We get the Yankees and the Red Sox as one of the Opening Day games this year, at Yankee Stadium, and just with that one game, in that place, with those two teams, that is as much baseball as you ask for, or want, on the first real day of baseball of April. It’s Opening Day a week later than we were supposed to get it because of a lockout. It took two postponed series to make it happen. Though heavy rain pushed the game back to Friday, no one cares how we got here. Just that we’re here. The last time the Yankees and Sox started a season at the Stadium was nine years ago.

It is almost six months to the day since Nathan Eovaldi, now the Red Sox's ace, was better than the Yankees’ ace, Gerrit Cole, in the AL Wild Card Game between the two teams at Fenway Park, the kind of one-game season the two teams had famously played a long time ago, in October of 1978. The Red Sox lost that one, mostly because of a three-run homer by an unlikely home run hero named Bucky Dent. Maybe you heard.

But it was different this time at Fenway. The Red Sox jumped Cole early, and never looked back. The Yankees went home. The Red Sox finally ended up with a two games to one lead over the Astros in the American League Championship Series, before Houston won three straight and went to another World Series.

Now the two teams are back up on each other. The same two starting pitchers are back. The scene has just shifted to the Bronx. The first of 162. You know it will feel like more than that when Cole goes to the mound in the top of the first, and it is his team against the Red Sox. All the baseball you could want on a day like this. What will feel like all the baseball in the world.

There will be noise all over the baseball map on this day, and into the first night of the season. Everything will just feel a little heightened in New York. A little more intense. The whole thing will be just a little louder. Twice over the last four seasons, the Red Sox have sent the Yankees home in the postseason. It happened in the 2018 Division Series. It happened last Oct. 5 at Fenway. Try telling the Yankees that The Rivalry isn’t what it used to be.

Try telling Yankees fans at the Stadium a little after 1 p.m. ET on Friday afternoon, when they get Eovaldi vs. Cole for Round 2, in April this time instead of October. When they faced each other last, Cole couldn’t get out of the third inning and Eovaldi didn’t want to leave in the sixth when his manager Alex Cora came out to get the ball.

“He gave me this look like, ‘What are you doing?’” Cora would say after Boston's bullpen built on Eovaldi’s four-hit, one-run performance and got the Red Sox to their series against the Rays.

Cole had pitched really well for the Yankees the previous October, first against Cleveland and then against Tampa Bay. Just not well enough. On the other hand, Eovaldi had become an October hero for the Red Sox back in 2018. First it was because of the way he pitched in that Division Series against the Yankees, Cora giving him the ball with the series tied at a game apiece and watching Eovaldi pitch what was the game of his life to that point, in what became a 16-1 Red Sox victory.

Then in Game 3 of the World Series against the Dodgers, Eovaldi pitched six dazzling innings after getting the ball in the 12th, until Max Muncy beat him with a home run in the bottom of the 18th. Eovaldi being that kind of horse that night, in an epic game the Red Sox ultimately lost, enabled Cora to save his pitching staff for the rest of the series, which the Sox won in five.

Chris Sale was the Red Sox's nominal ace that year. He struck out the side to win the World Series. Now he is hurt again. Eovaldi, who was with the Yankees once, is now the ace of Cora’s staff, in all ways, even if Sale had been healthy enough to get the ball on Opening Day at Yankee Stadium.

But he will bring some edge to this game, some sense of unfinished business. The last game he pitched last season, into the fifth against the Astros in Game 6 of the ALCS, just giving them one earned run, the Red Sox lost, and lost their season. It is the same with Cole, who didn’t get close to the fifth inning in that Wild Card Game against the Red Sox, the kind of game the Yankees paid him $324 million to win.

They are back at it on Friday afternoon. Six months after they pitched against each other with seasons on the line, they start one at Yankee Stadium. Yankees against the Sox. Ace against ace. The schedule wasn’t supposed to have them starting against each other. The lockout changed that. Here they are. Not even rain could ruin a moment like this.