Red Sox

How Red Sox prospect Richard Fitts has adjusted to the other side of baseball’s most iconic rivalry

Fitts was acquired by the Red Sox as part of the Alex Verdugo trade.

By Luke Scotchie

May 2, 2024

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Richard Fitts’s career-altering night in December did not begin with a warning. It did not begin with a dramatic, movie-like reveal to him, nor did it begin with a feeling or hint that his life was about to change.

It began with a sudden phone call.

And yet, that phone call was enough for Fitts to know something was up. The pitching prospect in the New York Yankees organization wasn’t much of a caller, so it was rare for him to feel his phone buzz in his pocket. But that phone just kept buzzing. And buzzing. Enough to where it took his focus away from the dinner he was eating at a Christmas party with some of the pitchers he worked out with over the offseason. 

Fitts took out his phone and read who was calling him. He knew right away that this was not a typical phone call. His dinner would have to wait a few minutes.

He stepped outside of the party to take the call. The other players at the party noticed Fitts’s sudden departure, wondering what he was told as his face wouldn’t be lighting up otherwise. 

With his eyes wide and his smile agape, Fitts pointed directly at Boston Red Sox pitcher Garrett Whitlock, who was perhaps the most confused person in the room. Whitlock asked his friend what he was trying to say, but Fitts just kept pointing. No one had any idea what was going on until he hung up the phone.

When Fitts returned to the clubhouse, there wasn’t a single eye looking away from him. He took a second to collect his thoughts, and blurted out the words that flipped his baseball life upside down.

“I’m a Red Sox!”

The news broke shortly afterward. The Red Sox had acquired Fitts and two other players in a trade that sent outfielder Alex Verdugo to the Yankees. Just like that, Fitts was now a member of the Yankees’ sworn enemy.

It didn’t take long for Fitts’s phone to start buzzing even more.

“I was really excited,” Fitts told Boston.com. “The Red Sox were wanting me here, and it made me feel really good.”

This one phone call gave Fitts, who currently pitches in Triple-A Worcester, an opportunity that most baseball players never receive. There’s a short list of players who have played for one of the Red Sox or the Yankees and have experienced the bitter, century-long rivalry between them.

Whether it’s motivation to perform well with thousands of people watching, or a desire to see their most hated team lose, players on these two teams take games between one another very seriously.

“Both teams feel that way,” said WooSox reliever Lucas Luetge, who had two saves against the Red Sox during his time with the Yankees. “It’s a historic rivalry of the game, it’s usually on prime television … I know from that side of it, we look forward to it.”

There’s an even shorter list of baseball players that have played for both organizations. Fitts joined that list when he first donned a Worcester Red Sox jersey. Though he’s never played under the bright lights in The Bronx, he was drafted to the Yankees and soon worked his way up to being one of the team’s top 20 prospects in the entire organization. Now, he’s a top 20 prospect for the Red Sox, where his new team’s biggest fans resent the organization that welcomed him to the sport.

“You watch ESPN, you watch everything, and it’s all ‘Yankees-Red Sox: the giant rivalry!’” Fitts said. “It’s really cool to kind of have both perspectives on it.”

While he’s had plenty of time playing baseball from the Yankees’ perspective, Fitts admits that seeing himself in a Red Sox uniform has required some mental adjustment. It doesn’t matter, though as he’s embracing the change.

“I look in the mirror sometimes when I’m wearing red and I’m like, ‘This is a little weird!’” Fitts said. “But I enjoy it. I like it. I’m trying to add a little bit of red into my shoe game and all that kind of stuff.”

Though it will take some getting used to, turning to the other side of a historic rivalry is nothing new for Fitts. He grew up an avid fan of the University of Alabama — his mother’s alma mater — as did many people from his hometown of Helena, Alabama. College sports reign supreme where he’s from, and few other teams can hold a candle to the chokehold the Crimson Tide have on the state. For a significant portion of his childhood, Fitts was under the Tide’s spell.

That was until his older brother Trevor began playing college baseball at Mississippi State University and became a campus hero. Trevor Fitts’s Bulldogs made it all the way to the College World Series when he was a sophomore in 2013, and he started two games on the mound of the prestigious Charles Schwab Field (then known as TD Ameritrade Park).

A 9-year-old Fitts got to travel to Omaha with the rest of his family and see Trevor’s starts in person, and cheering for the Bulldogs during the tournament shifted his allegiance from one crimson-clad team to another. There was something about the lights and atmosphere of that field that completely captivated him.

“I was like, ‘Wow,’ Fitts said. “How does it get better than this?”

That field would continue to captivate him as he started to dream of becoming a college baseball star and playing in the College World Series like his brother. That dream followed him all the way until he was old enough to see it through. All that was left was to make a decision on where to play.

He chose to attend the University of Auburn. 

Fitts, along with anyone who follows college sports, knows how much Alabama and Auburn hate each other. The two schools’ sports programs have been fighting for supremacy over the state of Alabama since 1893, and that passion hasn’t worn out with time. A fan of one team would almost never wear the other team’s colors for any reason.

But Fitts was willing to make that switch if it meant his baseball career would benefit from it. And it did. Fitts began his collegiate career with a College World Series appearance as a freshman — he even pitched on the same mound that his brother did before him — and he ended it as one of the Tigers’ best and most productive arms as a junior.

Fitts thrived after making the change from one rival team to another. He’s ready to do it again.

“[When] you hear, ‘the greatest rivalry in sports’ … Yankees and Red Sox are at the top and then Auburn and Alabama are pretty close there too,” Fitts said. “It’s funny going from those two different things, but I guess it did kind of help me a little bit.”

Fitts’s experience in being traded to these two opposite teams reflects a reality that most players fear: Everything can change in an instant. There’s almost no way for a player to know how long their locker will be theirs, or when they will be told to wear a new, possibly rival uniform moments after their current one starts to look right.

Luetge, who has played for three major league teams and many more in the minors, knows this fear all too well, and has developed a mindset that makes it a little less scary.

“I tell guys to never fall in love with one team, because you could be gone the next day,” Luetge said. “To me, you put on the uniform you’re wearing with pride, no matter where you’re at.”

So that’s what Fitts does. He embraces his new team and puts his heart on the mound against any batter, whether they represent a team he has played for before or a team he knows little about. Fitts shows them an equal amount of mercy: None at all.

“First-class kid. Incredible competitor,” WooSox manager Chad Tracy said. “We have people [from] the Yankees here that knew him before that said he’s a guy [that] you want to have the ball in his hands and have him out there because he loves to compete, and those are all things that I’ve noticed here.”

That competitiveness, combined with his and Luetge’s mindset of treating all teams the same way, has given Fitts the desire to “win us some games for the Boston Red Sox.” He may have begun his career with the Yankees, but he has since swapped sides of baseball’s greatest rivalry and has done so with pleasure. 

Fitts has big dreams for his baseball career, such as becoming a great pitcher, winner and role model for children. He had those dreams when New York drafted him, and he’s ready to make them come true not as a Yankee, but as a member of the Red Sox.

“Ultimately, I feel like I’ve adjusted pretty well and I feel like a Red Sox at heart,” Fitts said.