The Yankees and Red Sox are about to meet in a series at Yankee Stadium that will not provide any conclusions to what is going to be another classic chapter in Major League Baseball's best rivalry.
If the series had been scheduled 10 days ago, it looked like the Yankees might have the advantage. However, after getting swept by Tampa Bay last weekend and losing Gary Sanchez to a groin injury, that edge may have disappeared. Not only will the Yankees miss their powerful catcher -- although Austin Romine can get the job done in the short-term -- the Red Sox have turned up their offense a notch or two in recent days.
J.D. Martinez has been hammering the ball all season, and Mookie Betts is a legitimate MVP candidate. The big change for the Red Sox is that they are starting to get production from the bottom of their lineup, as third baseman Rafael Devers, catchers Sandy Leon and Christian Vasquez and center fielder Jackie Bradley Jr. have started to hit.
It should make for a memorable pre-July 4 series, one that should provide a lot of aha moments, but they are not likely to be the telling ones for the season.
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Those will come in the three series that follow the All-Star break. This is a season when these two behemoths will go at each other in classic fashion in August and twice in September, including a season-ending series at Fenway Park.
Unlike the classic pennant races of 1977 and '78, the second-place finisher will not be left crying in their beer. The winner will go to the playoffs and open with a best-of-five division series, while the loser will meet the No. 2 wild-card team – most likely the Seattle Mariners – in a one-game showdown.
There's no doubt that the division winner will have a huge advantage, but wild card teams have the ability to win the World Series.
The Yankeees-Red Sox rivalry is almost always smoldering and has been for more than 40 years. The ancient story about the sale of Babe Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees obviously goes back to 1920. But the modern part of the rivalry got ignited in 1975, when the Red Sox beat the Yankees with a pair of shutout victories during a doubleheader at Shea Stadium – Yankee Stadium was closed for renovation in '74 and '75 – and essentially pushed the Yankees aside in a late July series.
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One of those shutouts was a 1-0 win that saw Boston's "Spaceman" Bill Lee get the best of the Yankees' Catfish Hunter.
The Red Sox, led by Carl Yastrzemski, Fred Lynn, Jim Rice and Carlton Fisk, would go on to win the American League pennant and then lose a classic World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.
That loss was painful for the Yankees and their fans, but it lit the fuse on a hatred for the Red Sox that has rarely waned.
The Yankees would go on to win the pennant in '76 by double-digit games. Their closest pursuer was the Baltimore Orioles, not the Red Sox, who fell apart that season and barely exceeded the .500 mark. As good as Billy Martin's team was that year – the highlight was Chris Chambliss' pennant-winning home run to beat the Kansas City Royals in the bottom of the ninth inning in the decisive Game 5 of the ALCS – they were pummeled by the Reds in a four-game World Series sweep.
Boston got up in 1977 and featured a powerful home run hitting team that dictated the pennant race for much of the season. The Red Sox were in first place for 44 days that year, but they felt the pressure, as the Yankees breathed down their necks in that incredibly hot Son of Sam summer.
The Red Sox surrendered the lead to the Yankees during a brutal late August road trip to Milwaukee, Kansas City and Minnesota. The Yankees, with Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson sharing an uneasy peace, were getting the best of Detroit, Texas and the Chicago White Sox, and moved into the lead. They kept the Red Sox at arm's length the rest of the season and won the pennant by 2 1/2 games.
While the Red Sox simply lost their way once they surrendered the lead, the following year may have given baseball the most dramatic pennant race in the sport's history (apologies to the 1951 New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers).
Boston played with a purpose from the start and built an overwhelming 14-game lead by mid-July. George Steinbrenner fired Martin for the first time, replaced him with Bob Lemon, and the Yankees started to mount a charge.
The Bombers cut the Red Sox's lead to single digits in a little over a week, and they managed to cut the lead to four games when the two teams met at Fenway on Sept. 7 to start a four-game series.
The Yankees were peaking and flexing their muscles, while the Don Zimmer-led Red Sox were falling apart. New York won each game in decisive fashion, and the Red Sox were left shaking, battered and bruised.
The Yankees would build a 3 1/2-game lead before Boston rallied to tie New York on the last day of the season, when it defeated the expansion Toronto Blue Jays and the Yankees dropped their finale to the Cleveland Indians.
The result was a classic one-game playoff at Fenway Park in which the Bombers sent the incredible Ron Guidry to the mound against ex-Yankee Mike Torrez.
The Red Sox had a 2-0 lead heading into the seventh inning, but Bucky Dent took over with a three-run homer. The Yankees would build a 5-2 lead – Reggie hit an eighth-inning homer – but the Red Sox came back to make it 5-4. The game ended with a classic confrontation between the flame-throwing Rich Gossage and Yastrzemski, in which Goose induced a foul pop-up that ended up in Graig Nettles' sure hands at third base.
The Yankees won that classic pennant race. The 2018 race may turn out to be one that is a worthy chapter in baseball's best rivalry.
Follow Steve on Twitter at @Profootballboy
