The New York Yankees opened the AL Wild Card Series against the Boston Red Sox with a 9-0 rout on September 29, 2026, and the two players who drove it both grew up an hour outside Fenway Park.
Ben Rice, a Cohasset, Massachusetts native, went 4-for-5 with two home runs and 6 RBI. The signature moment came in the bottom of the eighth inning, when Rice worked Red Sox reliever Brayan Bello to a full count with the bases loaded and two outs, then drove a 408-foot grand slam to center field at 108.6 mph off the bat, per ClutchPoints. It was his second home run of the night — a fifth-inning solo shot to center made it 2-0 before the eighth-inning slam blew the game open. Different outlets have framed the record differently: Heavy.com reports Rice became the first Yankee in franchise postseason history with 6-plus RBI and 4-plus hits in a single game — a mark neither Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, nor Mickey Mantle ever hit — while NBC Sports notes he's the first Yankee with multiple home runs, including a grand slam, in a single postseason game. ESPN's coverage separately points out it's the first multi-homer playoff game by a Yankee since Giancarlo Stanton in Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS.
Rice wasn't doing it alone. Starting pitcher Cam Schlittler, born in Weymouth and raised in Walpole, Massachusetts, struck out 10 batters over 6.1 scoreless innings, allowing just two hits and a walk, and lowered his career ERA against the Red Sox to 0.47. The two Massachusetts natives combining to beat the team many New England kids grow up on gave the blowout its own local subplot, one both Fox News' OutKick and NBC Sports built entire recaps around.
The win came without Aaron Judge, the three-time AL MVP, who was left off New York's Wild Card Series roster with a strained right calf sustained September 16. Judge received a platelet-poor plasma injection on September 21 and took live batting practice on September 28, walking twice and taking a called third strike against teammates Ryan Weathers and Elmer Rodríguez, per NBC Sports. Manager Aaron Boone and the medical staff held him out anyway, with the Yankees hoping he can return for the AL Division Series if they advance. Boston now has to win three straight games in the Bronx to survive the series, a tall order after Rice and Schlittler's performance.
New York enters this series fresh off a regular season in which it finished 93-68 to claim the top AL wild-card seed, closing out the final regular-season series against Boston with a series win at Yankee Stadium in late August, part of a stretch that also saw the Yankees host Tampa Bay as they locked up the division race. The Wild Card round opener was previewed on Uristocrat as one of the fuller sports nights of the year, with four series kicking off across MLB.
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