For Yankees, David Ortiz can’t leave soon enough

12:21 AM ET

BOSTON — Here’s the good news, Yankee fans: Only 18 more games and you’ll never have to see David Ortiz again.

And the bad news: There are still 18 more games left between the Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, and oh yeah, Ortiz, before the one-man Yankee wrecking crew known as Big Papi toddles off into retirement.

And if there was any question about whether Ortiz would go quietly into that good night, they were dispelled in the eighth inning of Friday’s night’s game between these former bitter AL East rivals, won, of course, by Ortiz, with a two-run homer off the previously untouchable Dellin Betances to give the Red Sox a come-from-behind 4-2 victory at Fenway Park.

If the Yankees hadn’t seen this so many times before, it might have been surprising, or even shocking. But while it was dispiriting — the Yankees held a 2-0 lead behind a cruising Masahiro Tanaka with two out in the seventh — neither was it entirely unexpected.

In 225 career games against the Yankees, Ortiz has belted 48 home runs, driven in 160 runs, batted .307 and posted an OPS of .960. He has been even more deadly at Fenway, the site of 32 of those home runs and where his OPS against New York is a gaudy 1.025. And 14 of his home runs against the Yankees have given the Red Sox the lead, most recently last April 10, when he homered off Esmil Rogers in the 16th inning of a game at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees came back to tie that one, but the Red Sox eventually won in 19, and by the end of June, Rogers was pitching in Korea.

David Ortiz has 48 career regular-season home runs against the Yankees, including the game-winner Friday night. AP Photo/Elise Amendola

“I’ve been seeing it since he was in A-ball in Appleton, Wisconsin, with the Mariners,” said Alex Rodriguez, Ortiz’s on-again, off-again buddy who had given the Yankees a 1-0 lead with a second-inning home run. “He’s …

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