The 2026 Boston Red Sox are going to make me lose my mind

I had a tweet in my drafts. It was written on Monday night, June 22, 2026, the night that Jarren Duran ran around aimlessly in the left field corner in Colorado, bumbling with the baseball as multiple runs scored on Aroldis Chapman in a hilarious walk-off loss, plummeting the Boston Red Sox to 31-45. I nearly sent it, then panicked, noting on the upcoming schedule that the Yankees and Sox were set to play a four-game series in just a matter of days, and if things went poorly, a part of me that can't be killed would've believed I'd had a small cosmic role in the proceedings.

The tweet read: "I can't decide which is my favorite team I've ever rooted for: the 2025-26 Knicks or the 2026 Red Sox".

As a certifiably insane Sox observer, I can say with great certainty that no one is more aware of their positioning in the standings and potential to climb them than I am. It sometimes gets lost to history, but ... the Red Sox make these things tight all the time these days. In 2024, a 13-game Yankees lead on the Sox at 50-22 on June 14 became just 3 by July 26, a horrid loss at Fenway where a 7-4 edge was erased in the late innings. In 2022, the Sox went 20-6 in June, not dissimilar from their current state (but, of course, worse, because everything is worse). For a fan base that has recently breathlessly thanked the team for "giving them their summer back," they sure do get their summer given back to them in increasingly impressive and surprising ways with some degree of regularity!

All this to say, for as bumbling as they'd been, and for as distracted as I'd been with the Knicks' run - miracle upon miracles, a streak for which I will eternally be grateful without enough words to quantify my joy - I had my eyes on the Sox entering that Colorado series. They had just taken a set from the Mariners against the top of their rotation to pull to 12 under, with the Rox, Yankees (we always help), Angels, White Sox, and Mets still on the schedule before the break. My silly brain, at the time, couldn't help but play the "If They Win Every Game..." game, getting them to four games over before the All-Star break. This wasn't particularly likely, but if I were to draft one single MLB franchise that might pull it off, it would be the Red Sox. Still, every loss would help, and that opener in Colorado was massive. I almost tweeted, but didn't. They lost another in the finale, squandering another sizable lead against the league's worst team. For all my heming and hawing, this really did seem like the end for an underperforming team whose talent and superior run differential were simply fated to never align.

And then the Yankees came to town. They always do.

Yankees turned Red Sox season around to an unfathomable degree

It began with a Caleb Durbin home run against Cam Schlittler, who Red Sox fans refuse to accept they started a war with last October (and he, thankfully, finished it quickly). It ended with a Sunday night mess where Aroldis Chapman blew a save, Sonny Gray's no-hit bid was washed away, and Anthony Seigler started the scoring and winning rally in the bottom of the 10th anyhow (Garrett Whitlock, minor-league Sox K leader Gage Ziehl ... look at all those Yankees I just named!). This four-game sweep felt a lot like the one the Yankees provided to Toronto last year, and similar results unfolded immediately.

Since then, save for a series loss to Washington immediately, Boston has won every set they've played and swept most of them. Their 31-5 streak has them on par with the greatest stretches in this game's history. On Thursday, in what should be the peak of this insane stretch (but somehow won't be), they erased deficits of 4-0, 7-5, 7-6 with two outs and two strikes in the ninth, and 9-7, 10-9, and 11-10 in extras to walk off in the 13th (yup, Durbin again) and sweep the first-place White Sox. They received more bounces and breaks in that game than most teams do in an entire season. The stars were once again aligned in the shape of a Burgundy B.

25 wins in a 28-game span groups the Sox together with legendary streakers like the 2013 Dodgers, 2017 Indians, and 2002 Moneyball A's (non-title teams, if you still believe in a higher power). On Thursday, they became the first ever MLB team post-1961 to sweep six series against first-place teams. The Sox have erased the entirety of a 15-game Yankees lead in the loss column during that span, and the worst part is ... the undermanned Yanks played representative baseball. After leaving Fenway, they've gone 16-16 against top-tier competition. Boston has gone 27-5. So it goes.

When the Knicks won the championship, I lowered my standards for a successful 2026 Yankees season to basically, "Anything but this." So far, no dice; we have instead received this.

10 games into the 2026 season, Fenway Park rippled with resounding, unearned chants of "Sell the Team!" There are so many teams in so many great baseball cities that actually maybe SHOULD be sold that have never experienced and will never experience this. The Red Sox’s last title was eight years ago, their last magical playoff run five. They are and always have been among baseball’s most exciting franchises, a foundational MLB tentpole long before they had rings to match (they now have four rings in 22 years, a measure of time Cleveland baseball fans would call an “OH, COME ON!!!”).

Now, the same content creators who spent the entire April-through-June stretch calling them gutless and the worst team ever assembled are praising their textbook grit, heart, and determination. They’re not only winning repeatedly; they’re winning the greatest games in Fenway Park history after cosplaying as the damned. All you can do is laugh (Eds. Note: This is a lie people say when they are very angry).

This is the (now-repetitive) beauty of baseball, happening to the same city over and over again. In 2021, 2018, 2013, 2007, and 2004, which was more than enough magic for one lifetime - I didn't say it, they did! Fans in Milwaukee and Cincinnati and San Diego and Baltimore and Seattle would die for a 2026 Red Sox. 2026 Red Sox fans tripped into another one by accident, having to backtrack mid-stream and pretend they didn't despise this team with all their heart for three full months.

Of course there is jealousy involved. I miss having a baseball team that entered the playoffs by giving fans that dangerous feeling of championship hope. Instead, Yankee fans enter every October saying, “I don’t know when and where it will occur, but it is time for our annual humiliation ritual.” Belief is a dangerous collective drug, and the annual pain of waiting for the other shoe to drop transferred from the Sox to the Yankees over a decade ago. If it didn't happen every single year, we wouldn't expect it.

The lone silver lining? The Knicks' championship was the greatest catharsis of any New York fan's life. We never thought we'd see it. We spilled into the streets. We didn't know what to do with our limbs and voice boxes. And that feeling is exactly why Red Sox fans still try to "Sell The Team"-ify their watching experience. They work hard to undersell and erase their waves of success in the public eye, desperately trying to bury that they are the Yankees they despise, grocery shopping on other rosters and rampaging to rings. They yearn to be the little guy again doing the impossible. But they never, ever will be. It will never feel that way again.

But it still feels pretty great. And the deja vu is killing me.

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