What is your all time favorite Red Sox-Yankees regular season series.

jaytftwofive

New Member
Jan 20, 2013
1,182
Drexel Hill Pa.
Another extra inning win against the O's. Got to love it. Any way I know there have been so many through out the years but what is your favorite series. I have two. June 16th-18th 1986 in Yankee Stadium( Sox sweep) and September 15th-18th 1988. My choice is the 88 series. It was the Morgan Miracle year and the Sox go into the series 41/2 up. Clemens loses the first game and everybody starts getting 1978 Dejavu but no problem. Sox win Friday night with Evans catching a Mike Pagliarulo deep fly ball at the warning track in the 8th that would have tied the game. Hurst wins 3-1 on Saturday and on Sunday Mike Smithson sets the Yanks down 9-4. I came up from Philly for the weekend, that Sunday game was the only game I got to. It was the largest attended 4 game series in Fenway history up until then. Some others I can think of were the late July series in 04 with the A-Rod-Veritek fight and a 1975 series at Shea where the Sox swept them and basically put the Yanks out of the race. Another is June 1977 where the Sox sweep them with Billy Martin and Reggie nearly coming to blows after Martin pulls him for not hustling.
 

Flunky

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Jan 3, 2009
1,918
CT
really two series, but I liked when they crushed them into irrelevance in 2013 in Sept. The 10 inning was my first game at the Bidet.
 

TFisNEXT

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Jul 21, 2005
12,529
Not sure if I'd put at the top, but one of my favorites was last September...when they crushed the Yankees' souls and basically made them irrelevant in the playoff race with a 4 game sweep at Fenway. The first game of the series was the walkoff 3-run HR by Hanley off Betnaces which seemed to set the tone for the rest of the series.
 

DamageTrain

Member
SoSH Member
Sep 29, 2014
671
Vermont
The April 2007 sweep when the Red Sox went back to back to back to back was full of joy and a harbinger of good things to come.
 

jaytftwofive

New Member
Jan 20, 2013
1,182
Drexel Hill Pa.
Why I loved the June 86 series in New York was Clemens domination in the first game, 10-1. A tight 7-6 game when Dewey threw someone out at the plate(I think) that would have tied it. And Crawford getting out of a jam to win it. Then the third game(Which I was at ok little bias here)a 2-2 tie in the 8th or 9th and Baylor hits a 3 run double to put Sox up 5-2 and he points at Big Steins suite saying....that's what you get for trading me and thinking I was over the hill! Anybody remember that series? That put them up 7 or 8 games and really set the tone that they were for real. It was the Blue Jays as usual who got the closest in September.
 
Last edited:

Flunky

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Jan 3, 2009
1,918
CT
Not sure if I'd put at the top, but one of my favorites was last September...when they crushed the Yankees' souls and basically made them irrelevant in the playoff race with a 4 game sweep at Fenway. The first game of the series was the walkoff 3-run HR by Hanley off Betnaces which seemed to set the tone for the rest of the series.
Heh, I was at that game. The counter sweep before the end of the season and early playoff exit made that sort of fizzle memory-wise for me.
 

BuellMiller

New Member
Mar 25, 2015
449
What about Sep 10-12, 1999? Granted, like that season, it was pretty much all about Pedro's masterpiece in game 1, but game 2 and 3 were fun too (Saberhagen beating Clemens 4-1 in game 3, the pitching duel between two greats in Mark Portugal and Hideki Irabu that led to a 11-10 win in the second game).
 

mwonow

Member
SoSH Member
Sep 4, 2005
7,095
I'd go with July 23-25, 2004, with right honoarble mention for back-to-back-to-back-to-back, at the end of which I was literally flopping around my hotel room in pain from laughing.
 

