Red Sox (barely) prove they have the edge in baseball’s greatest rivalry
By Cody Rivera
The Yankees made it excruciatingly interesting in the ninth inning, but the Red Sox held on to win Game 4 and advance to the ALCS.
Although it had been 14 years since the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees last met in a postseason series, the Red Sox have proven that they still have the edge in the greatest rivalry in all of sports.
They made that abundantly clear in dominant fashion, beating the Yankees in back-to-back games at Yankee Stadium to officially bring New York’s 2018 season to an end. The final dagger came by way of a 4-3 Red Sox victory on Tuesday night to clinch the American League Division Series four games to one.
But it wasn’t before closer Craig Kimbrel nearly blew it for Boston. He entered the game in the ninth with a three-run lead, loaded the bases, allowed two runs, almost gave up a walk-off grand slam to Gary Sanchez, before finally getting Gleyber Torres on a grounder to third to wrap it up.
For Red Sox fans, it was heart attack central.
Amazingly, this was only the fourth time in history that Boston and New York had met in a postseason series, and now the score is officially even at 2-2. The last time they clashed in October was in 2004; the infamous ALCS in which the Red Sox became the first team to ever come back from a three-games-to-none deficit — something that Yankees fans to this day still pretend never happened.
After winning Games 1 and 3 to take a 2-1 lead in the series, the Red Sox were put in position to close the Yankees out in Game 4 thanks to an absolutely stellar pitching performance by Rick Porcello, a former AL Cy Young award winner. He pitched five innings allowing just one run on four hits, and manager Alex Cora questionably removed Porcello from the game before the sixth inning even though he had only thrown 60-something pitches.
Nonetheless, the bullpen (and Kimbrel, barely) was able to finish the job after the Red Sox hitters gave them a lead to work with, via RBIs by J.D. Martinez and Ian Kinsler as well as a solo home run by catcher Christian Vazquez.
The Red Sox will now face a very tall task against the Houston Astros in the ALCS. Houston, which won 103 games this year for the second best record in baseball behind Boston, appears to be unbeatable after sweeping the Cleveland Indians in their ALDS series.
Both the ALCS and NLCS are officially set, and now October is about to heat up.