Everything clicked for the New York Yankees on Tuesday in the 9-0 trouncing of their archrivals, the Boston Red Sox, to take the first game of the AL Wild Card series.

This included a piece of history for rookie George Lombard Jr., who had an outstanding three-hit performance to help lead the team to a game one victory. Lombard, 21, is the youngest player in Yankees history to record a hit in his postseason debut.

The hit was a bloop single that he fought off over second baseman Nick Sogard’s head and led to the first run on the board for the Yankees, thanks to Austin Wells, who brought him in on a two-out RBI hit.

The bloop single wasn’t the prettiest contact Lombard has made in his career, but it did the job just as well as a home run in the end, especially given the situation. Expectations for a rookie to perform in the playoffs are typically lower, and experience is key to success in the sport, so any form of contact in that spot was all the Yankees could have asked for.

This isn’t the only history Lombard has created on the Yankees, as he also hit a home run in his MLB debut to become the third-youngest Yankee to do so.

His night wasn’t over, as he also found two more singles in the fourth and eighth innings.

His final stat line would show three hits with two runs scored, an impeccable rookie debut in the playoffs, especially at a place like Yankee Stadium against the Red Sox.

Unfortunately for Lombard, his stat line would be overshadowed by Ben Rice’s four-hit, two-home-run, six-RBI performance, which included a grand slam, but I don’t think Lombard would complain if he heard that before the game.

Game two is tonight in New York, with game three (if necessary) also being played at Yankee Stadium in the best-of-three series.

George Lombard Jr. and his younger brother, Jacob, delivered a baseball rarity this week, each hitting a home run during their respective professional debuts on the same night, roughly 1,200 miles apart.

George Jr., 21, was called up by the New York Yankees and homered in the Bronx against the St. Louis Cardinals, becoming the 14th player in franchise history to go deep in his MLB debut and the second-youngest Yankee ever to debut at the major league level, trailing only Derek Jeter.

Hours earlier, 18-year-old Jacob had already homered in his own professional debut for the Single-A Jupiter Hammerheads, the Miami Marlins organization that selected him 14th overall in this year’s draft, against the Palm Beach Cardinals. Both brothers connected in their second at-bat of the night, and both home runs carried a 33-degree launch angle with nearly matching exit velocities — 100.2 mph for George and 99.9 mph for Jacob.

Their parents, Judy Lombard and former major leaguer George Lombard Sr., now a bench coach for the Detroit Tigers, had originally planned to travel to Florida for Jacob’s debut before their younger son urged them to go watch George Jr. in New York instead.

The family ended up split between two states in real time: from the stands at Yankee Stadium, Judy and George Sr. watched Jacob’s home run unfold on their phones before witnessing George Jr. do the same thing in person minutes later. “Just the fact that he’s worked his whole life for this and that day had come, there was no words,” Judy said afterward, describing the emotional weight of watching both sons reach the milestone within the same hour.

Jacob, speaking from Florida, said he and his brother had talked before the game, with George Jr. mostly encouraging him to settle his nerves.

“More than anything, he was kind of telling me to calm down and play my game,” Jacob said, noting it was his first competitive appearance in a couple of months after signing with Miami. The dual debuts cap a whirlwind year for the Lombard family, with George Jr. rising through the Yankees’ system to reach the majors while Jacob became a first-round talent straight out of the 2026 draft.