers would move after just 1 season, becoming the St. Louis Browns in 1902, and later the new major league version of the Baltimore Orioles in 1954. A new minor-league team would take up the Brewers name, before making way for the Boston Braves to become the Milwaukee Braves in 1953. They moved to Atlanta in 1966, making possible a new AL Milwaukee Brewers in 1970.

On Friday, April 26:

* The Washington Senators beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 5-1 at Columbia Park in Philadelphia. The Senators became the Minnesota Twins in 1961. They were replaced by an expansion team with the Senators name that year, but that team also moved, becoming the Texas Rangers in 1972. The Athletics moved to Kansas City in 1955, to Oakland in 1968, and to Sacramento in 2025, and hope to move to Las Vegas in 2028.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Boston Americans, 10-6 at Oriole Park in Baltimore. The Americans would change their name to the Boston Red Sox in 1908. The Orioles would break up in 1902, and a new franchise was created in its place for the 1903 season: The New York Highlanders, who, in 1913, officially changed their name to what people had been calling them for a few years already: The New York Yankees. (Research by Yankee historian Marty Appel has proven that the New York franchise of 1903 onward is not the Baltimore franchise of 1901 and '02.) A new minor-league team would take up the Orioles name.

* The Tigers beat the Brewers, 6-5 at Bennett Park.

And there were 3 games played in the National League that day: The New York Giants beat the Brooklyn Superbas, 5-3 at the Polo Grounds in New York; the Boston Beaneaters beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-3 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia; and the Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Orphans, 8-7 in 12 innings at West Side Park in Chicago.

The Superbas became the Dodgers in 1911, changed their name to the Robins in honor of new manager Wilbert Robinson in 1914, and became the Dodgers again in 1932 after he was fired. They moved to Los Angeles in 1958. At the same time, the Giants moved to San Francisco.

The Beaneaters became the Braves in 1912, and, as I said, moved to Milwaukee in 1953, and to Atlanta in 1966. The former Chicago White Stockings had long been led by Adrian Constantine Anson, known as "Cap" for "captain," and "Pop" as he got older, and after his 1897 retirement, were known as "the Orphans, because they missed their Pop." They became the Cubs in 1903.

Yankees vs. Red Sox: The Defining Moments, Part VI: 2005-2026

April 5, 2005, Yankee Stadium. After he hit the home run that won Game 4 of the 2001 World Series, Derek Jeter said he'd never hit a walkoff homer before, not even in Little League. He does it again in this game, off Keith Foulke. Yankees 4, Red Sox 3. The Yankees could have used one of these homers on October 17 or 18, 2004.

April 8, 2005, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. The film Fever Pitch premieres, starring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore. It tells the story about a man in love with a woman and a baseball team, and what happens when the 2 loves come into conflict.

It was based on the 1992 memoir of the same title by Nick Hornby, then an English teacher in London, and a fan of North London soccer team Arsenal. He told of following the team from the fall of 1968, when he was 11 years old, until just before publication, including the 1971 "Double" season (meaning that they won the Football League Division One and the Football Association Cup in the same season) and the next League title, which wasn't until 1989 -- 18 years.

It had previously been made into a film in the United Kingdom, premiering in 1997, starring Colin Firth and Ruth Gemmell. This version, with Hornby writing the screenplay, followed a fictionalized version of Hornby during the epic 1988-89 season, with flashbacks to his youth in 1968 and 1972.

The United States version was adapted by Providence, Rhode Island-based filmmakers Peter & Bobby Farrelly, fans of New England's sports teams, including the Red Sox. They cast Fallon, then a former star of NBC's Saturday Night Live, and not yet the host of a late-night talk show, now hosting The Tonight Show. Ironically, in real life, Fallon is a Yankee Fan, so this film proves that he really can act.

This version of the film follows the Red Sox in their own epic season, of 2004. Unlike the makers of the U.K. version, the Farrelly Brothers did not know how the season was going to turn out. So, having already got permission from the MLB officers to film at Fenway and use game footage, they asked one more favor, and got the right to set up cameras at Busch Memorial Stadium when the Sox finished the job on October 27, 2004, and put Jimmy and Drew on the field, in character, celebrating.

Most Yankee Fans hate the film, for obvious reasons: It glorifies the Sox, and shows the Yankees losing and the alleged curse ending. Most Sox fans hate it, too, because, as Jimmy said of his group's trip to Spring Training, captured on ESPN and seen by Drew's character and her parents, "We looked like morons!"

Me? I think it's a good movie, but the ending makes it a horror movie.

April 14, 2005, Fenway Park. Yankee right fielder Gary Sheffield's cap is knocked off by a Red Sox fan while trying to pick up a fair ball in right field. In response, Sheffield pushes the fan. The conflict is quickly stopped by security guards. The fan is ejected from the game for interfering with play, and is eventually stripped of his season tickets. Red Sox 8, Yankees 5. Still, the Sox fans once again prove that they, not the Yankees or their fans, are the evil ones.

January 3, 2006, Yankee Stadium. Center fielder Johnny Damon, one of the heroes of the Sox' revival, the man who named them "The Idiots," signs as a free agent with the Yankees. Gone are the long hair and the beard. Yankee Fans welcome him. Sox fans call him a traitor.

August 18, 19, 20 & 21, 2006, Fenway Park. The Yankees complete a 5-game sweep at the little green pinball machine off Kenmore Square. The scores are 12-4, 14-11, 13-5, 8-5 and 2-1. The Yankees won a tight pitching duel, a pair of slugfests, and 2 blowouts. They have moved from 1 1/2 games ahead of the Sox to 6 1/2 games ahead, effectively killing the Division race with 6 weeks to go.

I was in Boston on the 20th, for the 4th game, although my chances of getting into Fenway were slim and none, and I had to watch from elsewhere in Scum Town. Then again, I'd rather have watched from outside Fenway and won than watched from inside and lost.

You should have heard Sox fans, not to mention the WEEI radio hosts, talk: They were in a daze, acting as though what happened in October 2004 had never happened. (And, based on what we now know, it really didn't.)

April 22, 2007, Fenway Park. Manny Ramirez, J.D. Drew, Mike Lowell and Jason Varitek hit 4 consecutive home runs off Yankee pitcher Chase Wright, powering a comeback from a 3-run deficit and completing a 3-game sweep of the Yankees at Fenway Park for the first time since 1990. Red Sox 7, Yankees 6.

While the Yankees do get the Wild Card in this season, they never recover enough from this beating to take the Division title. The Sox win the World Series again, although this can also been deemed illegitimate. Of the players who hit the 4 straight homers, Manny is later proven a steroid user, and the other 3 have also been suspected.

Joe Torre is lowballed on a new contract offer, and leaves the Yankees. Former catcher Joe Girardi is named manager. Meanwhile, the Sox go on to win the World Series again.

December 13, 2007, Office of DLA Piper, Washington, D.C.: The Mitchell Report is issued. Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, Democrat of Maine, was charged with finding out just how far baseball players had gone with the use of performance-enhancing drugs, including those that fall under the term "steroids."

Issuing his report from the office of the law firm for whom he consulted, he based it mainly on the testimony of 2 men whose credibility was highly questionable: Brian McNamee, a personal trainer who had worked for Yankees Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch, and who had previously worked with Clemens as the strength & conditioning coach with the Toronto Blue Jays; and Kirk Radomski, a former clubhouse employee of the Mets.

