BOSTON — Alex Verdugo swung at the first pitch he saw as a visiting player at Fenway Park in almost five years and absolutely demolished it. After that, his emotions took over.
As soon as Verdugo crushed a Brayan Bello sinker into the center field bleachers in the first inning to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead over his former team Friday, he let loose on the basepaths. The former Red Sox outfielder pounded his chest repeatedly, yelled at both the crowd and the Yankees dugout and pointed at the Fenway Park grass during a slow, demonstrative trek around the bases. To say he relished the bit of revenge against the team that traded him would be an understatement.
“Pure adrenaline, man. Just fired up,” Verdugo said. “I wasn’t really expecting to swing first pitch and to put it out of the ballpark and give us an early 2-0 lead was big. I let a little yell out around first and when I hit second, I saw my dugout going crazy, all the guys out there barking and doing whatever they’re doing. I kinda lost it again.”
Verdugo’s trot was so expressive that two former Red Sox players and current NESN analysts — Will Middlebrooks and Jonathan Papelbon — tweeted about the possibility of Boston firing back by drilling him with a pitch in his next at-bat. But if the display bothered manager Alex Cora, he didn’t admit it.
“Not at all,” Cora said when asked.
Verdugo has been a fiery player throughout his career and never shied away from the fact he wanted to deliver in his first series back at Fenway after four years with the Yankees. He added two more hits and four RBIs in an 8-1 New York rout. But the most memorable moment was the homer.
“To come over here and do what we did as a team and obviously the swing I put on it in the first to give us the lead, it was a big moment,” Verdugo said. “It felt like a lot of relief for me with the anticipation for this matchup.
“There’s no secret that this was a big series for me.”
Facing Bello for the first time in his career — but knowing his arsenal from playing behind him for much of the last two years — Verdugo turned around a 98 mph sinker for a rare homer to dead center, a place he didn’t visit very frequently while with the Red Sox. It was his ninth homer so far this season after he had just 13 all of last year.
“It was middle-middle,” Cora said. “One of the things he does well is hit sinkers. He does. Just like Kyle the other day, I bet he’s been thinking about swinging at the first pitch for a while now.”
The shot came just seconds after Verdugo, hitting cleanup with Juan Soto on second after a double and two outs, was booed by a split Fenway Park crowd that at 35,024 fans, did not constitute a sellout Friday night. The reaction from fans only fueled him.
“It was as expected,” Verdugo said. “I wasn’t sure what to expect coming back here and what would be the initial reaction. But I did know I was gonna get booed. To see it immediately, it was like, ‘OK, we’re no longer over there and they’re gonna let you have it.’”
After Anthony Rizzo and others spent much of the day ragging on Verdugo on the team bus about his return to Fenway, he gave the Yankees an instant spark as they beat Boston in the first matchup between the rivals this season. Verdugo will have 12 more chances to get the last laugh against Cora and some former teammates this season.
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“I wasn’t nervous,” he said. “It was more of a controlled focus all day today. I felt alert and ready to go. It was more of just trying not to, in a sense, be too hyped up too early to need my adrenaline during the game.
“I had a lot of energy for this matchup. I felt like I was in a good spot.”
