I wasn’t nervous when I woke up on Saturday morning. I knew the Yankees had to win Game 2 later that night to avoid putting themselves on the brink of elimination the way they had after two games in last year’s ALDS, but I wasn’t worried. It felt weird to not be nervous or worried about a Yankees-Red Sox playoff game, but I hadn’t been the night before for Game 1 and I wasn’t on Saturday for Game 2.

A lot of optimism and confidence for this series came from the idea that I still was unsure how the Red Sox won 108 games. I mean technically I know how they won 108 games, they beat up on and piled up wins against the bad teams (and there were a lot of them this season) while the Yankees struggled to. But when you look at their 25-man roster as a whole it’s puzzling how this team could be the best regular-season Red Sox team in history. I guess that just shows you how bad most of Major League Baseball was this season.

As the game drew closer, I still wasn’t nervous or worried and when I sat down in my seat at Fenway Park, after glancing over toward the Pesky Pole, I was completely confident the Yankees would win Game 2.

The Yankees as a team were batting .300/.365/.544 in 269 career plate appearances against David Price, and the highest-paid pitcher in history had never won a playoff game, not with the Rays, Tigers, Blue Jays or Red Sox. Now he was being asked to beat the Yankees, who he rarely ever beat, in the playoffs, where he never had won, to prevent his team from going to the Bronx tied 1-1 with Rick Porcello and Nathan Eovaldi most likely starting the next two games. Why wouldn’t I be glowing with confidence?

Ten pitches into the game, my confidence was rewarded as Aaron Judge sent a 1-2 pitch high over the Green Monster in left-center field where few have ever hit a ball. The Yankees had an early 1-0 lead and all of the Red Sox fans who had talked themselves into Price finally showing up in the playoffs were quietly sitting down as Fenway Park turned into a church.

Gary Sanchez entered the game 6-for-13 in his career against Price with five home runs and 11 RBIs, and leading off the second, he crushed the third pitch of the inning over the Monster to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. The exact game I had envisioned was unfolding as the Yankees’ right-handed power was knocking Price around and the career postseason failure was laying another egg in October. As Sanchez’s home run was still in the air and headed for Back Bay, Fenway Park broke out in a “Yankees suck” chant, another embarrassing moment for the fan base.

After a pair of ground outs, Gleyber Torres and Brett Gardner put together back-to-back walks and then Andrew McCutchen lined a single to left field to score the Yankees’ third run. That was it for Price as Alex Cora took the ball from him and gave it to Joe Kelly with Price still responsible for the two runners on. Luckily for Price, Judge’s 109.8 mph line drive off Kelly was hit right at Mookie Betts in right field or his pitching line for the night would have been even worse that it was and it was still really bad: 1.2 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 2 HR.

Price had most likely wished he had been scratched from the start with a mysterious injury or illness the way he had earlier in the season when he took himself out of a start at Yankee Stadium because of a video game-related injury. But instead, he had recorded five outs and allowed three hits, two walks, two home runs, three runs and forced his bad bullpen to get 22 outs. I guess $217 million doesn’t buy you what it used to.

Masahiro Tanaka did what he has always done in the postseason as he kept putting up zeros, giving the offense a chance to extend their 3-0 lead. But unlike Game 1, the Yankees weren’t able to push across any runs despite four baserunners in three innings against Kelly, Ryan Brasier and Brandon Workman. Xander Bogaerts hit a solo home run in the fourth to make it a 3-1 game, and at the end of the sixth with the game still 3-1, I started to feel uneasy. The Yankees had been unable to tack on to their early three-run lead, which had become a two-run lead, and I began to wonder if this would be a reversal of the previous night with the Red Sox now looking to slowly get back in the game.

I have defended Sanchez all season. I have supported him through his historically-awful offensive season, his injuries, his passed balls and the perception that he is lazy and doesn’t hustle. I have stood by the franchise catcher because that’s what he is: a franchise catcher. When healthy, he’s the best catcher in the world and we saw that for the last two months of 2016 and all of 2017. One bad injury-plagued season shouldn’t be enough for Yankees fans to turn on him and call for Austin Romine to start or for the Yankees to trade Sanchez for someone like J.T. Realmuto. Game 2 of the ALDS should end all of the anti-Sanchez crap.

