NEW YORK – Their chief rivals were vanquished, and a playoff-clinching victory was in hand, but the New York Yankees lined up in a regular handshake line, exchanging fives and smiles.
No dogs were piled by the mound, no victory laps taken. Inside their clubhouse, where they gathered for toasts and the de rigueur champagne showers after their 4-0 victory eliminated the Boston Red Sox in Game 3 of the American League Wild Card series, the revelry was cut short not long after they’d blasted through George Benson and The Game on their standard clubhouse playlist, and then calmly walked outside for a team photo.
By 11:30, the protective plastic wrap was off the lockers, the room silent. Yet the two bottles of Ace of Spades champagne resting in rookie pitcher Cam Schlittler’s chair at his locker spoke volumes.
Schlittler had already done his figurative talking, setting a franchise rookie record with 12 strikeouts over eight shutout innings. And the champagne had hardly started to flow when Schlittler, a Walpole, Mass. native, revealed his deep satisfaction beyond saving New York’s season: That unspecified Red Sox fans were talking, um, trash about him before the game, perhaps on social media.
