The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are about to renew acquaintances for the first time in the 2026 season and it appears the Schlitt has already hit the fan between the bitter rivals.
Yankees pitching phenom Cam Schlittler, who memorably shut the Red Sox down during the teams’ Wild Card series in the 2025 postseason, told reporters he and his family have received death threats ahead of his first start at Boston’s Fenway Park, scheduled for Thursday, April 23.
“It’s just those diehards that just have nothing else in their lives other than baseball or sports that really care about this, and the fact that I play for the Yankees makes it worse for them,” Schlittler, 25, told the New York Post in a story published Sunday, April 19.
Schlittler grew up a Red Sox fan in Walpole, Massachusetts, less than an hour’s drive from Boston. He went to college at Northeastern University, less than a mile from Fenway Park.
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But the Yankees drafted him in the seventh round of the 2022 MLB Draft, forcing him to change allegiances — something he knows he will pay for when he takes the mound on Thursday.
“It’s gonna be bad, it’s gonna be bad. I’m not nervous about it, but it’s gonna be loud,” he said.
Schlittler was born in 2001, meaning his earliest baseball memories probably included the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry at its most recent height in the mid-to-late 2000s. He knows what to expect as a visiting player in a ballpark where the bullpens are so close to the stands.
“They’re gonna probably have dudes that are my age or a little bit younger, sitting right outside the [visiting] bullpen, yelling whatever, probably throwing stuff at me, trying to grab me,” he said. “That’s kind of what I expect. So I know the guys are excited for it and I’m excited for it.”
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But even Schlittler thought — perhaps foolishly — that his legendary performance in the playoffs last year would quiet some of the haters. Schittler won the winner-take-all Game 3 between the two teams at Yankee Stadium, throwing eight shutout innings and striking out 12 Red Sox batters while allowing five hits and walking none.
“[You’d] think after last time, how much they were talking before, that they might be trying to quiet it down a little bit,” Schlittler told The Athletic in a story published Sunday.
He also called out Red Sox fans after that game for harassing his family, including his mother, on social media.
“There’s a line and I think they crossed it a little bit,” Schlittler told reporters last October. “I’m a competitor, and I’m gonna go out there and make sure I shut them down.”
The Yankees and Red Sox begin their three-game series at Fenway Park on Tuesday, April 21.
