Yankees vs Red Sox Opening Day looms as NYY vote against 2022 MLB season

Through the most unconventional route possible, the same team that finished off the 2021 New York Yankees’ season will be the first faces they see when 2022 begins.

The Boston Red Sox will travel to the Bronx to face the Yankees on Opening Day, which will take place on April 7, 2022. All the words typed above sound so … blessedly normal that it’s easy to forget about the circumstances that brought the baseball world to this moment.

It was just over a week ago when two series were “axed” from the schedule, never to be seen again, leaving the Yanks to open at home with sets against Boston and Toronto. Both sides were reportedly willing to lose the season to gain the things they were searching for in the CBA. Grim times were upon a dying sport.

It was just under a day ago that momentum built for the second time, untangled by the last-minute insertion of the International Draft as a lock-strengthener by the league. Baseball died 24 times over the past three months.

And yet, here we are, watching a new set of rules and regulations get verified in time for Opening Day; again, that’ll be April 7, Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees. All doubleheaders will be nine innings each. There will be no ghost runners on second base. Baseball is baseball again.

Yankees vote against CBA, CBA for 2022 MLB season passes anyway

Now, here’s the truth no one wants to reckon with: the MLBPA Executive Committee voted against this deal unanimously, though they did not sway individual teams to vote the same way. That’s Gerrit Cole. That’s Zack Britton. That’s Scott Boras, too.

The Yankees also joined the Mets, Astros and Cardinals as the only teams voting NO on the new deal. Did the Yanks share the same concerns as the Mets, worried about the upper tiers of the tax bracket? Or did something run deeper here — eg, MLB’s last-minute insertion of the proposal to drop the 2020 COVID-related lawsuits, another sneaky poison pill in a long line of them?

It will forever remain unclear, but what is obvious is the Yankees stayed united behind Cole and Britton (and Boras, and Andrew Miller), even as most teams swayed in the opposite direction, ready to play.

New York will now have to scramble to fill several holes — apparently against their wishes — and will need to find a first baseman, shortstop, center fielder and pitching depth when free agency opens at 6:00 PM on Thursday night.

Again, that’s free agency. For the 2022 MLB season. Which opens with Yankees vs. Red Sox on April 7, and will consist of 162 games, some squished into doubleheaders and some played in early October.

That’s all that really matters.

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