The Red Sox Got Swept, And They Won

The Red Sox lost all four games of this weekend’s series with the Yankees, which was probably intended to intensify a playoff race but instead did nothing of the sort. Instead we got the compelling-enough storyline of Aaron Judge trying to break maybe sort of a home run record, which I will admit it is pretty cool but didn’t want to happen against the Sox. It didn’t, and, since the Sox denied something the Yankees wanted very much, it ruled.

It ruled. After bumbling through the season, in the front office and on the field, the 2022 Boston Red Sox finally had something to play for. The previous 147 games, once thought to be important, turned prologue. I considered it a fait accompli that Judge would do it, but baseball can and will surprise you, and in this case the sport did so in the best and funniest way.

Over four otherwise pathetic days, it seemed like everyone who was not Judge hit a home run, which makes it a perfect troll and was probably the way it had to happen. If Sox pitchers had dominated the Yankees, it seems too scary to think about Judge coming to bat in any given huge spot and, in one swing, changing history in any more nauseating a way than it has already been presented. After this dumb season, it was ultimately lovely to avoid what I considered a fairly inevitable humiliation.

Judge was the star of the weekend nonetheless, of course, with Yankees fans rooting for the Red Sox to extend games so they could watch him fail, again, to hit a home run. In this is reminds me of an extended, inverted version of Carl Everett’s perfect game-ruining hit against Mike Mussina at the end of the 2001 season. Despite what it signifies in both cases for the Yankees—now, that they have a historic dinger-maker, then, that they came within one out of perfect gaming the Sox on national television—it signifies something more for us. We ruined their perfect moment, and to them I said: nanana booboo, thppppt, enjoy getting spanked by the Astros, losers.