BOSTON — Well, then.
There’s life in the old feud yet.
All it took was a hard slide, some hard feelings, and a hard, purposeful fastball, and suddenly it was 2003 again, Red Sox and Yankees spilling out of dugouts and sprinting out of bullpens. Suddenly it was 1973, Carlton Fisk and Thurman Munson rolling around the Fenway Park dirt. Suddenly it was 1952, Billy Martin meeting Jimmy Piersall under the stands, knocking him flat with a left-right combo.
Suddenly Yankees-Red Sox had risen from a crypt of gentlemanly indifference in which it had lain muffled for a decade.