Hendu At The Wall

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 31, 2005
108
Woodstock, NY
Agree on apex being July 23-25, 2004, but this was a good one:

April 24-26, 2009
Game 1: Jason Bay ties it with a 2-out 2-run shot off Mariano Rivera, Sox win in 11 (YOUK)

Game 2: Comeback from down 6-0 with heroics from Mike Lowell, Sox win 16-11

Game 3: Ellsbury steals home off Pettitte, Sox sweep with 4-1 win
 

trekfan55

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Oct 29, 2004
11,586
Panama
Agree on apex being July 23-25, 2004, but this was a good one:

April 24-26, 2009
Game 1: Jason Bay ties it with a 2-out 2-run shot off Mariano Rivera, Sox win in 11 (YOUK)

Game 2: Comeback from down 6-0 with heroics from Mike Lowell, Sox win 16-11

Game 3: Ellsbury steals home off Pettitte, Sox sweep with 4-1 win
My then 10 year old daughter asked me if it's possible to steal home during that game 3. I told her it is but it's difficult. I go out to dinner (place is showing the game) and Ells steals home. I call my daughter, she was literally jumping on the bed and laughing. Great personal moment for me that game.
 

Unin10D

New Member
Feb 7, 2017
257
April 2009 was good.

The first home series of 2006 stands out too. The merabelli police car game, Damon getting booed. I think one of the games was rained out and maybe the series wasn't great but that one game encapsulated how ridiculous the rivalry was back then
 

Van Everyman

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 30, 2009
26,993
Newton
What was the series with the Pokey (Jeter) Catch Game? IIRC we lost all three games of that series. The first one we got bombed with Tony Clark hitting dingers. The second was super close and, I believe, the game where the ball went through Ortiz's glove allowing the winning run to score? And the last was the Catch game which remains the single greatest game I've ever watched, despite the result. Sheffield came in to play third as I recall with the bases loaded. Manny finally hits the go ahead HR/hit only to have John Flaherty hit the game winner in the bottom of whatever god forsaken inning that was.

Obviously the result was terrible. But every inning was fraught with drama at the height of the rivalry. And of course, it all was a prelude to The Greatest Comeback in Baseball History.

Unless of course I'm making this all up.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

Member
SoSH Member
Jan 23, 2009
20,676
Maine
What was the series with the Pokey (Jeter) Catch Game? IIRC we lost all three games of that series. The first one we got bombed with Tony Clark hitting dingers. The second was super close and, I believe, the game where the ball went through Ortiz's glove allowing the winning run to score? And the last was the Catch game which remains the single greatest game I've ever watched, despite the result. Sheffield came in to play third as I recall with the bases loaded. Manny finally hits the go ahead HR/hit only to have John Flaherty hit the game winner in the bottom of whatever god forsaken inning that was.

Obviously the result was terrible. But every inning was fraught with drama at the height of the rivalry. And of course, it all was a prelude to The Greatest Comeback in Baseball History.

Unless of course I'm making this all up.
You're not making it up. June 29-July 1, 2004 at the Toilet.

Ortiz's error was what allowed the tying runs to score in the 7th of the second game. Timlin allowed three straight base runners leading off the bottom of the 8th, plating the winning runs.
 

rlsb

New Member
Aug 2, 2010
1,373
Any of the 1973 season series, but in particular, July 2-5, a five game series. At the beginning of that series, the Yankees were in first place at 45-33. The Red Sox took four of five including an Independence Day doubleheader where they scored exactly three runs, commencing a Yankee tailspin where they finished the rest of the season 35-49 in fifth place. The Red Sox at .500 when this series began (37-37) ended up finishing in second with a finish of 52-36. Lots of great pitching in that series from Culp, Lee, Moret and Curtis. The Red Sox were 14-4 that year in that season series, including giving the original stadium a fine send off winning 6 of nine there.
Honorable mention was the season opening series sweep in Fenway with the action ending via a walk off by Orlando Cepeda, his first tater with the Red Sox.
 