Among the players Mitchell said had used PEDs were Clemens, Pettitte and Knoblauch. And it was already known that Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield were steroid users, although neither of those two ever managed to help the Yankees win a World Series.

Interestingly, no players from the 2004 Red Sox were named, and only 2 players from the 2007 Red Sox were, and they were hardly crucial to the World Series win: Éric Gagné, the reliever whose streak of 84 consecutive saves with the Los Angeles Dodgers electrified fans from 2002 to 2004; and Brendan Donnelly, also a reliever, who had been a rookie on the 2002 World Champion Anaheim Angels. 

The Report did not name either David Ortiz or Manny Ramirez, who would later be revealed to have failed steroid tests. Nor Bronson Arroyo, who would later confess to PED use. Nor Curt Schilling, nor Trot Nixon, nor Kevin Millar, nor Bill Mueller, nor Mark Bellhorn, nor Kevin Youkilis, all of whom have been suspected.

Mitchell is a lifelong Red Sox fan, and was, at that time, a member of the team's board of directors. Until that point, only crazy conservative pundits had ever questioned his integrity. But this was a massive conflict of interest: Yes, the research should have been done; yes, a report should have been issued; no, he should not have been the one to do it.

At any rate, the Yankees became the face of "cheating" in baseball, while the Red Sox got off scot free. The Red Sox were "America's Team," and the Yankees were the "Evil Empire."

The truth would come out.

February 29, 2008, Legends Field, Tampa, Florida. At the spring-training complex soon to be renamed for his father, Yankee senior vice president Henry George Steinbrenner III, a.k.a. Hank Steinbrenner, responds to the popularity of the Sox in The New York Times newspaper's Play magazine:

"Red Sox Nation?" What a bunch of bullshit that is. That was a creation of the Red Sox and ESPN, which is filled with Red Sox fans. Go anywhere in America, and you won't see Red Sox hats and jackets, you'll see Yankee hats and jackets. This is a Yankee country. We're going to put the Yankees back on top and restore the universe to order.

Not "restore order to the universe." "Restore the universe to order." It will take 2 more seasons.

Hank's health would begin to fail, and brother Harold "Hal" Steinbrenner, 12 years younger, would end up winning the power struggle for control of the team. Hank was willing to spend big to get big results, like George Steinbrenner and Tom Yawkey; Hal Steinbrenner is more interested in making a profit, like Jean Yawkey.

July 15, 2008, Yankee Stadium. The House That Ruth Built hosts the All-Star Game in its last season. Jeter and A-Rod are elected starters, and get huge ovations. Manny, David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia are also elected starters, and get the hell booed out of them. (Ortiz was injured and could not play.)

Sox reliever Jonathan Papelbon, having closed out the previous year's World Series against the Colorado Rockies, tells the media that he should close out the game, not Mariano Rivera of the Yankees. In Rivera's ballpark.

Despite having his own manager, Terry Francona, managing the AL team (the managers of the previous season's Pennant winners are always the opposing managers), Papelbon is inserted in the game in the 8th inning, and he blows a 2-2 tie to give the National League the lead. And the Yankee Fans let him hear it.

But the AL ties it in the bottom of the 8th. Rivera is called on to get the last out in the top of the 9th, and gets the biggest ovation of his career so far. He gets the last out, and pitches the 10th as well, getting into trouble, but getting out of it. The AL wins the game in the 15th, tying it with the 1967 edition in Anaheim for the longest All-Star Game ever, and the only one on the AL team who doesn't feel like celebrating is Papelbon.

August 28, 2008, Yankee Stadium. The teams meet at the old Bronx ballyard for the last time. Jason Giambi hits a bases-loaded single off Papelbon in the bottom of the 9th to win it for the Yankees, 3-2.

On September 21, the Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles 7-3 in the final scheduled game at the old Yankee Stadium, thus keeping them mathematically alive in the Playoff race. The next day, the Sox clinched the Division, and the Yankees ended up not winning the Wild Card, either. It was the 1st time they had missed the postseason since 1993. (There was no postseason to miss in 1994.)

September 28, 2008, Fenway Park. The teams close the regular season with a rain-forced doubleheader against each other. The Yankees win the 1st game, 6-2. The Red Sox win the 2nd game, 4-3, on a walkoff single by Jonathan Van Every off José Veras. The Sox get as far as Game 7 of the ALCS, before losing to the Tampa Bay Rays.

May 4, 2009, Yankee Stadium II, Bronx. The teams meet at the new Yankee Stadium for the 1st time. Boston wins, 6-4.

July 30, 2009, Fenway Park. Exactly 10 years to the day after the 13-3 demolition I saw at Fenway, it is revealed that both David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez failed steroid tests in the 2003 season. With Papi and Manny the 2 biggest reasons the Sox won the 2004 and 2007 World Series, those titles are now revealed to be completely illegitimate.

August 7, 2009, Yankee Stadium II. A-Rod ends a 0-0 standoff after 15 innings with a 2-run home run off Junichi Tazawa, who is making his major league debut. Two days later, Damon and Mark Teixeira hit back-to-back homers to give the Yanks a come-from-behind 3-2 win and a sweep.

A-Rod had also tested positive in 2003. In 2009, he was the most-tested athlete in sports history, and he kept coming up clean. He also kept coming up big when the Yankees needed him, instead of his usual tendency to boost his stats by homering when the Yankees were already winning, or losing, big.

September 27, 2009, Yankee Stadium II. Yankees 4, Red Sox 2. The Yankees complete a 3-game sweep of the Red Sox with a 4-2 victory, clinching their 1st AL East title since 2006. The Yankees came back to tie the season series against the Red Sox 9-9, after starting with an 0-8 record against them, and go on to win their 27th World Championship -- slaying their own dragons (real, imagined, or steroid-induced), and in Hank's words, restoring the universe to order.

May 17, 2010, Yankee Stadium II. Marcus Thames breaks a bottom-of-the-9th slugfest deadlock with a walkoff homer off Papelbon. Yankees 11, Red Sox 9.

September 28, 2011, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, Maryland. As late as September 1, a date on which they completed a 2-out-of-3 series win over the Yankees, the Sox were in 1st place in the AL East. But they went into a tailspin, the Yankees took advantage, and, on this date, the Sox lose to the Baltimore Orioles, 4-3, while the Yankees lose to the Rays. As a result, with the Yankees having already clinched the AL East, the Sox blow the Wild Card to the Rays.

Manager Terry Francona and general manager Theo Epstein will soon be fired. Once again, it is the Yankees who are regarded as champions, and the Red Sox who are regarded as chokers. As God intended it.

April 20, 2012, Fenway Park. The Sox celebrate the ballpark's 100th Anniversary -- the 1st Major League Baseball stadium to reach a Centennial -- by playing on the exact anniversary, and playing the exact same opponent. But they don't get the same result, as the Yankees hit 5 home runs: 2 by Eric Chavez, and 1 each by Nick Swisher, Russell Martin, and 1 by Alex Rodriguez. Yankees 6, Red Sox 2.

Every time A-Rod comes to the plate, the Sox fans chant, "Steroids!" -- while cheering for known steroid cheat David Ortiz.

April 21, 2012, Fenway Park. The Yankees come from 9-0 down to beat the Sox 15-9, including 7 runs in the 7th inning and 7 more in the 8th. Swisher homers again, and Teixeira hits home runs from each side of the plate. The next day, the series finale was rained out, and postponed until July, but the Yankees ended up winning it then anyway.

