NEW YORK -- For the Red Sox, it was a night that started with all the focus on No. 3 prospect Jarren Duran, who made his anticipated Major League debut and belted a hard single up the middle on the first pitch of his career.

But as this zany, rainy Saturday at Yankee Stadium unfolded in an eventual 3-1 loss for Boston, plots shifted in several other directions.

• Box score

It was quite a way for the Red Sox to finally lose to their rivals after winning the first seven matchups this season. The game was declared official after a rain delay of 52 minutes that started just following a completely wild bottom of the sixth.

From an early gem of a pitching performance by Nathan Eovaldi to a controversial strikeout call on Christian Vázquez that led to two ejections to Alex Verdugo getting a baseball thrown at his back by a fan to the constant rain muddying things further, there was a lot to unpack.

But let’s try to do so in chronological order.

Duran’s debut
The build-up that started on Wednesday with the news that Duran had been called up at last resulted in the speedy center fielder getting his first career plate appearance more than 72 hours later.

Yankees ace Gerrit Cole unleashed a first-pitch 95.2 mph fastball and Duran smoked it into center for a single.

“Yeah, it felt like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders and it was like, ‘OK, I can relax now.’ Just get that first one out of the way,” said Duran.

And then he got his first roar around the basepaths out of the way moments later when Christian Arroyo lofted a bloop single and Duran scored from second while reaching a peak sprint speed of 29.3 feet per second, per Statcast.

“It was fun to see him scoring from second on that base hit. It was a good night from him,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora.

Expect there to be many more.

Nate waited, and then was great
Eovaldi and Cole deserve the “patience award” for waiting 50 minutes through a non-rain, rain delay for the game to start and then trading zeroes for most of the night.

This was an occasion in which Eovaldi continued his mastery against the Yankees since 2018 (2.54 ERA, .596 OPS allowed). The flame-throwing righty went 4 2/3 innings with a no-hitter before Greg Allen doubled to center. He wound up giving up two hits and one run over five innings, walking one and striking out seven.

Hindsight is always 20-20, but the game likely could have been played to completion if it had started on time, rather than having the near hour-long dry delay.

“Yeah, I mean, all my start days, I’m always looking at the weather checking it out and stuff and to me, it looked like that cell was going to miss us,” said Eovaldi. “And then we were talking about possibly having a rain delay and I didn’t think we would have a rain delay. Even the weather that was close to us, it looked like it would be green, which I thought we’d be able to play through until 10, 11 o’clock. That’s when we knew it would be raining hard, but that’s the decision they came up with and we have to deal with it.”

Golden scoring chance marred by tough call
With the game tied at one with the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the sixth, Vázquez appeared to clearly check his swing on an 0-2, 87.8 mph slider by Cole. But he was called out on strikes.

That wound up being Boston’s final plate appearance of the night, thanks to the rain. Red Sox bench coach Will Venable and backup catcher Kevin Plawecki (who wasn’t in the game) were ejected.

“The check swing was called a strike by first base umpire Manny Gonzalez, and the Boston dugout reacted,” home plate umpire and crew chief Jeff Nelson told a pool reporter. “Player Plawecki and coach Venable were ejected for comments made and directed towards umpire Gonzalez.”

“It’s one of those that obviously over the course of the game we didn’t agree with some calls and I think everybody showed emotion,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “It’s one of those, it’s a big at-bat, bases loaded two outs, Cole makes a pitch, we thought he checked his swing but it didn’t go our way. There were a few guys that expressed their emotions on that one.”

Verdugo hot after getting hit
Emotions poured right over from the controversial call that ended the top of the sixth inning to Verdugo going out to take his position in left field to start the bottom of the inning.

After warming up between innings, Verdugo tried to throw the ball to a young Red Sox fan. But a Yankees fan wound up catching it instead and threw it at Verdugo while he was getting set and ready for the first pitch of the inning and it hit him squarely in the back.

Boston’s emotional outfielder became incensed.

“You don’t throw [stuff] at people,” Verdugo said. “It’s that simple. You wouldn’t do that to somebody in the street, you wouldn’t do that to me if we were standing right next to each other without a 40-foot gap and a fence to separate us. So it’s just one of those things. I’m here to play hard, I’m here to interact, take it and kind of give it back to the fans. Jaw back with them, but that’s part of the fun.

“But once you throw [things] back at players, you’re crossing the line. And my personal feelings of that is the line was crossed. I just wasn’t going to sit there and stand for it.”

The Red Sox briefly brought their defense back into the dugout as security ejected the fan.

“Obviously the player was upset, understandably so,” said Nelson. “We tried to make sure that there was a security presence in left field, that the issue was addressed by security, and then also balancing that with continuing the game and keeping the game moving, knowing that we had continuous rain.”

Back-to-back jacks, Mother Nature sink Sox
Once order was restored at The Stadium, Hirokazu Sawamura was touched up for back-to-back homers from Gary Sánchez and Gleyber Torres to make it 3-1, New York.

Though the Yankees scored just the two runs in the game-turning inning, the bottom of the sixth lasted a whopping 34 minutes due to the ejections, the Verdugo incident, a replay review and a pitching change.

Then, at 10:48 p.m. ET, just as the Red Sox were about to try to swing back the momentum in their favor in the top of the seventh, the seemingly inevitable rain delay finally happened. Play never resumed. The Yankees were declared the victors at 11:40 p.m.

When Cora did his postgame Zoom with the media, he agreed with the decision not to continue the game.

“Everything we hear is that in 10 or 15 minutes it’s going to rain and not going to stop so that’s the reason they canceled it,” said Cora.

The manager was right, as not only did the rain intensify after the game was called, but there were several bursts of thunder and lightning.

The game made quite an impression on Duran, who looks forward to a more standard night -- and hopefully a Red Sox victory -- in Sunday’s rubber match.

“I got a little of everything today,” said Duran. “I experienced how loud Yankee Stadium can get. I think I got a gist of everything they had today so it was nice.”