reggiecleveland

sublime
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Mar 5, 2004
27,957
Saskatoon Canada
Not the greatest but really good.Sept 15-18 1988.
After the Morgan Magic streak ended Yankees got in the race and won the first game 5-3 actually beating Clemens. Lots of talk of 1978, here come the Yankees, Ghosts of Babe Ruth blah blah.
Next Game Sox jump out to 7-2 lead behind immortal Wes Gardner.
Then Hurts pitches a complete game where Dewey gave him a 2-1 lead in the 8th, 3-1 win
Last Game Pregame 78 talk is muted, but Ron Guidry is back and pitching well! Sox put 6 on him in an inning and a third. Yankees leave town down 6.5 and Sox have to worry about Detroit, Toronto, Milwaukee the rest of the way, but not NY
 

chief1

New Member
Aug 10, 2012
147
1975
3 out of 4 at NY (granted not at Yankees Stadium) that included a doubleheader sweep and Freddy Lynn's catch! Left the beech with my buddies to go watch. Was so big at the time.
 

brandonchristensen

Loves Aaron Judge
SoSH Member
Feb 4, 2012
38,144
The April 2007 sweep when the Red Sox went back to back to back to back was full of joy and a harbinger of good things to come.
I remember watching this on TV. it must have been a Sunday game because we had it broadcast in Canada.

Anyway, we started the game about 20 mins late so we could skip commercials and my dad kept going to his office to check the score. He kept spoiling everything for us, but it was still great.
 

jaytftwofive

New Member
Jan 20, 2013
1,182
Drexel Hill Pa.
Not the greatest but really good.Sept 15-18 1988.
After the Morgan Magic streak ended Yankees got in the race and won the first game 5-3 actually beating Clemens. Lots of talk of 1978, here come the Yankees, Ghosts of Babe Ruth blah blah.
Next Game Sox jump out to 7-2 lead behind immortal Wes Gardner.
Then Hurts pitches a complete game where Dewey gave him a 2-1 lead in the 8th, 3-1 win
Last Game Pregame 78 talk is muted, but Ron Guidry is back and pitching well! Sox put 6 on him in an inning and a third. Yankees leave town down 6.5 and Sox have to worry about Detroit, Toronto, Milwaukee the rest of the way, but not NY
Yes that was my choice. That was also the largest Fenway crowd for a 4 game series up to that point. One semi-myth I also like to point out is that after the 3 game series in Fenway July 23-25 2004 the Yankees went on a little tear and wound up the beginning of August with a 10 game lead, bigger then on July 25 which was 7 I believe. The turnaround didn't start until after July 31st with the Nomar trade. A lot of people are led to believe that turned the season around but it didn't.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

Member
SoSH Member
Jan 23, 2009
20,676
Maine
Yes that was my choice. That was also the largest Fenway crowd for a 4 game series up to that point. One semi-myth I also like to point out is that after the 3 game series in Fenway July 23-25 2004 the Yankees went on a little tear and wound up the beginning of August with a 10 game lead, bigger then on July 25 which was 7 I believe. The turnaround didn't start until after July 31st with the Nomar trade. A lot of people are led to believe that turned the season around but it didn't.
Even the Nomar trade wasn't much of a direct catalyst, at least not any more than the Varitek/ARod wrestling match. The Sox went 4-5 immediately after the trade went through (6-6 post Tek/ARod), leading to a 10.5 game deficit on August 9 that was the largest of the season. From there, they went on a 38-14 tear to finish the season.
 

chrisfont9

Member
SoSH Member
Another extra inning win against the O's. Got to love it. Any way I know there have been so many through out the years but what is your favorite series. I have two. June 16th-18th 1986 in Yankee Stadium( Sox sweep) and September 15th-18th 1988. My choice is the 88 series. It was the Morgan Miracle year and the Sox go into the series 41/2 up. Clemens loses the first game and everybody starts getting 1978 Dejavu but no problem. Sox win Friday night with Evans catching a Mike Pagliarulo deep fly ball at the warning track in the 8th that would have tied the game. Hurst wins 3-1 on Saturday and on Sunday Mike Smithson sets the Yanks down 9-4. I came up from Philly for the weekend, that Sunday game was the only game I got to. It was the largest attended 4 game series in Fenway history up until then. Some others I can think of were the late July series in 04 with the A-Rod-Veritek fight and a 1975 series at Shea where the Sox swept them and basically put the Yanks out of the race. Another is June 1977 where the Sox sweep them with Billy Martin and Reggie nearly coming to blows after Martin pulls him for not hustling.
The June '77 one was the first thing that came to mind for me, but it only qualifies in a short-sighted way. Yes, it was very entertaining, but the reality is that the Yankees went 64-31 after that funk (including two subsequent losses to Detroit), so you might argue that Martin started turning things around, and calling out Reggie probably helped do that.
 