June 28, 2012, E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse, Washington, District of Columbia: Roger Clemens is found not guilty on 6 counts of lying to Congress, when he testified that he had never taken performance-enhancing drugs.

Few people believe he was actually innocent, but the federal government was unable to prove its case based on the evidence at hand. For the record: Roger Clemens has never failed a test for steroids. But David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez all did. Of those four men, only Ortiz has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

July 7, 2012, Fenway Park. The Sox lead 5-3. Boone Logan comes in to relieve Phil Hughes with 1 out in the 6th, man on 2nd. Flyout, back-to-back walks, strikeout. End of that threat. But Girardi should have realized that, having already walked 2 batters, Logan shouldn't be kept in the game.

He leaves Logan in to start the 7th, and he allows a double. Girardi brings in Cory Wade, who turns that leadoff double (totally Logan's fault) into 4 runs (all of them partly Logan's fault). The Sox lead 9-4 instead of 5-4. The Yanks manage to make it 9-5, meaning if Logan doesn't allow that double, it's no worse than 5-5.

And this is against The Scum. Granted, the Sox were awful in 2012, but you still want to beat them, and the Yanks were still in a Division title race. This was Game 21 in Logan's Litany of Losing.

However, having Bobby Valentine as manager turns out to be a disaster for the Sox, as they go 69-93, their worst season since 1965. The Yankees win the Division, but the postseason turns out to be a disaster.

May 31, 2013, Yankee Stadium II. The teams play each other for the 1st time since the bombing at the Boston Marathon on April 15. "Boston Strong" signs are everywhere, and, for once, the fans of the 2 legendary rivals are united. (Despite the banner of solidarity at Fenway, there were no games between them in 2001 after September 11.) Behind the pitching of CC Sabathia and an RBI double by Vernon Wells, the Yankees win, 4-1.

August 5, 2013, Commissioner's Office, Rockefeller Center, New York. Alex Rodriguez is suspended for the rest of the 2013 season, and all of the 2014 season, for steroid use. They don't have a failed test on him -- not since 2003, before the current policy, anyway.

David Ortiz, who also failed a test in 2003, but not since, is permitted to continue playing.

September 6, 2013, Yankee Stadium II. The Yankees host the Sox, and lead 8-3. Andy Pettitte has pitched 6 strong innings. But Girardi brings the struggling Phil Hughes in to pitch the 7th. He gets 1 out, but allows 3 singles and a walk, making it 8-4. Girardi brings Logan in to face Ortiz with the bases loaded and 1 out. Cringe time... Logan strikes Ortiz out! All right, now get him out of there!

No, Girardi leaves him in to face Mike Napoli with the bases loaded and 1 out. Logan feeds the gopher, and Napoli hits a game-tying grand slam. Girardi still leaves him in, to face Daniel Nava. Nava singles, and, finally, Girardi takes him out, and Preston Claiborne gets Stephen Drew out to end the inning. Claiborne and Joba Chamberlain finish the disaster in the 8th, and the Sox win, 12-8.

By this point, even Girardi had learned that Logan could not be trusted with pitching in the major leagues. Only once more did he put Logan in a game, and that was on September 24, in a game that an exhausted Hiroki Kuroda had already let get away. It was in a 7-0 loss to the Rays, and Logan faced 1 batter, Sam Fuld, and struck him out. But the September 6, 2013 game was the 34th game that Logan blew, or helped to blow, in his 4 seasons in Pinstripes. Exit permanently, stage lefty.

The Yankees went 85-77, a decent season by most teams' standards, but missing the Playoffs, finishing tied for 3rd in the AL East, 12 games behind the Division-winning Red Sox, and 7 games behind the 2nd Wild Card team, the Rays.

The Sox went on to win another World Series, beating the St. Louis Cardinals in 6 games. David Ortiz, who shouldn't even be allowed to play professional baseball after being outed as a steroid cheat and a liar, and still lying about it, was named Series MVP.

September 4, 2014, Yankee Stadium II. Chase Headley hits a home run off Koji Uehara in the bottom of the 9th, giving the Yankees a 5-4 win.

September 28, 2014, Fenway Park. At the same ballpark where Mickey Mantle played his last game, 46 years earlier to the day, Derek Jeter plays his last game. The Red Sox present him with gifts.

Jim Rice, Mookie Betts, David Ortiz, Derek Jeter and Carl Yastrzemski

In the top of the 3rd inning, he singles home Ichiro Suzuki against Clay Buchholz, part of a 4-run inning. Brian McCann -- a slow catcher, so this Girardi move makes no sense -- is sent in to pinch-run for him, and the New England fans give him a standing ovation. The Yankees go on to win, 9-5.

September 28, 2016, Yankee Stadium II. Teixeira hits a walkoff grand slam, the 409th and last home run of his career, off Joe Kelly to give the Yankees a 5-3 win over the Red Sox.

As of Jasson Domínguez's drive against the Texas Rangers on May 21, 2025, the Yankees have hit 242 walkoff home runs in their history, counting the postseason. 30 of these, including the postseason walkoffs by Bernie Williams in 1999 and Aaron Boone in 2003, have been against the Red Sox.

September 29, 2016, Yankee Stadium II. For the final time, David Ortiz, the biggest Yankee Killer ever, plays against the Yankees. CC Sabathia strikes him out in the 2nd inning, then walks him in the 4th. As with Jeter in his farewell, he is removed for a pinch-runner, in his case Brock Holt. The Yankee Fans give him a standing ovation.

Thanks in part to an RBI double by Jacoby Ellsbury, one of the heroes of the Sox' 2013 title who then signed with the Yankees, the Yankees win 9-5. This will be a rare good moment in Pinstripes for Ellsbury, whose injuries made him one of the most-mocked acquisitions in Yankee history.

April 26, 2017, Fenway Park. On his 25th birthday, Aaron Judge hits a home run against the Red Sox. He becomes the 6th Yankee to hit a homer against the Sox on his birthday. The Yankees win, 3-1.

August 13, 2017, Yankee Stadium II. This game was the Yankees' 2017 season in a nutshell. They got good pitching from Jordan Montgomery, David Robertson and Dellin Betances, and led 2-1 going into the top of the 9th inning.

But Aroldis Chapman gave up a game-tying home run to Rafael Devers, and was left in for the 10th inning, hitting Jackie Bradley with a pitch, and giving up a walk to former Yankee error machine Eduardo Núñez. Girardi brought Tommy Kahnle in, and he walked Mookie Betts to load the bases, and gave up a single to Andrew Benintendi to lose it.

The Red Sox won, 3-2, and ended up winning the AL East by 2 games. Oddly, the Yankees not only snuck into the Wild Card Game, but won it, and won their ALDS, while the Sox lost theirs to the Houston Astros, only for the Yankees to stop hitting in Games 6 and 7 of the ALCS, and lose the Pennant to the Astros by 1 game. Who knows if winning the Division would have made a difference?

Girardi's contract ran out, and the Yankees did not seek a new one. The new manager was rivalry hero Aaron Boone.

October 8, 2018, Yankee Stadium II. Game 3 of the ALDS is the worst loss in Yankee postseason history, 16-1, including 7 Boston runs in the 4th inning, shelling Luis Severino. Nathan Eovaldi, whom general manager Brian Cashman released due to long-term injury, getting nothing for him, was the winning pitcher for the Red Sox.