Cora must have felt he had gotten enough out of his actual relievers after three scoreless innings, so he called on starter Eduardo Rodriguez with two outs in the sixth and Rodriguez had retired both batters in the inning. Rodriguez was back out for the seventh, but after Judge singled to lead off the inning, Luke Voit drew a walk and the Red Sox’ left-hander, who was pitching in an unfamiliar role was in a serious jam. With two on and no one out, the Yankees had the middle of their order coming up and a chance to break the game open and tie the series. To no surprise, Giancarlo Stanton did what everyone expected him to do by weakly grounding out, and thankfully it was weakly as it was nearly a double play, and that brought up Sanchez with Judge on third and Stanton on first.

Sanchez got ahead 2-0 on Rodriguez and than swung through a pitch outside the zone, clearly trying to break the game open. Now a 2-1 count, Rodriguez challenged Sanchez, and this time he didn’t miss, destroying a 93-mph fastball for a 479-foot, three-run home run. Sanchez had given the Yankees a 6-1 lead, his bat accounting for four of the six runs, and had erased his struggles of the last six-plus months. The Red Sox were now down five runs with nine outs to their name, but that didn’t stop Fenway Park from chanting “Yankees suck” following Sanchez’s second home run of the game had just ripped out the heart of Red Sox fans.

The game was essentially over, and despite the run allowed in the bottom of the seventh, it was. Dellin Betances, Zach Britton and Aroldis Chapman combined to allow one run over four innings, and the Yankees won Game 2 of the series, 6-2.

My personal strategy for the series was going exactly as planned. The Yankees had won a game in Boston and were heading, where these Yankees don’t lose in October, with their best starting pitcher going in Game 3 and with home-field advantage for what is now a three-game series. The 108-win, best regular-season Red Sox team in history? They’re in a lot of trouble.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

I go into every Chris Sale start against the Yankees thinking the Yankees are going to lose. Why wouldn’t I? When Sale is healthy he is the best pitcher in the league and he has dominated the Yankees in his career. In 17 games and 14 starts and 100 2/3 innings, he has 130 strikeouts to go along with a 1.61 ERA and 0.894 WHIP. Me thinking the Yankees aren’t going to hit him isn’t me being a bad fan, it’s me being a realist.

But on Friday night, my thinking was different. With Sale being virtually an unknown for Game 1 of the ALDS after he limped to the regular-season finish line with two trips to the disabled list and a serious drop in his velocity, I thought the Yankees could get to him. And if the Yankees could get to him, and win Game 1, that would be the series. David Price, the biggest postseason pitching failure of all time would be waiting in Game 2, and the Yankees could go return home up 2-0 in the series.

I sat down in my seat right before first pitch and glanced over to the Pesky Pole, and all the memories I feared from the last playoff game I attended in Fenway Park came rushing back. But thankfully, I didn’t have time to focus on and worry about the haunting events of Oct. 18, 2004 as Sale delivered the first pitch of the game to Andrew McCutchen.

The Yankees didn’t score against Sale in the first inning, but they did make him throw 24 pitches, which was the next best thing to scoring. If Sale was going to be on, the Yankees would have to at least drive up his pitch count to have three or four innings against the Red Sox bullpen, which is the worst in the American League playoff field.

The Yankees traded for J.A. Happ because of his success against the Red Sox. Sure, they needed rotation help at the the trade deadline after Jordan Montgomery went down for the season earlier in the year and Sonny Gray completely lost what he had been in Oakland, and sure, Happ had been a proven AL East commodity. But the No. 1 reason for Happ becoming a Yankee was to beat the Red Sox. It was long ago determined the either the Yankees or Red Sox would win the division and the other team would be the first wild-card team, and then if that team won the wild-card game, it would set up a meeting between the two. The Yankees got Happ to beat the Red Sox.

When Happ was needed most in the regular season (during the four-game series in Boston in August), he was unavailable due to a rare illness. But now Happ had a chance to make up for the unfortunate missed start that helped determine the division race if he could beat the Red Sox and outpitch Sale in Fenway Park in the first game of the series.

Four batters into the game, Happ had two on with one out and J.D. Martinez at the plate. Boston’s lineup is weak. After the first four hitters (Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Steve Pearce and Martinez), it’s Xander Bogaerts, Eduardo Nunez, Ian Kinsler, Sandy Leon and Jackie Bradley Jr. When you factor in their shaky starting pitching and disastrous bullpen, it makes no sense how this team won 108 games, but they did so, by beating up on the Orioles and destroying the National League in interleague play.

Happ fell behind Martinez 2-0 and I thought it made sense to just put him on at that point. Let Bogaerts or Nunez beat you. Don’t let any of the first four hitters beat you. But Aaron Boone let Happ continue with Martinez, and the next pitch, a 2-0 pitch low and inside, was lined over the Green Monster. 3-0, Red Sox.

