That sound you hear is TBS executives and newspaper editors applauding. Yankees–Red Sox: the series that half the country desperately wants to see and the other half is already tired of hearing about. These games are all in prime time and will all take somewhere between four and five hours—in part because of the pace of play and in part because of the time the broadcast will need to devote to highlights of 1978, 2003 and 2004.
Amazingly, this is these teams’ first playoff meeting since that wild 2004 ALCS, and their first ever in the ALDS. (Before the move to the current playoff format, with two wild cards, the wild-card team was barred from playing the winner of its division in the first round.