October 9, 2018, Yankee Stadium II. Through a stroke of luck, this became the 1st live postseason sporting event I ever saw. I would have been better off missing it.

As with another win-or-go-home game, Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, Bucky Dent was invited to throw out the ceremonial first ball. As on that earlier occasion, it provided no effect. The Sox tagged Sabathia for 3 runs in the 3rd inning, and a Christian Vázquez home run in the 4th made the difference. The last out was much-hyped rookie Gleyber Torres, Cashman's golden prospect, grounding out on a play that had to be reviewed, but the replay showed that he was out. Red Sox 4, Yankees 3.

They had already clinched the Division at our place, and now they clinched this series at our place as well. They went on to win a World Series without David Ortiz for the 1st time in 100 years. They also won it, apparently, without steroids. There was, however, an accusation of the use of Apple Watches to "spy" on opponents.

Since 2000, the count is now Red Sox 4* (asterisks on all of them), Yankees 1. That is unacceptable.

June 29, 2019, London Stadium, London, England, Great Britain. The rivalry goes international. London Stadium, centerpiece of the 2012 Olympics, and now the home of East London soccer team West Ham United, is converted for baseball use. For the 1st 2 MLB games in Europe -- despite "Brexit," Britain still counts -- baseball's biggest rivalry provides the opponents.

The 1st inning of the 1st game was insane: Each team scored 6 runs. On social media, Americans were explaining to their British online correspondents, "No, this does not happen regularly. It's rare." The Yankees scored another 6 runs in the 4th inning, and the Sox scored another 6 runs in the 7th. The Yankees got home runs from Judge, Aaron Hicks and Brett Gardner; the Sox got 2 from Benjamin Chavis and 1 from Jackie Bradley Jr. The Yankees won, 17-13.

June 30, 2019, London Stadium. In the 2nd and last game of the London Series, the Sox scored 4 in the 1st inning, but the Yankees scored 9 in the 7th. The Yankees hit only 1 home run, from Didi Gregorius, but won, 12-8.

October 5, 2021, Fenway Park. Both teams finished the regular season 92-70, 8 games behind the AL East-winning Tampa Bay Rays. Since the Sox won the series series, they hosted the AL Wild Card Game against the Yankees. Xander Bogaerts hit a 2-run home run off Gerrit Cole in the 1st inning, and that was pretty much it: The Sox won, 6-2. Again, the winning pitcher was Nathan Eovaldi.

April 8, 2022, Yankee Stadium II: Opening Day. The season couldn't have started much better for the Yankees: With the "ghost runner" rule in effect, Josh Donaldson leads off the bottom of the 11th inning by singling Isiah Kiner-Falefa home, and the Yankees beat the Red Sox, 6-5.

This time, Eovaldi wouldn't be the winning pitcher, as he gave up home runs to Anthony Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton. DJ LeMahieu hit one off Garrett Whitlock. Michael King was the winning pitcher, in relief of Gerrit Cole.

Over the course of the regular season, in Boston, the Yankees would lose 2 games to the Sox on walkoffs, and win another in 10 innings.

September 12, 2024, Yankee Stadium II: Again with the ghost runner, Juan Soto leads off the bottom of the 10th by singling Jon Berti home, and the Yankees beat the Red Sox, 2-1. Clay Holmes is the winner, in relief of Nestor Cortés. The Yankees went on to win their 1st Pennant in 15 years, an interregnum in which the Sox had won 2.

August 23, 2025, Yankee Stadium II: After losing the 2 previous games, 6-3 and 1-0, the Yankees lose to the Red Sox, 12-1. Although they salvage the last game of the series, 7-2, these losses help to cost them the Division title and a better postseason position.

October 2, 2025: It is 76 years to the day after The Jerry Coleman Game, and 47 years to the day after The Bucky Dent Game. This is The Cam Schlittler Game: The rookie, who was promoted from the minor leagues on July 9 as an injury-replacement emergency starter, continued his fine run in Game 3 of the AL Wild Card Series, going 8 innings, allowing 5 hits and no walks, striking out 12. David Bednar walked a batter in the 9th, but finished the 5-hit shutout. The Yankees won, 4-0, winning a postseason series against the Red Sox for the 1st time in 22 years. But they lost in the next round.

April 21, 2026, Fenway Park: The rivalry resumes. Let's go, Yankees! BEAT THE SCUM!  

Yankees vs. Red Sox: The Defining Moments, Part V: 2002-2004

 

December 26, 2002, Fenway Park. The Yankees sign Cuban pitcher José Contreras, and new Sox president Larry Lucchino, in a fit of petulance, calls the Yankees "the Evil Empire."

Oh, really? Putting aside the question of which team is actually more evil... The term "Evil Empire" had been used by President Ronald Reagan -- who knew more about baseball than he did about economics or foreign affairs -- to describe the Soviet Union. Excuse me, Larry, but how do you square the image of the heavily capitalist Yankees with Communism and its prohibition of private property?

Some Yankee Fans, however, connect the word "Empire" with the villains of the Star Wars film franchise, including one fan who made a T-shirt with Darth Vader's helmet, saying, "May the Curse be with you."

October 11, 2003, Fenway Park. Game 3 of the ALCS, and another Roger vs. Pedro matchup. Pedro hits Karim Garcia in the head, on purpose. Not the first time he's hit a Yankee on purpose, nor will it be the last, but it is easily the most notorious.

There is yelling back and forth. Jorge Posada, himself a former Pedro victim, yells in Spanish so that Pedro has no problem understanding. Pedro points at his head, then at Jorge. Message: "I'm going to hit you in the head." Making such a threat is a crime.

Later in the game, Clemens pitches to Manny Ramirez, and the pitch is head-high... but over the plate, and clearly not intended to hit Manny. (As we've seen, if Roger Clemens wanted to hit a batter, that batter got hit.) Manny points at Clemens and walks toward him, still holding the bat. The benches clear again, and Yankee coach Don Zimmer -- manager of the Sox in 1978, but also a former player who nearly died from a beaning in Triple-A ball in 1953 -- runs toward Pedro.

Pedro Martinez, age 32, grabs Don Zimmer, age 72, by the head, and throws him to the ground. Attempted murder, if the jurisdiction is New York City. In Boston, Zimmer ends up forced to apologize, with Pedro getting a $50,000 fine -- pocket change, with what the Sox are paying him.

Refresh my memory: Did we have to apologize to Japan for putting Pearl Harbor in the way of our Pacific Coast?

When things finally settle down, Clemens finishes his strikeout of Manny. The Yankees win, 4-3. The next day, Game 4 is rained out, giving everyone a 24-hour cooling-off period, which was really for the best.

English soccer fans like to refer to their rivals as "The Scum," and their rivals' fans as "Scummers." As far as I'm concerned, this was the day the Red Sox stopped being mere arch-rivals, and truly became The Scum. They can take their "Evil Empire" talk and shove it up their own evil asses.

October 16, 2003, Yankee Stadium. It comes down to a Game 7. David Ortiz hits 2 home runs (cough-steroids-cough), and the Sox lead 5-2 in the bottom of the 8th. By this point, Ortiz, a.k.a. "Big Papi," has been hitting the Yanks like crazy all year. His success against the Yankees will eventually beg the question, "How many times does a guy have to get big hits off you before you plunk him?"

