First things first: Dog bless emergency starter Richard Fitts, filling in for the injured Tanner Houck, and his Yankees counterpart Clarke Schmidt for making it through five innings unscathed as I bathed my children and put them to sleep, meaning I missed, if anything, some righteous defensive plays and little else as the game was scoreless. What am I gonna do, lie to you? This is when I started watching and it just so happened to be the right time to have done so. Serendipitous! I wish I could say the same about the rest of it.
It started nicely. Jarren Duran led off said sixth with a single, and a Tyler O’Neill blast to left came up short just as the AppleTV+ announcers started saying dumb shit about Rafael Devers and the media, so, you know, good timing. Not to be outdone, Masa Yoshida actually hit one out two pitches later to make it 2-0 Sox:
Not to be outdone, Aaron Judge led off the bottom of the sixth with a single against new pitcher Justin Slaten, and after retiring Austin Wells, he gave up another single, this one to Giancarlo Stanton. Two men and one out and apparently zero problem, because Slaten got Jazz Chisholm to pop out and Anthony Rizzo to whiff to end the threat.
And then in the top of the seventh, a moment months in the making… after a Triston Casas single, Trevor Story hit his first homer of the year to make it 4-1:
On came Zack Kelly, and walks to Anthony Volpe and Alex Verdugo (no comment) put two on with no outs, and a Gleyber Torres first-pitch single made it 4-1 and extremely (and extremely quickly) not fun while ending Kelly’s night after about five minutes, handing things over to Cam Booser, who merely had to face two of the best hitters in baseball history in Juan Soto and Aaron Judge.
Booser promptly walked Soto on four pitches, loading the sacks for the once and future American League MVP with no outs, and Aaron Judge did what Aaron Judge does, grand slamming to make it 5-4. It is hard to be even remotely surprised:
After that Luke Weaver came out for a six-out save and that eventually was that. Friday the 13th indeed. We had Manny and Papi, once, and now I know how it must have felt to face them, as a fan. They, Soto and Judge, are too good to hate and perfect to still root against, but they’re just incredible, especially in tandem.
