Boston Red Sox (5) vs. New York Yankees (4), 8:00 PM ET

There’s an element to sports that sportswriters never weary of trying to capture, hacking through the kudzu of metrics and quotations to get at. It’s the paradox of a sense of overwhelming immortality, mixed with a sense of how fleeting that omnipotence is. Athletes hypnotize themselves into attaining it, fans slurp at it like a shallow oasis in the desert, writers build entire novels constructing a world to provide it. The Boston Red Sox lost a pair of games to the Washington Nationals by 15 runs around the end of June, and then seized that invincibility and held it for more than five full weeks, enjoying a run almost unparalleled in the history of baseball. It was like snorting cocaine while on a runner’s high after finding out you’d aced a college final and fallen in love, all at the same time.

Unfortunately, that time happened to be July, and by the end of September it was a happy memory. Baseball took that perfect month and chewed away at it with its sharp little teeth, as it always does, pulling at hamstrings and snapping bones. And on Tuesday, the capricious and hateful gods of baseball took it and provided it to one Ben Rice, handed him the thunderbolts to strike the heroes down. For one day it was the Yankees who were invincible, led by the league’s best pitcher and a hitter whose resting face might best be described as vague concern, even as their captain stood with his elbows on the dugout railing. The New York Yankees are now, today and only today, the greatest team in baseball. But maybe not tomorrow. The gods need fresh meat.

BOS: RHP Sonny Gray (18-5, 2.72 ERA, 85 DRA-), NYY: LHP Max Fried (5-5, 2.80 ERA, 79 DRA-)