Ah, but there's a double standard at work: A Sox pitcher can hit a Yankee batter, and get away with it every... single... time; a Yankee pitcher can hit a Sox batter, and he gets thrown out of the game, fined and suspended. Anyway, the Sox need 5 more outs.

Derek Jeter doubles. Bernie Williams singles, Jeter scores. It's 5-3. Sox manager Grady Little comes out, and he has to know that Pedro has thrown too many pitches, and that the next 2 batters are Hideki Matsui, a lefty; and Posada, a switch-hitter but much better from the left side than from the right; so the right thing to do is to bring in a lefthanded pitcher, probably Alan Embree (who usually pitched well against the Yankees), to pitch Matsui lefty-on-lefty and turn Posada to his weaker right side. The decision seems obvious to everyone: Sox fans, Yankee Fans, the Fox broadcast team, neutral TV viewers.

Obvious to everyone, that is, except for the man whose decision it was: Little. He leaves Pedro in. Matsui hits a ground-rule double, moving Bernie to 3rd base.

2nd & 3rd, only 1 out, and the dangerous (especially from the left side) Posada coming up. Now Little has got to take Pedro out, and bring in Embree.

But he stays in the dugout. Pedro remains on the mound, and Jorge dumps a looper into short center, scoring Bernie and Hideki. 5-5. Yet another legendary Sox choke, and The Stadium shakes with fans cheering and jumping. (And, considering Game 3, I find it very fitting that Posada got the hit that ended Pedro's night.)

Bottom of the 11th, and Tim Wakefield, who had beaten the Yanks in Games 1 and 4 of the series, and had pitched a scoreless 10th, opens the inning by throwing a 69 miles-per-hour knuckleball to Aaron Boone. Boom. Yankees 6, Red Sox 5. Boone takes his place alongside Bucky Dent and Bill Buckner.

Was this the greatest game of all time? Or, at least, the greatest Yanks-Sox game? It might have been, if the Yankees had won the ensuing World Series. But they lost. I don't want to talk about it. Jeff Fucking Weaver.

So, to me, the Bucky Dent Game remains the greatest. We won the World Series after that one.

November 28, 2003, Fenway Park. Having failed to trade Nomar to the Texas Rangers for Alex Rodriguez, the Red Sox instead pull off a "reverse Tom Seaver": They trade 4 nobodies -- Casey Fossum, Brandon Lyon, Jorge De La Rosa, and Mike Goss (who never even made the major leagues) -- to the Arizona Diamondbacks for one of the top pitchers in the game, Curt Schilling, who had previously driven the Yankees nuts in the 2001 World Series.

As a Philadelphia Phillie, Schilling had been described by general manager Lee Thomas as follows: "One day out of five, he's a horse; the other four, he's a horse's ass." Schilling lives up to that reputation at his introductory press conference in Boston, by saying, "I guess I hate the Yankees now."

February 15, 2004, Yankee Stadium. With the Sox having failed to trade for A-Rod, making a very public mess of the negotiations with the Texas Rangers, the Yankees succeed, sending Alfonso Soriano to Texas for the biggest name (if not the best player) in baseball. With Jeter still at shortstop, A-Rod moves over to 3rd base.

July 1, 2004, Yankee Stadium. As wild a regular-season game as you'll ever see. The Yankees end up using everyone on their roster. The Sox use everyone on theirs, except for 2. One is backup catcher Doug Mirabelli, who had to be held back in case of emergency. The other is Nomar, apparently injured but not on the Disabled List -- and the fact that Nomar is not sent into what is very much a key game, calendar be damned, is telling.

Once, Nomar, Jeter and A-Rod were the subjects of a debate as to who was the best shortstop in baseball. Now, Jeter is making a diving play that saves the game, A-Rod is playing 3rd base and moving to shortstop after Jeter got hurt on that play, and Nomar is sitting on the bench, leading to his being traded by the Sox within a few days.

Manny homers in the top of the 13th, but Miguel Cairo and John Flaherty double in the bottom of the 13th to win it. Yankees 6, Red Sox 5. A stunning game whose re-airing on the YES Network the next morning gets relabeled from Yankees Recap to the newest episode of Yankees Classics.

It also allowed "Flash" Flaherty to turn his one big hit in the major leagues into a broadcasting career on YES. Then again, one big hit is more than Fran Healy, a backup catcher for the Yankees who broadcast for both New York teams, ever got.

July 24, 2004, Fenway Park. Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo -- except for Bo Derek, white people should never wear cornrows -- purposely hits A-Rod in the back. A-Rod curses Captain Cornrows out. Sox catcher and Captain Jason Varitek leaves on his mask, like the coward that he is, and pushes his catcher's mitt into A-Rod's pretty face, instigating a full-scale brawl.

Refresh my memory: Which of these teams is evil? After the 1976 brawl, Bill Lee said, "The Yankees looked like a bunch of hookers swinging their purses." Well, at least they didn't hide behind protective masks.

Bill Mueller takes Mariano Rivera deep in the bottom of the 9th. Red Sox 9, Yankees 8. Mueller has often been suspected of steroid use, but has thus far been protected from such revelations.

September 19, 2004, Yankee Stadium. Yankees 11, Red Sox 1. The Yankees, the one team that seems to give Pedro trouble, beat him yet again, pounding him. In a postgame press conference, he says, "I just tip my cap, and call the Yankees my daddy."

"Who's Your Daddy?" chants will dog Pedro for the rest of his career. One fan -- was it Vinny Milano, a.k.a. Bald Vinny the River Avenue T-shirt vendor? -- made up a T-shirt showing Darth Vader wearing a Yankee jersey, and saying, as if to Luke Skywalker, "Pedro, I am your father!"

The chant even returned when Pedro pitched for the Mets in an Interleague game in 2006, and for the Philadelphia Phillies in Games 2 and 6 of the 2009 World Series at the new Yankee Stadium.

October 17, 2004, Fenway Park. Game 4 of the American League Championship Series. The Yankees had won the 1st 3, including 19-8 last night. The Sox were looking pitiful. Still, their resident wisenheimer, Kevin Millar, told the media, "Don't let us win tonight."

It seemed like a ridiculous thing to say, for 8 1/2 innings. It was 4-3 Yankees going to the bottom of the 9th. All the Yankees needed to complete a sweep was 3 more outs without a run, and Mariano Rivera was on the mound.

But, Cliché Alert: Walks can kill you, especially the leadoff variety. Rivera issued a leadoff walk to Millar himself. Manager Terry Francona took Millar out, replacing him with pinch-runner Dave Roberts. Everybody watching this game, in Fenway or on TV, knew that Roberts would try to steal 2nd base. Joe Torre could have called a pitchout. He didn't, and Roberts had what is now the most famous stolen base in baseball history. Bill Mueller singled up the middle to bring Roberts home with the tying run.

In the bottom of the 12th, Paul Quantrill allowed a single to Manny Ramirez, and gave up a walkoff home run to Ortiz. Red Sox 6, Yankees 4.

October 18, 2004, Fenway Park. Okay, it was 1 game. The Yankees just had to win tonight to close it out in Boston. And Mike Mussina had taken a perfect game into the 7th inning of Game 1. This shouldn't be too hard.

Is it sounding like the 1978 Boston Massacre yet, with the cleat on the other foot?

