NEW YORK — The Boston Red Sox owned the New York Yankees for much of the regular season. Now it’s the postseason, and it looks like — and sounds like — they own Yankee Stadium as well.
Some of it, anyway. For while emotions are always high when the Red Sox play the Yankees, especially in the playoffs, it was the type of emotions that stood out Tuesday night in Boston’s 3-1 victory over New York in Game 1 of this best-of-three American League Wild Card Series.
Let’s start with the crowd. Yes, Yankee Stadium was packed and boisterous, just as this place and the old place have been for decades of postseasons. Twenty-seven World Series championships will inspire those types of emotions. It’s just that there was a noticeable Red Sox roar, which suggests Yankees management may have been on to something the other day when it put the word out to Ticketmaster to only sell Wild Card Series tickets to fans in New York and the surrounding states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
🎟️ Ticket Trouble
The Sox-Yankees playoff showdown just got more heated… Ticketmaster is keeping out-of-state fans from Yankee Stadium seats. Full scoop: https://t.co/VlEzx24FIj pic.twitter.com/S0e4mEiIYA— WBSM (@WBSM1420) September 30, 2025
And yet enough Red Sox fans were able to make their way inside Yankee Stadium for Game 1, enough to make some noise. Now, make no mistake, it was a pro-Yankees crowd, as one might expect. It’s just that there was, shall we say, a Boston accent in the air.
It wasn’t the only impossible-to-ignore outpouring of emotions from Tuesday night. In most cases when the Red Sox play the Yankees, it’s knock-down pitches that make everyone emotional. Or a benches-clearing brawl. Or an ornery quote from one of the players, such as that time Sox ace Pedro Martinez besmirched the legacy of Babe Ruth when he said, “Wake up the Bambino and have me face him. Maybe I’ll drill him in the ass.”
On this night, the best display of emotions by the Red Sox was a long dugout hug between Sox starter Garrett Crochet and right-hander Lucas Giolito that took place after Crochet had done his job, and then some. In 7 2/3 take-charge innings at Yankee Stadium, the Red Sox lefty allowed just one run and retired 17 straight batters after Anthony Volpe’s second-inning home run.
And after having thrown 117 pitches, and with a man on first, and with closer Aroldis Chapman warmed up and eager to deliver a four-out save, Crochet handed the ball to Sox manager Alex Cora and headed for the dugout.
Paint 🎨
Garrett Crochet ends his night with strikeout No. 11! #Postseason pic.twitter.com/p0wtM1bq8a
— MLB (@MLB) October 1, 2025
As per custom, Crochet received lots of hugs, handshakes and attaboys from his Red Sox teammates. But all of that was about as emotional as a bunch of people standing around waiting for an elevator compared with what happened when Crochet locked eyes with Giolito.
“He’s just a very special player, and I feel fortunate to be on the same team with him,” Giolito said after the game.
It was more than that. Crochet and Giolito have a friendship that predates their time with the Red Sox, both of them having made the majors with the Chicago White Sox, first Giolito and then Crochet. They’ve been reunited on the 2025 Red Sox, who were counting on both of them to be postseason studs. And then came terrible news: Giolito has an elbow injury that’s likely to keep him out of the entire postseason.
Part of the hug was for that, too. If Giolito can’t pitch, he’s going to summon as much karma as he can and deliver it to the big guy, The Beast, Garrett Crochet.
“This was his first playoff start,” said Giolito, who had a couple of them with the White Sox. “We’re in Yankee Stadium. And he turned in an incredible performance. He’s been the heart and soul of our pitching staff. It means so much to me for him to be a leader, to do it at the highest level.
“So I just wanted to give him a hug,” Giolito said. “It’s funny, he came up, he was 21 years old during the Covid year and we got to know each other pretty well. Then he came over here and we reconnected in spring training. And I’m like, OK, he’s grown up. He’s not a kid. He’s grown up. And he’s turned into an absolute monster.”
Crochet, speaking with the media after the game, said, “I guess he was proud of me. He’s known me since I was a kid. I guess for me to go as deep as I could and give us a chance to win, he was just proud of me.”
Crochet did more than give the Red Sox a chance to win. He had gone into this Game 1 start telling Cora he’d only need to use the bullpen phone once — meaning Crochet would go deep into the game. When Crochet was later asked to flesh out that remark, he said, “Just being arrogant, to be honest.”
When a TV guy mentioned to him that his last pitch was clocked at 100 mph and added, “I don’t know if you looked back and saw it,” Crochet quickly interrupted him to say, “I did.”
This Red Sox-Yankees rivalry certainly keeps evolving. Not only is it the Red Sox who win the big games now — they’ve won three straight playoff rounds against the Yankees — but now their fans are making noise inside Yankee Stadium. So much noise, apparently, that Yankees management is pressuring Ticketmaster to keep Sox fans down to a dull roar.
And there’s Crochet, who didn’t plunk any Yankees Tuesday. He didn’t stare, he didn’t argue, he didn’t pout. What he did do was throw 117 pitches, the last one hitting 100 mph, and by his own admission, he got a good look at that reading and was rather pleased with himself.
And then he went into the dugout for a 10-second hug from a buddy who should be making postseason starts, but can’t.
In terms of emotions, these Red Sox — and a goodly number of their fans — are just doing their thing, seemingly oblivious of the Yankees.
(Photo of Garrett Crochet, right, and manager Alex Cora: Al Bello / Getty Images)