Van Everyman

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 30, 2009
26,993
Newton
Agree on apex being July 23-25, 2004, but this was a good one:

April 24-26, 2009
Game 1: Jason Bay ties it with a 2-out 2-run shot off Mariano Rivera, Sox win in 11 (YOUK)

Game 2: Comeback from down 6-0 with heroics from Mike Lowell, Sox win 16-11

Game 3: Ellsbury steals home off Pettitte, Sox sweep with 4-1 win
What I love about this series--and I remember following Game 1 on my phone religiously that night when I lived in DC--is that it perfectly encapsulates how 2004 changed this rivalry forever. Like, the Yankees actually won the WS that year, which should have been a horrible thing for me as a Red Sox fan, right?

Wrong. Few things gave me as much pleasure as watching the Yankees swarm the field celebrate that title like kids who had never won. Why? Because guys like Jeter, Posada and Rivera very much *had* won. That whole season--from Cashman admitting in the NYT that they signed Sabathia, Teixera and Burnett because they were "desperate" to us being able to tear their hearts out in series like these--showed to me that this team was no longer the entitled bunch of insufferable pricks they had been for most of my life but just another team.
 

snowmanny

Member
SoSH Member
Dec 8, 2005
15,667
I agree with the June 1977 sweep, having been there for the 4 HR against Catfish Hunter in the opener, as well as there for the Saturday and Sunday games. That was a fun weekend.
Ha. I was at all three as well. Sox outhomered the Yanks 16-0. Billy Martin pulled Reggie out of RF in the middle of an inning and they fought in the dugout. Thurman Munson complained about Fenway Park being a phone booth even though they couldn't even touch the wall once.

Crappy outcome to the season but a fun few days.
 

SidInOC

New Member
Jul 16, 2005
9
July 9-July 13, 1959. After losing a makeup game in NY, the action shifted to Fenway for a FIVE game series. The Yanks were pretty formidable (Mantle, Berra, Bauer, Turley, Larsen etc.) and the Sox were pretty weak, but they got hot that week. The Sox swept the series 14-3, 8-5, 8-4 (10), 7-3, and 13-3. This series knocked the Yanks out of contention and the pennant was eventually won by the White Sox with the MFYs in third and the Red Sox finishing fifth.

I was 15 years old and visiting my cousin in Newton. He had little interest in baseball, but I persuaded him to go with me to one of these games and then, another. It was thrilling with increasing crowds every day and newspaper stories that went from buried in the sports pages in the first game to the front page when the sweep was complete. I had seen games at Fenway and the old Yankee Stadium before this series, but this was my first sweep of the Yankees, and it was totally unexpected. And it was a FIVE game sweep.
 

Buster Olney the Lonely

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2006
4,518
Atlanta, GA
Why I loved the June 86 series in New York was Clemens domination in the first game, 10-1. A tight 7-6 game when Dewey threw someone out at the plate(I think) that would have tied it. And Crawford getting out of a jam to win it. Then the third game(Which I was at ok little bias here)a 2-2 tie in the 8th or 9th and Baylor hits a 3 run double to put Sox up 5-2 and he points at Big Steins suite saying....that's what you get for trading me and thinking I was over the hill! Anybody remember that series? That put them up 7 or 8 games and really set the tone that they were for real. It was the Blue Jays as usual who got the closest in September.
Ranks as one of my favorites as well. I went to that last game with my Dad. Oil Can Boyd pitched a CG and aside from the Baylor double, the thing that sticks out in my mind was Oil Can picking off Rickey Henderson (believe it was in the ninth). Loved that team in spite of how the season ended.
 

pk1627

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
May 24, 2003
2,514
Boston
I've seen the Sox play in every city. Well after this weekend, that is. The worst place to watch them play is the toilet. No question.