The Yankees trailed 2-1 in the top of the 6th, but took a 4-2 lead. That lead held into the bottom of the 8th. But former Sox pitcher Tom Gordon gave up a leadoff homer to Ortiz. Again, Millar drew a walk; again, he was replaced by Roberts. No steal necessary this time: Trot Nixon singled, Gabe Kapler ran for Nixon, Mariano was brought in, and Varitek hit a sacrifice fly to score Roberts and tie the game. For the 2nd night in a row, Rivera had blown a postseason save. The entire rest of his career, he did that only twice.

The game went to the bottom of the 14th. At 5 hours and 49 minutes, it was, at the time, the longest postseason game by time. Esteban Loiaza, a former Chicago White Sox ace who'd been shaky for the Yanks that season, had pitched valiantly since the 11th, and struck Mark Bellhorn out to start the inning. But he was out of gas. Again, it was walks that made the difference: He walked Damon and Ramirez, bracketing a strikeout of Orlando Cabrera. Then Ortiz hit not a home run, but a looping single that was enough to bring Damon home. Red Sox 5, Yankees 4.

October 19, 2004, Yankee Stadium. Game 6. The series had come back to Yankee Stadium, home of Mystique and Aura and 39 American League Pennants and 26 World Championships. All the Yanks had to do was win tonight, and all those brand-new Sox memories would have been as wasted as Carlton Fisk’s home run that won Game 6 of the 1975 World Series.

Except Curt Schilling (who had said before the series, "I'm not sure I can think of any scenario more enjoyable than making 55,000 Yankee Fans shut up") was pitching for the Sox. So badly hurt that he couldn't pitch well in Game 1, he’d had a special surgery on his ankle that allowed him to pitch tonight. Who pitches 6 days after surgery? Curt Schilling did, and has been called "courageous" ever since. If a Yankee had done it, what would the media have called him?

And the Yankees refused to test that ankle by bunting on him. John McGraw would have done it. Casey Stengel would have done it. Earl Weaver (not a New York manager but a crafty one) would have done it. You can be damn sure that Billy Martin would have done it. Joe Torre didn't do it.  What good is "class" if you lose? Especially to The Scum?

Schilling pitched 7 solid innings, and Bellhorn (cough-steroids-cough) hit a home run. It was a reverse of the Jeffrey Maier play in 1996: The ball hit a front-row fan in the chest and bounced back onto the field. It was an obvious home run, but the umpires ruled it went off the wall. Sox manager manager Terry Francona appealed, and the ruling was (sadly, but correctly) changed to a homer.

The Sox still led 4-2 in the bottom of the 8th, but the Yankees got Jeter on 1st. With 1 out, Alex Rodriguez came to the plate. And the pitcher was Bronson Arroyo, the same matchup as on July 24.

Alex hit a weak grounder back to the mound, and as Arroyo tried to make the tag just before 1st base, he (or so it first appeared) dropped the ball. It had been 18 years (minus 6 days) since the Bill Buckner Game. Now, at another New York ballpark in October, a ball rolled away from 1st base down the right-field line, and a run scored against the Red Sox! It was 4-3 Boston, and A-Rod was on 2nd with the tying run! The Stadium was going bananas! Red Sox fans were in full "Oh, noooo, not again! It can't be happening again!" mode.

Except this call was reversed as well. It was The Slap Play. A-Rod slapped the ball out of Arroyo's glove. It met baseball's legal definition of interference, and he was called out. What's more, Jeter was sent back to 1st.

That's the part that bothers me, ruling-wise: Jeter had nothing to do with the interference, and he would have had 2nd legitimately even if A-Rod had done nothing out of the ordinary, and Arroyo had been allowed to properly tag him out. It wasn't Jeter's fault: 2nd base was rightfully his, interference or no, even if 3rd and home were not.

This killed the rally, but, as mad as I was at the umpires, A-Rod was rightfully the real target of Yankee Fans' wrath, including my own. This was the beginning of A-Rod's image as "a player who screws the Yankees over in the clutch," and he did not shake it until October 2009. Though he did his damnedest to restore it in the next 3 Octobers, and again in 2015. (So how many bad Octobers does one good October excuse? Apparently, at least 8.)

The Sox held on to win by that same 4-2 score, and the series was tied, the 1st time a Major League Baseball team had ever come back from 3-games-to-none down to force a Game 7.

For the first time since I became aware of the Curse of the Bambino, I believed it was not going to work. As the man who popularized the Curse, Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, pointed out, the kinds of things that usually went against the Red Sox and/or in the Yankees favor were now working the other way around.

As bad as the next night was, Game 6 was really the day that any curse, jinx, hex, hoodoo, hammer, whammy, whommy, whatever you want to call it, that the Yankees had over the Red Sox came to an end.

And those of us who are old enough to remember could feel it coming. I had no confidence at all that the Yankees would win Game 7, not even at home, especially with their starting pitching options so messed-up. As the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Brooklyn Dodger fan as a kid but a Red Sox fan since going to Harvard, likes to say, "There's always these omens in baseball." This was an omen to rival Damien Thorn.

Had the Yankees won Game 6, there would have been no Game 7. David Ortiz's "heroics" of Game 4 and Game 5 would have been meaningless, as they were the year before. The Yankees would have prepared for the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, and probably won it.

If that had happened, you can be damn sure that the outcry from Red Sox fans (and fans of other teams that hate the Yankees) that, due to the steroid use of A-Rod, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield, "The Yankees cheated" and should be stripped of their Pennant and title. And their willing accomplices in the media would have gone along with it. There would have been a cloud over the Yankees, the way there never has been over the Red Sox, who, through Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, were far more reliant on performance-enhancing drugs, and, from 2003 to 2016, the Big Papi Years, probably wouldn't even have made the Playoffs, much less won 3 World Series.

The Yankees wouldn't have gotten away with it, as the Red Sox always have.

Still, having that cloud over us -- which we essentially had put over us anyway -- would have been preferable to the insufferable unearned arrogance of the Boston fans of 2004 onward, especially the bandwagoners.

And I still want the blood on Schilling's sock tested! I think he was using steroids, too! And somebody else must think so. It can't be only his rotten personality, his politics, and his post-retirement business shenanigans that's keeping him out of the Hall of Fame. If anything, those things, as bad as they are, should be irrelevant as to whether he belongs in Cooperstown.

October 20, 2004, Yankee Stadium. Game 7 is a disaster from the outset, as proven steroid user Ortiz homers again. Red Sox 10, Yankees 3.

What a difference 4 days can make.

The game was over in a hurry, as emergency starter Kevin Brown gave up a 2-run homer to Ortiz in the 1st inning, and Javier Vázquez gave up a grand slam to Damon in the 2nd. In a manner of speaking, it was the longest game in Yankee history. We had to endure 9 innings' worth, 3 1/2 hours' worth of Sox fans' celebrating and taunting, before it ended.

To paraphrase New York gangster Henry Hill: "It was revenge for Bucky Dent, and a lot of other things. And there was nothing that we could do about it. Papi was a made man, and A-Rod wasn't. And we had to sit still and take it. It was among the New Englanders. It was real Chowdahead shit."

The Red Sox became the 1st Major League Baseball team to come back from a 3-games-to-0 postseason deficit, and win the Pennant, clinching at Yankee Stadium, a house of pain for them for so long. They went on to beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, killing the Curse of the Bambino after 86 years.

Or so they thought. Now we know the truth.

Part VI, the finale, is ahead.

