BOSTON — Narratives, when they are weighted with history, are not easily rewritten.
So even though the Boston Red Sox have won three World Series titles to the Yankees’ one in the last 14 seasons and even though they sprinted past everyone else in baseball with a franchise-record 108 victories this year, an uneasy feeling had settled in here as the visitors from the Bronx arrived this week.
The Yankees, after all, were looking like the dream-wreckers of old, after their cartoon-size sluggers, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, clubbed home runs while a frothy crowd urged them on during a wild-card playoff romp over Oakland on Wednesday.
And with Red Sox ace Chris Sale nursing a sore shoulder the last two months, and his velocity dipping, and with the Boston bullpen in a perpetually shaky state, the threads for a Boston unraveling were in plain sight as the two teams began their American League division series on Friday night.
CreditChang W. Lee/The New York Times
But the Red Sox beat back any immediate concerns, riding an early three-run homer from J.D. Martinez, plus a stout performance by Sale, and then surviving their usual bullpen jitters for a 5-4 victory in Game 1.
“I thought we did a really good job of pecking away, a good job of giving ourselves opportunities, and just ran out of time,” Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said. “We just couldn’t get that backbreaking hit.”
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