Baseball fans have had their pick of only-in-2020 moments this season: socially distant walk-off celebrations, balls hitting cardboard cutout fans, players shouting expletives over fake crowd noise. But Monday night may have provided the first only-in-October-2020 moment—and it provided two of them.
Twice in Game 1 of the American League Division Series between the Yankees and Rays, which New York won 9–3, a starting pitcher found himself in trouble in the middle innings, and twice he was permitted to work out of it.
Because all playoff games from this point forward are being played at neutral sites, there is no travel.