Thankfully, the Fenway Park crowd is tame. At times it felt like a church with the level of quiet in there for a postseason game. I understand it’s post-2004 and the whole place and the surrounding area has changed for the worst since, but the Red Sox have won one playoff game in the last four years and haven’t won a playoff series in the last five years and they are at home for the first game of the postseason against their hated rival. I thought all of this coupled with the first-inning home run would have resulted in some passing beer showers or something, anything. But instead, nothing.

The Yankees put three on in the first three innings and had nothing to show for it. Still trailing 3-0 in the bottom of the third, Happ completely unraveled. A leadoff double to Betts and a single to Benintendi put runners on second and third with no outs and Boone emerged to take the ball from Happ. It was an awful performance and when Chad Green came in and allowed both inherited runners to score, it made things worse. (It was funny that Boone was willing to go to Green early with a three-run deficit, but wasn’t willing to go to him with the lead early in the first game in the August series that determined the season. I know, I know, I gave Boone a clean slate after the wild-cardi win.)  The Yankees were down 5-0, facing Chris Sale and needing 21 outs from their bullpen creating a complete recipe for disaster. Happ was supposed to be the Red Sox’ kryptonite and instead he was Kevin Brown: 2 IP, 4 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 1 BB, 2 K, 1 HR. If all of the idiots who wanted him to start the wild-card game instead of Luis Severino had gotten their way, the Yankees’ season might have ended on Wednesday. But if the Yankees were going to get embarrassed in this series the way they had through the first three innings, it would have been better if they had lost on Wednesday.

After the third inning, the game became a night of the Yankees leaving runners on base. In the fourth inning, they left two on. In the sixth, they finally got to Sale, forcing him out the game and plating two runs that got tagged to his line. But with the bases loaded and two outs and Brandon Workman pitching, Gleyber Torres had a rookie-playing-in-the-postseason-against-Boston at-bat and went down swinging to leave three more on.

In the seventh, the Yankees loaded the bases with no one out for Giancarlo Stanton. It was his moment to prove he could come through and get a big hit in a big spot and not just pad his stats in games that already over like he had through the entire regular season and in the wild-card game. But Stanton got worked over by Matt Barnes, striking out for the third time in the game, unable to produce a productive out let alone a hit in the game-changing at-bat. Luke Voit grounded out to get a run in, but Didi Gregorius also grounded out to leave two more on.

Aaron Judge homered to lead off the ninth against Craig Kimbrel, who he always seems to hit, to get the Yankees within a run at 5-4, and it felt like maybe, just maybe the Yankees could tie the game against Kimbrel. But Brett Gardner, in the injured Aaron Hicks’ spot in the order, struck out, Stanton struck out for the fourth time in the game and Voit struck out to end the game. The Yankees had a lost a more than winnable game, which would have effectively ended the Red Sox’ chances in the series, and left 11 on base. It was a frustrating and disappointing loss and I would have rather had the Red Sox pile on to their early 5-0 lead than to have the Yankees come back, but not complete the comeback.

The Yankees made two things clear for the rest of the series:

1. Don’t pitch to the Red Sox’ 1-4 hitters as they went 6-for-14, scored all five of runs with a double, home run and five 5 RBIs, while the Red Sox’ 5-9 hitters went 2-for-16. Don’t let Betts, Benintendi, Pearce (when he plays) and Martinez be the reason you lose the series. Pitch around them.

2. The Yankees will score against the Red Sox’ bullpen. Alex Cora showed he doesn’t trust his relievers (the same way his mentor A.J. Hinch didn’t in Games 6 and 7 of the 2017 ALCS) when he went to Rick Porcello for the eighth inning after Ryan Brasier, Workman, and Barnes allowed two inherited runners to score, and earned run and six baserunners in 1 2/3 innings.

I wasn’t angry, mad or upset that the Yankees had lost the first game of a best-of-5 and would need to go 3-1 over the next four to win the series. I went into this series asking to just win one of the first two games in Boston and then return home with home-field advantage for what would then be a three-game series. That plan was still intact and with postseason-proven Masahiro Tanaka facing the postseason failure Price, it was easy for me to accept that I have nine more years after this season of watching Stanton guess wrong in the batter’s box and weakly flail at sliders away.

As I walked out of Fenway Park, I looked up at the big screen in center field, which reminded me I would be back there in a short 21 hours for Game 2. Then I glanced over to my seats from Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS, and even with the Game 1 loss, I felt this series would go exactly as I had envisioned it when I predicted Yankees in 4.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

I won’t feel well walking into Fenway Park on Friday night. Even though I have been to countless Yankees-Red Sox games since it happened, this is different. It being Monday, Oct. 18, 2004.

