Red Sox vs New York Yankees Timeline – A Game-by-Game History

No rivalry in American sports hits quite like Red Sox vs. Yankees.

Not Bears-Packers. Not Duke-North Carolina. Not even Ali-Frazier.

This one is different because it spans generations, crosses social classes, and occasionally spills into actual fistfights – in the tunnel under Yankee Stadium, no less.

The red sox vs new york yankees timeline stretches back more than a century, built game by game, season by season, through pennant races that went to the wire and playoff series that broke hearts on both sides.

Some of it is baseball history. A lot of it is something closer to mythology.

Whether you want to understand what all the fuss is about or you’ve been watching this rivalry your entire life, here’s the complete story – starting with a 1912 uniform decision that still makes Fenway groan, and ending with a wild card game that sent a dynasty home early.

Red Sox vs New York Yankees Timeline

The Complete Red Sox vs Yankees Timeline – At a Glance

Before There Was a Rivalry, There Was Ruth

The whole thing starts — really starts – with one transaction.

On January 5, 1920, the Boston Red Sox announced they were selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. The price was $100,000, and a $300,000 loan against Fenway Park.

Owner Harry Frazee needed the money. What Boston got in return was 86 years without a World Series title and a curse that became its own religion.

But before the sale, there were already early signs that these two teams brought something out of each other.

In 1912, the Yankees — still called the Highlanders — wore their pinstripe uniforms for the very first time in a game against Boston. They lost 5–3.

Two weeks later, the Red Sox opened Fenway Park with New York as the opponent.

Tris Speaker singled home the winning run in the 12th inning. Boston went on to win the World Series that year.

In 1915, a 20-year-old Ruth — still pitching for the Red Sox — hit his first major league home run at the Polo Grounds off Yankee pitcher Jack Warhop.

He was so impressive that day, both on the mound and at the plate, that one reporter called him “quite a demon pitcher and demon hitter when he connects.”

Three years later, Ruth led Boston to another championship. Then came the sale. And the Yankees won four titles with him.

The Middle Decades: Yankees Dominance, Boston Heartbreak

From the 1920s through the 1960s, this wasn’t a rivalry between equals. The Yankees were a dynasty. Boston was a very good team that kept finishing second.

The 1949 pennant race captures the dynamic perfectly. The Red Sox used an 11-game winning streak in September to pull into a tie with New York entering the final game of the year.

Boston manager Joe McCarthy called on Ellis Kinder, a 23-game winner. Kinder was exhausted – he’d pitched three times in relief in the preceding days – and left the game trailing 1–0 in the seventh.

The Yankees won 5–3 and started a run of five straight pennants and World Series titles.

The 1948 season featured a memorable twist: Boston actually eliminated the Yankees on the final day, winning 10–5 at Fenway.

The Red Sox then lost a one-game tiebreaker to Cleveland the next day, but they’d at least sent New York home. Small consolation, but the fans took it.

The late 1930s gave the rivalry its first real brawl.

In a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium on May 30, 1938, Red Sox manager Joe Cronin and Yankee outfielder Jake Powell threw hands — not just on the field, but in the tunnel beneath the stadium afterward.

The fight went down in rivalry lore as the moment these two teams stopped being simply opponents and became genuine enemies.

The 1970s: Great Baseball, Great Fights, No World Series Rings for Boston

The 1970s produced some of the best baseball this rivalry has ever seen — and two of its most famous fights.

In August 1973, Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk brawled at home plate at Fenway after a busted suicide squeeze left all three participants — Munson, Fisk, and Yankees batter Gene Michael — tangled up in a pile. Both were ejected. Fisk’s replacement drove in the winning run.

Three years later, at Yankee Stadium, Fisk and Lou Piniella collided at the plate. The benches cleared. Mickey Rivers punched Boston pitcher Bill Lee in the back of the head, separating Lee’s pitching shoulder.

Lee was out for nearly two months. Boston won that particular game 8–2, but the Yankees took the pennant.

The biggest moment of the decade came at the tail end of it.

Boston led the AL East by 6.5 games on September 1, 1978. Then the Yankees started playing like the Yankees, with manager Bob Lemon replacing the fired Billy Martin. The Red Sox fell apart.

From September 7 to 10, New York outscored Boston 52–9 in a four-game stretch at Fenway — two doubleheader sweeps that came to be called “The Boston Massacre.”

By early October, the two teams were tied. A one-game playoff was needed to decide the division.

On October 3, 1978, at Fenway, Bucky Dent — a light-hitting shortstop with three home runs on the season — pulled a Mike Torrez pitch over the Green Monster in the seventh inning. Three runs scored.

The Yankees won 5–4. Red Sox fans added a new middle name to Bucky Dent, one that can’t be printed here without an asterisk.

1999–2003: Pedro, Clemens, and the Series That Should Have Been

By the late 1990s, the teams finally met in October. It took the expansion of the postseason to make it happen, but in 1999, the Red Sox and Yankees played their first-ever playoff series in the ALCS.

The defining moment wasn’t the series result — New York won in five. It was Game 3.

Pedro Martinez was at that point in his career where he was operating on a different level from everyone else in the sport. At Fenway, he struck out 12 Yankees in seven shutout innings. Boston won 13–1.

The matchup between Pedro and Roger Clemens — the man he effectively replaced in Boston — added a layer to the rivalry that went beyond team loyalty.

