Championship Series – New York Yankees v Cleveland Guardians – Game 3 / Maddie Meyer/GettyImages

On Thursday night in Game 3 of the ALCS, 20 years to the day that David Ortiz (and Dave Roberts) helped spur a Boston Red Sox turnaround, the New York Yankees had a game stolen twice: once by Jhonkensy Noel, and again by David Fry.

The Cleveland Guardians have reinserted themselves into this particular series, and, naturally, so have Boston fans. Because if there’s baseball happening and the Yankees are losing, Bostonians just love to wedge themselves in there, obscuring another playoff-free October in New England.

But it wasn’t Bostonians equating Papi’s and Fry Papi’s homers that got us angry. They were always going to do that. Yankee heartbreak is their currency.

Why’d ESPN have to get involved, though?! Posting this tenuous link that is only impressive to Dorchester residents clearly shows where their allegiance lies.

Red Sox fans claiming David Fry’s Yankees walk-off for their own team is sickening

Wow, that’s crazy. My dog groomer is named Kevin Millar. Maybe you should post about that?

What’s really crazy is that Ortiz and Fry are the only two people to ever be named David. Not just MLB players. People. Really makes you think.

Can’t wait to visit the “City of Champions” wing at Logan Airport and gaze upon the “David Fry, Who Plays for the Cleveland Guardians, Once Hit a Big Homer in a Game Against the Yankees in Which the Red Sox Did Not Participate” banner.

Four World Series since 2004, six Super Bowls under Tom Brady, and a Celtics championship four months ago aren’t enough, apparently. Guardians Game 3s are now yours to cherish, too (and ESPN took that narrative and ran with it). It’s always the same people feeling great at the end of every day, usually at our expense!

The New York Yankees have multiple chances to get off the mat in this series, just as they did when the boulder started rolling down the hill in Boston 20 years ago. That Yankee team was undermanned all year, riding the last bits of championship mojo, but very unsteady below the surface; in fact, their pythagorean expected record was 89-73, and their actual record was 101-61. Teams that trip into +12 wins of luck factor typically don’t perform well in the postseason, and the Red Sox reciprocated by evening the scales and getting them four times in a row.

On the one hand, the 2024 Yankees were a 94-68 team with a 96-66 pythagorean record: a little bit unlucky, but a little too sloppy to really be considered as such. They’re right where they should be, and have a chance to make Fry’s smash (and Boston’s co-opting of the cause) into a footnote.

On the other, though, this hideous bit of symmetry, glorified by the mainstream media, makes us at least a little bit glad the Yankees aren’t up 3-0 in the series so that we’ll never know if they would’ve blown the same edge again, 20 years later.