Over the last nearly 14 years when I enter Fenway Park, I glance over toward the Pesky Pole, where I sat on that miserable night, and the memories come rushing back. I can still see Bernie Williams’ solo home run clearing the wall in right field and Derek Jeter’s bases-loaded, bases-clearing double rattle around in the corner. I see David Ortiz’s solo home run flying over the Green Monster and Dave Roberts tagging up to score on Jason Varitek’s sacrifice fly to center. I can see the old left-center field scoreboard to the right of the Green Monster at Fenway Park that would display both team’s lineups and it would place an asterisk next to the batter that was up in the game and I can see the asterisk changing places a sI counted how many names the asterisk had to go before reaching “Manny Ramirez” and “David Ortiz” in extra innings. I can see Tony Clark’s should-have-been go-ahead double bouncing over the fence right in front of me and Ruben Sierra being forced to hold up at third. And of course, I can see David Ortiz’s walk-off line drive floating in the air towards center field wondering if Williams will get to it in time.

Sometimes I like to think about what the baseball world would be like if Joe Torre had brought in Mariano Rivera for a two-inning save rather than waiting to use him until after Tom Gordon had already ruined the game. Would I enter Fenway Park and glance over toward the Pesky Pole and have memories of watching the Yankees celebrate the American League pennant on the field rather than the memories I do have? Would the Red Sox still be without a championship? Would “1918” T-shirts still be relevant? Would this October be the 100th anniversary of the Red Sox’ last World Series title?

After Alex Rodriguez’s retirement in 2016 and Ortiz’s in 2017, no one from either team remains from that game and that series. No one on either team has any connection to the worst collapse or greatest comeback, depending on how you look at it, in postseason history. No one but the fans. This is a new era of Yankees-Red Sox on the field. In the two cities and in homes around the Tri-State area and New England though, it’s a continuation of the storied rivalry and just the next chapter in a history that took a 14-year hiatus.

After Wednesday’s easy AL Wild-Card Game win, I’m unusually confident about the ALDS. I know it’s not wise to be, but I am. Since before the season started and all season long, I have felt that when both teams are healthy, the Yankees are better than the Red Sox.

Unfortunately, during the most important series of the season, the Yankees weren’t healthy. They were without Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez for the four-game series in Boston in August and newly-acquired J.A. Happ, who the Yankees traded for mainly because of his AL East resume and his success against the Red Sox, was unavailable to pitch due to a rare illness. The Yankees were swept in four games, and the division race was over.

But now the Yankees are completely healthy with their full lineup, rotation and bullpen available. Judge is back, Sanchez is back (though really just physically present and not back as the best offensive catcher in baseball) and Happ is lined up to start Game 1 and a potential Game 5. The team is coming off their season-saving win on Wednesday, while the Red Sox haven’t played since Sunday and haven’t played a meaningful game in over a month. The Yankees couldn’t be better set up to not only steal a game in Boston this weekend, but to steal a series against a team that is trying to not be the latest regular-season success story to not get the job done.

The Yankees will see Chris Sale in Game 1 and David Price in Game 2, and those two pitchers will see a lineup that boasts eight right-handed hitters with Didi Gregorius being the lone lefty. The Red Sox traded for Sale to win games like Friday’s and they gave Price the biggest free-agent contract for a pitcher in history win games like Saturday’s. The two have combined for zero postseason wins despite their regular-season accomplishments. Last season, Sale lost as the team’s Game 1 starter and took the loss as a reliever in Game 4, responsible for his team’s elimination, while Price, wasn’t even a member of his team’s rotation, pitching out of the bullpen against the Astros. The amount of pressure on the two this weekend in Boston can’t be described. The team’s best pitcher and the team’s highest-paid player have to prevent the Yankees from winning one of the first two games in Boston.

I should be able to sit back, relax and enjoy this series knowing that the Yankees are the true underdog in the series, facing the best Red Sox team in regular-season history with their 107 wins. But because it’s Yankees-Red Sox, there is no sitting back or relaxing and the only enjoyment will be if the Yankees are still playing baseball next Saturday in either Houston or Cleveland.

When I enter Fenway Park on Friday and Saturday, I will glance over to the Pesky Pole and all the visions of 14 Octobers ago will come back. Next season, when I enter Fenway Park and look around I want to envision the moments from this October, from this series and I want the memories to be winning ones. Yankees in 4.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.