Clemens had left the Red Sox for Toronto, then landed in New York. When they faced each other for the first time on May 28, 2000, Pedro won 2–0 on a ninth-inning Trot Nixon homer. It was pure baseball theater.

Then came 2003. Game 7. Grady Little. Pedro ran out of gas in the eighth with a 4-1 lead, and Little left him in. The Yankees tied it.

In the 11th, Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball didn’t knuckle, and Aaron Boone hit it over the left field wall. Walk-off. Pennant. The worst loss in a rivalry full of them, at least until the following year, flipped the script entirely.

October 2004: The Comeback That Changed Everything

No moment in the Yankees vs Red Sox timeline has been replicated before or since.

Down three games to none in the ALCS, Boston was hours away from elimination. Then Kevin Millar drew a walk-off Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning of Game 4.

Pinch-runner Dave Roberts stole second. Bill Mueller singled him home. David Ortiz hit a walk-off homer in the 12th.

The next night, Game 5 went 14 innings. Ortiz won it again with a walk-off single.

Game 6 at Yankee Stadium. Curt Schilling on the mound with a dislocated tendon in his ankle, sutures holding the peroneal tendon in place. His sock turned red from the blood.

He gave Boston 7 innings and a 4–2 lead. ARod slapped the ball out of Bronson Arroyo’s glove in the eighth — the umpires overruled it — and Schilling’s effort held up.

Game 7 wasn’t close. Boston scored six runs in the first two innings and won 10–3, celebrating the pennant on the Yankee Stadium infield. They went on to win the World Series.

No team in baseball history had ever come back from 3–0 in a postseason series. The Red Sox did it against the Yankees, in New York, with a bloody sock.

Recent Chapters: A Rivalry That Still Draws Blood

The teams have kept producing moments worth remembering.

In 2011, Boston’s late-season collapse was spectacular enough to matter even without the Yankees causing it directly.

Closer Jonathan Papelbon blew a ninth-inning lead in Baltimore on the final night of the season, and the Rays won the wild card on the same evening. Manager Terry Francona was gone within weeks.

In 2013, Ryan Dempster hit ARod with a pitch on a 3–0 count in the first inning, with home plate umpire Brian O’Nora warning both benches and ejecting Yankee manager Joe Girardi — but not Dempster.

Rodriguez later hit a 442-foot homer off him to dead center. The Yankees won 9–6. Dempster was suspended for five games and admitted afterward that he’d done it on purpose.

Derek Jeter’s last at-bat at Fenway, on September 28, 2014, was something unusual for this rivalry: a moment of genuine respect.

Jeter singled for an RBI in the sixth inning — his 3,465th career hit — and Fenway gave him a standing ovation. Some things are bigger than the rivalry.

The most recent chapter came on October 5, 2021, when the Red Sox hosted the Yankees in the first-ever Wild Card game between the two clubs.

Boston pounded Gerrit Cole for two homers. He recorded six outs. The Red Sox won 6–2 and ended New York’s season.

FAQs

• Q: When did the Red Sox vs Yankees rivalry officially begin?

The rivalry has roots going back to the 1910s when the teams first played each other regularly. Most historians point to the 1920 sale of Babe Ruth from Boston to New York as the defining starting point, with the 1938 brawl between Joe Cronin and Jake Powell often cited as the moment genuine animosity took hold.

• Q: What is the most famous game in the Red Sox vs Yankees rivalry?

Most fans point to Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS (Aaron Boone’s walk-off homer) or the 1978 one-game playoff won by Bucky Dent as the most heartbreaking Boston losses. The 2004 ALCS comeback — the only time any team came back from 3–0 in baseball postseason history — is generally considered the most historic series between the two clubs.

• Q: Who is the most hated player in the history of the rivalry?

Bucky Dent, Aaron Boone, and Alex Rodriguez each have legitimate claims depending on which fan base you’re asking. Among Yankees fans, Bill Buckner, Grady Little, and Jonathan Papelbon hold honorary villain status for their roles in Boston collapses.

• Q: Have the Red Sox and Yankees met in the postseason?

Yes. They first met in the 1999 ALCS (Yankees won in 5). They met again in 2003 (Yankees won in 7 on Boone’s homer) and 2004 (Red Sox won in 7, coming back from 3–0). In 2021, they met in the Wild Card game, with Boston winning 6–2.

• Q: What was “The Boston Massacre”?

The nickname given to a four-game series from September 7–10, 1978, when the Yankees outscored the Red Sox 52–9 at Fenway Park. The series turned a 4-game Boston lead into a tie and led directly to the one-game playoff won by New York on Bucky Dent’s home run.

• Q: Who hit the first home run in Yankee Stadium history?

Babe Ruth, against the Red Sox, on April 18, 1923 — the first game ever played at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees won 4–1.

Conclusion:

More than a century of baseball, and these two teams still bring something out in each other that no other matchup quite produces.

The red sox vs new york yankees timeline isn’t just a list of scores.

It’s a record of moments that shaped franchises, ended careers, broke cities, and occasionally broke furniture in bars from Boston to the Bronx.

The Ruth sale. Bucky Dent. Aaron Boone. Dave Roberts. Pedro in his prime. The Bloody Sock. Ortiz with the game on the line.

If you’re new to baseball, this is the rivalry to understand first. If you’ve been watching your whole life, you already know — there’s nothing else like it.

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