Yankees vs. Red Sox, The Defining Moments, Part IV: 1983-2001

July 4, 1983, Yankee Stadium. Both teams have changed tremendously in 5 years. The rivalry has fallen a bit. Despite the opponent and the 4th of July holiday, only 41,077 fans come out to The Stadium. Why? Well, it is the 4th of July, and it's really hot, so it's a beach day, not a baseball day. And neither team is really in the race.

This game would be totally forgotten by anyone who wasn't there... if it wasn't for Dave Righetti pitching a no-hitter. He even managed to strike out the tough-to-fan Wade Boggs for the final out. Yankees 4, Red Sox 0.

October 5, 1986, Fenway Park. The Yankees beat the Red Sox, 7-0, and complete a 4-game sweep. However, this not-quite Boston Massacre -- this was the only real blowout of the series -- is meaningless, as the Sox had already clinched the American League Eastern Division title a weak earlier.

This was because the Sox had great starting pitching: Roger Clemens, Bruce Hurst, Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd, and even the final, somewhat hard-luck season of Tom Seaver. In contrast, the Yanks' rotation was weak: While Dennis Rasmussen went 18-6, no other Yankee pitcher, starter or reliever, won in double figures. Ron Guidry had an uncharacteristic 9-12 after winning 22 the year before, and Doug Drabek, Bob Tewksbury and 41-year-old knuckleballer Joe Niekro (whose brother Phil had pitched for the Yanks the preceding 2 years) won just 34 between them.

Also, Boggs, who did have the excuse of a sore hamstring, sat this series out, and wins the AL batting title over Don Mattingly, who slumped badly in the last 2 weeks.

October 25, 1986, Shea Stadium, New York. For Yankee Fans, this was the nightmare scenario: A World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets. For the record, at the time, I hated the Mets more, and I had a little sympathy for Sox fans and their World Series drought, then 68 years, so I rooted for the Sox.

If it were ever to happen again? I would root for aliens to come and beam up the entire stadium. Including both sets of fans? Especially both sets of fans.

While "The Bill Buckner Game" was played in New York City, and it did make the Sox look like morons, it had nothing to do with the Yankees, and it makes the Mets look heroic, and I don't think either Yankee Fans or Sox fans want to hear about it. So let's just move on.

September 28, 1987, Yankee Stadium. Mike Easler -- not traded from Boston to New York for Don Baylor in the 1985-86 off-season, although it did sort of work out that way -- treats Calvin Schiraldi even more harshly than the Mets did in the previous year's World Series. He hits a pinch-hit home run to win the game, 9-7.

May 27, 1991, Yankee Stadium. The Sox are the defending AL East Champions (and would barely be nipped by the Toronto Blue Jays at the end this time), while the Yankees had finished last the year before. Only 32,369 come out for this Memorial Day matinée between the two old rivals, and the Yanks trail 5-3 in the bottom of the 9th.

But Mel Hall -- who would later leave the Yankees under ignominious circumstances -- takes Jeff "the Terminator" Reardon deep. Yankees 6, Red Sox 5. Maybe Sox fans can blame the 1st base umpire, Larry Barnett, the same ump who they, in their delusions, think screwed them in Game 3 of the '75 World Series.

A lot of Yankee Fans point to this game as the beginning of the rise from the abyss. It wasn't: 1991 and '92 were both bad years, though not as bad as '89 and '90. But the building blocks were in place: George Steinbrenner had been suspended for 2 years, former good-field-no-hit infielder Gene Michael was running the show as general manager, and the Yankees were making good trades and draft choices, including, the following June, a shortstop born in North Jersey, but raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan and graduating from Kalamazoo Central High School. His name was Derek Jeter.

This Mel Hall homer is also cited by some as the beginning of Yankee broadcaster John Sterling's closing call of, "Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeeee Yankees win!" I'm not so sure. Granted, I was watching this one on WPIX-Channel 11 with Phil Rizzuto, Bobby Murcer and Tom Seaver, rather than listening to Sterling and Joe Angel on 77 WABC.  But even as late as Jim Leyritz's 1995 Playoff walkoff against Seattle, his "Theeeeeeee... " was still just a "The... " without much elongation.

September 14, 1991, Yankee Stadium. This was my first live Yanks-Sox game, included among an attendance of 45,758. This was a 4-game series, and the Sox won 3 of them. Not this one: Yankees 3, Red Sox 1. And, yes, Sox fans were every bit as obnoxious as you might expect, especially since they were still in the race (they'd be caught at the death by those pesky Blue Jays) and the Yanks were awful, having just begun their climb back from the abyss of last place the season before.

December 15, 1992, Yankee Stadium. Having been allowed to leave via free agency by the Sox, Boggs signs with the Yankees. It was weird seeing him in Pinstripes, but I got used to it, because he could still hit for average, began to hit with power (aided by the short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium), and his fielding, already good, got better.

October 26, 1996, Yankee Stadium. The Yankees beat the Atlanta Braves, 3-2, to win Game 6 and clinch the World Series, their first such win in 18 years. A moment in time by Red Sox standards, but interminable by ours.

Boggs, who'd come so close with the 1986 Red Sox, and signed with the Yankees prior to the 1993 season and became part of the restoration, got on a policeman's horse and rode around the field in the celebration. Rubbing it in? He may not have thought so, but we sure did.

As Denis Leary, a native of Worcester, Massachusetts, a big Sox fan, but also with connections to New York through his comedy career and his TV series The Job and Rescue Me (about policemen and firemen, respectively), put it: "If you had told my father in 1986 that, within 10 years, Wade Boggs would be celebrating winning a World Series with the Yankees while riding on the back of a police horse, his head would have blown up."

May 24, 1997, Yankee Stadium. Charlie Hayes is best remembered by Yankee Fans for catching the last out of the 1996 World Series. Almost forgotten is this game the following spring, in which he hit a walkoff homer against John Wasdin -- or "Wayback Wasdin," as some Sox fans called him. Yankees 4, Red Sox 2.

February 18, 1999, Yankee Stadium. Although the rivalry was amped up a little bit by the Yankees signing Boggs, Boggs riding that horse, and the arrivals in Boston of Pedro Martinez and Nomar Garciaparra -- the latter forging a rivalry-within-the-rivalry with Yankee shortstop Jeter -- and the Sox had made the Playoffs the season before, this is the day the rivalry really gets going again.

On this day, the Yankees trade pitchers David Wells and Graeme Lloyd, and infielder Homer Bush, to the Toronto Blue Jays for Roger Clemens, whom the Red Sox had cast aside 2 years earlier. Then-Sox general manager Dan Duquette saw Clemens not getting enough run support to get a plus-.500 record, and gaining weight, and said he was "in the twilight of his career."

Whether Duquette blew it big-time, or Clemens really was in the twilight of his career and turned that around with performance-enhancing drugs, may never be fully proven. What we know for sure is this: One way or another, Clemens got back into shape, had 2 great years with the Jays, and became a Yankee Legend, albeit one most of us on the Light Side of The Force are not comfortable with. By contrast, Sox fans have treated Clemens as their "Darth Vader," forgetting just which side is good and which side is evil.

July 13, 1999, Fenway Park, Boston. The Major League Baseball All-Star Game is held at the ancient home of the Sox. Yankee manager Joe Torre is manager for the American League team. Nomar Garciaparra of the Red Sox starts for the American League at shortstop and receives a standing ovation from the fans after Jeter comes in to replace him after they embrace. Later in the game when he came to bat, Jeter gave Garciaparra a tribute by mimicking his batting stance. Pedro starts for the AL and strikes out 5 of the 6 National League batters he faces.

