As more years go by without the Boston Red Sox in the playoffs, conversations have sprouted up around MLB about the Red Sox/New York Yankees rivalry not living up to what it used to be. But Boston's rookies showed it lives on through them.
Marcelo Mayer gave Red Sox fans something to be excited about in the team's June 6 loss. He cracked his first big league homer into left field at Yankee Stadium to give his arch-rivals a taste of what's to come between them for the foreseeable future. In his postgame interview, Mayer embraced New Yorkers' "boos" after his blast.
"It's like music to your ears," Mayer said. "Honestly, I didn't really hear it just cause I was so focused on the game, but yeah, that's pretty cool."
Kristian Campbell also channeled the powers of the rivalry in the Bronx. He collected four hits between Saturday and Sunday after a weeks-long slump, and he even crushed a homer to add to the Red Sox's barrage in the series finale.
Longtime Yankees prospect Carlos Narváez hit one of the Sox's five Sunday homers to show his former team what it missed out on. New York traded the catcher to Boston over the offseason and he's defied expectations every step of the way. Narváez was a career .250/.364/.382 hitter over eight years in the Yankees' minor league system, and he's slashing .282/.361/.459 with 12 doubles and six homers over 50 games.
Red Sox rookies embraced the Boston-New York rivalry in their first series against the Yankees
GO AHEAD, NARVI. pic.twitter.com/V6qAZ5z2Pw
— Red Sox (@RedSox) June 9, 2025
Rookie pitcher Hunter Dobbins turned the most heads, by far, during the year's first rivalry series. He uttered some comments about the Yankees organization that became the focus of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball broadcast. It was later proven that not everything he said was true, but his dislike of the Yankees exists all the same.
“My dad was a diehard Red Sox fan,” Dobbins said to Gabrielle Starr of The Boston Herald (subscription required). “And I’ve said it before, that if the Yankees were the last team to give me a contract, I’d retire.”
“I grew up watching the Red Sox a lot, but I knew I wanted to do this as a career. I didn’t get attached to a team, but I grew up watching (the Red Sox), and just, I think out of disdain for the Yankees, I watched anybody but them.”
Dobbins posted a solid showing against New York. He went five innings and let up three runs on four hits. Two of those runs came off a first-inning bomb by Aaron Judge, the best hitter in the game this season. For the most part, he lived up to his trash-talk.
Rafael Devers also blasted two homers against the Yankees, as he tends to do, alongside Boston's rookies' dominance. Devers and the many rookies who posted great series in New York will be with the Red Sox organization, hopefully sticking it to the Yankees on and off the field, for years to come, and they could put to bed any debate about the decline of one of the greatest rivalries in sports.