But it was sublime for one series, and that's why it's my favorite. April 3-6, 2005.

Lost the first games with Wells (thanks Theo) pitching but I barely noticed. Many Y fans noticed the B on the cap and congratulated Boston on the previous year. Classy.

Lost the second game but tied it in the ninth on Mariano, and my God was that fun. Won the third.
 

Cumberland Blues

Moderator
Moderator
SoSH Member
Sep 9, 2001
5,193
June 16th-18th 1986 in Yankee Stadium( Sox sweep)
A week later at Fenway - the Yanks won the first two of a three game set by convincing margins, and leaving Fenway after the second game, the scoreboard listed the next day's starters as:

NYY: Drabek, 0-0, 5.49 (but coming off a very good 8 inning performance against the Jays)
BOS: ???

The next night - Al Nipper came off the DL way ahead of schedule, gave up two in the first and nursed his balky knee through a 7 inning 4 run outing - leaving w/ a 5-4 lead (the Sox chased Drabek w/ a 5 run first). Joe Sambito got the two inning save - which included picking Rickey off 1B for the second out in the 9th. Griffey Sr. flew out to Psycho (who hadn't been traded for Seaver yet) to end it - and the mfy deficit was pushed back to 5 games, halting any momentum they had regained by winning the first two.
 

S. H. Frog

Member
SoSH Member
May 13, 2011
6,672
Not the greatest but really good.Sept 15-18 1988.
After the Morgan Magic streak ended Yankees got in the race and won the first game 5-3 actually beating Clemens. Lots of talk of 1978, here come the Yankees, Ghosts of Babe Ruth blah blah.
Next Game Sox jump out to 7-2 lead behind immortal Wes Gardner.
Then Hurts pitches a complete game where Dewey gave him a 2-1 lead in the 8th, 3-1 win
Last Game Pregame 78 talk is muted, but Ron Guidry is back and pitching well! Sox put 6 on him in an inning and a third. Yankees leave town down 6.5 and Sox have to worry about Detroit, Toronto, Milwaukee the rest of the way, but not NY
Hurst's complete game was one of my favorite Fenway experiences: SRO tickets, assorted hi-jinks in the concourse, then late innings watching sick lefty curves from vacated seats four rows back on the third base side of home plate.

Follow that with a drive to Philly for the Amnesty International human rights benefit concert, a winter learning a trade on the job, a twentieth birthday, starting college, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dot-com boom, the advent of my wife and son, Jesus, what a run it's been.

Did the bleachers do the "TASTES GREAT!" "LESS FILLING!" thing that day?
 

reggiecleveland

sublime
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Mar 5, 2004
27,957
Saskatoon Canada
I had to follow that through highlights during Jays games, until the last game which was on cable here in Canada. Jays annopuncers were pulling hard against reh Sox so each time they broke in 'Bad News! Ellis Burks goes Deep" "Sorry Jays Fans Hurst with the strike out to end the inning!"
 

TheoShmeo

Skrub's sympathy case
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Jul 19, 2005
12,890
Boston, NY
The Sox swept the Yankees in their first series of the 2004 season in NY. That was the first time back after the hideous Grady brain lock game. I was at the 03 abomination and the final game of the sweep. The latter was better.

There were certainly more important Sox-MFYs series over the years but I enjoyed this one a lot.

Jeter was in the middle of a hideous slump and the MFYFs actually booed him, which was glorious.

And I had my Andy Warhol moment.

ImageUploadedBySons of Sam Horn1506954855.701332.jpg