Before the game, nominees for the MLB All-Century Team are introduced. The legends wear the current caps of their teams, not necessarily the caps their teams wore in their own time. One of the nominees is Reggie Jackson, former recipient of "Reggie Sucks!" chants from the Fenway stands, and he gets a nice cheer. Hearing this, he looks at the TV camera, wearing his Yankee cap, and winks.

There was only one person among the nominees who was booed: Clemens. He wore not the cap of the team that made him famous, the Sox, but of the team for whom he played at the moment, the Yanks. Tremendous booing. Heck, even Rickey Henderson got cheered. (Barry Bonds, not yet known as a steroid cheat, was not in attendance, as he was not named to the NL All-Star Team that year, although he was an All-Century Team nominee.) The AL wins the game.

July 30, 1999, Fenway Park. I was there for this one. The Sox had recently published their plans for New Fenway Park, to be built across the street, and I figured this might be my last chance to see a Yanks-Sox game at Fenway in the heat of a Pennant race. Who knew at the time that, 10 years later, Fenway would still stand, and it would be the Yankees who would build a new stadium across their street?

I paid a scalper $42 for a $24 obstructed-view seat. It was worth every penny. On the 2nd pitch of the game, Chuck Knoblauch hit a home run over the Green Monster. On the 5th pitch of the game, Derek Jeter hit a home run to dead center field. The victimized Sox pitcher was Mark Portugal, who had been a fair pitcher with the Houston Astros, but was now washed up, would retire after the season, and literally fell off the mound a few pitches later.

The Yanks left the 1st inning ahead 2-0, and while the Sox did tie it up, the Yanks unloaded the lumber afterward. Yankees 13, Red Sox 3. Joe Torre let Hideki Irabu pitch a complete game. No, I'm not kidding: Torre let a pitcher go the distance, and Hideki I-rob-you, no less.

At the start of the game, there were 33,777 paying customers in Fenway, and about 10,000 of them were Yankee Fans. By the 7th inning stretch, there were about 15,000 people there, and about 10,000 of them were chanting, "Let's go, Yankees!" A great night. I even ran into a guy who played football at my high school, who was by this point going to Boston College. And he was also a Yankee Fan. What were the odds?

September 10, 1999, Yankee Stadium. Chili Davis hits a home run off Pedro Martinez. That's the only hit that Pedro allows, and he strikes out 17 batters, the most ever fanned by a Yankee opponent. Had Andy Pettitte not allowed a home run to Trot Nixon, Pedro would have pitched a one-hitter and struck out 17 Yankees, and lost. Instead... Red Sox 3, Yankees 1.

Pedro begins to achieve godlike status among Sox fans, a status achieved since World War II only by Ted Williams, Tony Conigliaro, Carl Yastrzemski, Carlton Fisk and Nomar. But the Yankees win the American League Eastern Division, while the Sox get the Wild Card.

October 13, 1999, Yankee Stadium.  Game 1 of the American League Championship Series. Because the Boston Tie Party of 1978 is officially counted as a regular-season game, this is the first "real" postseason game between the Pinstripes and The Scum. Sox fans are sure that their deliverance from the Yankees and the Curse of the Bambino are finally at hand.

Not tonight: Bernie Williams hits a home run to dead center field off Rod Beck. Yankees 4, Red Sox 3. The Yanks will take Game 2 as well.

October 16, 1999, Fenway Park. Game 3. Pedro pitches superbly, while the Sox batter Clemens. As Clemens walks off the mound after getting knocked out of the box, a fan holds up a sign saying, "Roger, thanks for the memories -- especially this one!" One side of Fenway chants, "Where is Roger?" The other side chants, "In the shower!" Red Sox 13, Yankees 1. Sox fans are delirious, and are now sure they will beat the Yanks and go all the way.

But, as Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, the man who popularized the phrase "Curse of the Bambino," pointed out, the point was not to beat Clemens, but to win the series. And the Sox still trail it, 2 games to 1. The Yankees don't lose again until April.

October 17, 1999, Fenway Park. Game 4.  Admittedly, there were a couple of umpiring mistakes that worked in the Yanks' favor. But it's still 3-2 Yanks in the 9th, and poor fielding leads to a Ricky Ledée grand slam off Beck. Sox fans, furious at the umpiring, throw garbage onto the field.

Since then, the description of Boston as "the Athens of America" gets this response from me: "Bullshit." While there were many fans who had stood by the Sox through all the torment, this was a limited few who had come to the team through Pedro and Nomar, and were more likely to get blitzed than the ones who did so in '78, and they were animals. Of course, these are the ones who get noticed, the kind that got stereotyped as the "Red Sox fans" we have come to know, lampooned on Saturday Night Live by Jimmy Fallon (before he moved on to the U.S. version of Fever Pitch).

Anyway, Yankees 9, Red Sox 2.

October 18, 1999, Fenway Park. Jeter and Jorge Posada hit home runs, Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez pitches superbly, and the Yankees beat the Red Sox, 6-1, and clinch the Pennant, and danceon the field at Fenway. They go on to win the World Series.

April 22, 2001, Yankee Stadium. David Justice bangs his gavel off Derek Lowe, hitting a walkoff homer to give the Yanks a 4-3 win.

May 24, 2001, Yankee Stadium. On the 60th birthday of Bob Dylan -- a man who once wrote a song about Catfish Hunter, and another song titled "Seven Curses" (but it had nothing to do with baseball) -- Pedro is getting ready to pitch against the Yankees. "I don't believe in curses," Pedro says. "Wake up the damn Bambino, and have me face him. Maybe I'll drill him in the ass."

But the Yankees beat him. Yankees 2, Red Sox 1. The Yanks move into first place, Pedro gets hurt in his next start, and doesn't win another game for the rest of the season.

You don't believe in curses? You mock Babe Ruth -- a better pitcher than you were, Pedro? What a fool. As Dylan might have said, "They'll stone you just like they said they would."

September 2, 2001, Fenway Park. Mike Mussina comes within one strike of pitching a perfect game, but Carl Everett's 9th-inning, two-out, two-strike single is the only baserunner allowed by Mussina. By an amazing coincidence, David Cone, the last Yankee pitcher to throw a perfect game in 1999, had started the game for the Red Sox. Yankees 1, Red Sox 0.

September 18, 2001, Fenway Park. The Sox play their first game since the 9/11 attacks.  They play the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and win, 7-2.  A fan at Fenway holds up a banner of solidarity, which would have been unimaginable 8 days earlier (and on most days since September 2001): "TODAY, WE (HEART) NY." The Yankees also play their first game following the resumption of play, in Chicago against the White Sox, and win, 11-3.

December 20, 2001, Fenway Park. The JRY Trust, named for Jean Yawkey, sells the Sox to New England Sports Ventures, the company now named Fenway Sports Group, run by John W. Henry. This ends 79 years of Yawkey family-connected ownership of the Sox. (Tom and Jean never had any children to take over for them; Jean inherited the team when Tom died in 1976, and John Harrington had run the club through the Trust since Jean's death in 1992.)

The Henry group, including former Florida Marlins owner Henry, former Baltimore Orioles and San Diego Padres president Larry Lucchino, and the youngest general manager in the game at the time, Theo Epstein, change the culture around the club. The fans, having already changed into the Chowdaheads that they became at the dawn of the Nomar-Pedro era, don't change, but they sure embrace this change.

Part V is ahead.