The New York Yankees spent Sunday afternoon turning a weekend series into a statement, burying the Boston Red Sox 16-1 and taking three of four in the Bronx.
By the eighth inning, the game had long since stopped being competitive, but Jazz Chisholm Jr. was still playing it his way.
That is when WEEI play-by-play voice Will Flemming lost his composure on the air and turned a blowout into a referendum on how the Yankees second baseman conducts himself.
Chisholm opened the inning with a walk against Jovani Morán. Boston chose not to hold him at first, then again at second. He stole both bases without a throw, pushing his season stolen-base total to 40. From the Red Sox radio booth the sequence sounded like a personal affront.
“Chisholm’s doing it again,” Flemming said as Chisholm slid into third. “This is what he does.”
Moments later he labeled Chisholm “a bush league player” and added, “I’m going to say it, he plays the game the wrong way.” After Austin Wells followed with a two-run homer and Chisholm jogged home, Flemming suggested Morán “should fight Chisholm.”
From the Yankees’ side of the rivalry those remarks land as the familiar sound of a beaten opponent reaching for the unwritten-rules handbook. Chisholm has never pretended to play a quiet, deferential brand of baseball. He runs when he sees an opening, celebrates when he wants to celebrate, and treats every inning as if it still matters.
In a 7-1 game, the Red Sox had already conceded the bases; they simply did not like that Chisholm accepted the invitation. Color analyst Will Middlebrooks called the steals selfish and accused him of padding stats. Yankees fans heard something else: a player who refuses to let the other team dictate the tempo.
Flemming later conceded that Chisholm is “awesome” and “so talented,” which only underscored the contradiction. The same broadcast that wanted a pitcher to drill Wells and start a fight with Chisholm also recognized the talent that makes him dangerous.
That talent helped New York roll through a series Boston needed far more than the Yankees did. The Red Sox entered the weekend two games back in the wild-card race and left it further behind, their frustration spilling from the field into the booth.
Rivalries thrive on this exact friction. Chisholm did not invent the idea of running in a lopsided game, and he did not invent the idea that some voices will always call it unsportsmanlike. He simply kept playing. The Yankees kept scoring.
And a Red Sox radio team that had already watched a controversial fifth-inning replay and a 16-1 final score decided the real problem was Jazz being Jazz.
That is the kind of compliment the Bronx will happily take.
