This is the whole point of getting Garrett Crochet

"They'll tell you it's a best-of-three series, but it's not. The whole season comes down to tonight. This is the whole reason you trade for Garrett Crochet: To beat Yankees offseason acquisition Max Fried at his own game, in his own stadium, on a beautiful night in New York. I cannot stress that last part enough. I'm currently just across the river in a small town along the New Jersey border."

"And, for what it's worth, I don't feel a bit of dread. The Yankees and Sox have switched places when it comes to offseason heebie-jeebies from the last time our boys found themselves in this position. I'm not talking about anything that happened this century. I'm talking about the late 90s, the prime Pedro Martinez era, which was the last time the Sox were staring at a playoff run with these particular team dynamics,"

Tonight's game determines the season as Garrett Crochet was acquired to beat Max Fried at Yankee Stadium. The location and atmosphere favor the Yankees, with the narrator positioned just across the New Jersey river in deep Yankees territory. The moment feels like a calm before a storm rather than dread. The Red Sox and Yankees have swapped offseason anxieties compared with the late 1990s Pedro Martinez era. The Red Sox won four World Series since then while the Yankees won one. Yankee fandom retained bitterness from the 2017 Astros scandal, with lingering narratives about scapegoats like A-Rod and postseason trauma.

Read at Over the Monster