Yankees fail first big test as familiar weaknesses crop up again

They expired quietly, a soft 1-2-3 over-and-out in the bottom of the ninth against an old friend named Aroldis Chapman. A few fans had already started moving for the garages and the subway platforms when Roman Anthony’s blast cleared the wall and cleared the house in the top of the ninth. Now they exited with even greater urgency.

Those 47,036 — much like the Yankees themselves — wanted to bury this as quickly as possible.

“Not a great night for us,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said.

The Sox won, 6-3. They prevailed in a game that felt, for one of the few times these last two decades, like an old-school Yankees-Red Sox game, real stakes on the table, both teams harboring genuine playoff ambition. It even lasted 3 hours and 25 minutes, which is the 2025 equivalent to those 4 ½-hour epics that used to be the norm.