NEW YORK — When you’re in the eye of the storm that is baseball’s greatest rivalry, there is no escaping the venom or the glare. Ron Guidry, Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, they can all tell you about it, the pressures that go with pitching the kind of game Cam Schlittler will be pitching Tuesday night in Yankee Stadium.

“He’s obviously super talented and really skilled,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “But he’s also really tough and able to focus, and it seems like the bigger the game, the better he seems to be here in his young career. You saw kind of a rapid, steady improvement through the Minor Leagues to what he is now, and he’s turned into an ace in the sport ”

Schlittler, 25, began the 2025 season pitching in Hartford for the Somerset Patriots, and he ended it in the playoffs, throwing eight scoreless innings, striking out 12 in a winner take all Game 3 against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. So he has been here before, yes, but the role is vastly different now. A year ago, the Yankees had no other choice, not much to lose when they turned Schlittler loose, though he had only a couple of months in the big leagues.

Now he is, indeed, an ace in the sport, even if he won’t say so himself, chosen over time-tested aces Gerrit Cole, Max Fried and Carlos Rodon to start Game 1 of this AL wild-card series and widely considered the front-runner for the Cy Young Award in the AL. So as these two ancient rivals ready for another three-game playoff series, Cam Schlittler, native Bostonian who got little attention from the hometown team when he pitched in college for Northeastern, is the “It Guy” this week. All eyes on him, Schlittler is the man the Red Sox have to beat, and the star who has to show up for the Yankees. If he doesn’t, all the great things he did all summer, 14-6 record, 1.95 ERA, 239 strikeouts in 193 2/3 innings, will lose the luster and the Yankees will be facing elimination.

Contact the spirit of Jack Chesbro, whose record 41-win season in 1904 was spoiled by an ill-timed wild pitch to give the Red Sox the pennant in the rivalry’s first great race. He was haunted to his dying day.

Calm and and collected, Cam Schlittler hasn’t been scared yet, but this is a different kind of pressure, the weight of his, and his team’s season.

“Cam likes to have fun, he likes to make jokes,” rookie center fielder Spencer Jones said. “Then he flips that switch, and he knows he’s got great stuff. It’s fun to watch him flip that switch.”

The other aces on both sides who have been under the glare in these types of Red Sox-Yankees games didn’t have to deal with social media, the creativity of the fans in the ballpark was rough enough. Schlittler is a target for Red Sox fans, from back home. And he sometimes offers a droll, troll response. He know what’s out there.

“I wouldn’t say I’m always on my phone looking for that stuff,” Schlittler said. “At the same time, I don’t really live under a rock as well. (I’ve ) found ways to use that to my advantage. I think I’m good at keeping receipts. At the end of the day, I’m locked into going in there tomorrow and doing my job.”

Now, the Red Sox’s starter is wired a little differently. Payton Tolle, 23, is a gregarious Oklahoman who likes to joke around, seemingly any time. He’s a lefty, throws hard and has had success against the Yankees, so he was manager Chad Tracy’s choice over veteran Sonny Gray, who had a Cy Young-caliber season. Gray goes Game 2, Tolle will have to match Schlittler.

After a long, oddly relevant riff about applying for a job that calls for five year’s experience when one year might be enough, Tolle used the example of facing the Pirates’ star Paul Skenes in his first major league start in August 2025.

“Thinking that’s a big moment, but you’ve got to come back to Earth,” Tolle said. “‘You’re not facing Paul Skenes, you’re facing the lineup,’ it’s something you learn when you experience it. So you just shut (the matchup) out.”

Prediction? “A real slobberknocker,” Tolle said. “You know, it’s going to be a whole lot of fun. It’s going to be a good night.”

Tolle was a second-round pick in 2024 who reached the majors quickly. Schlittler was a seventh round pick in 2022, a hidden gem pushed to Yankees’ brass by northeast area scout Matt Hyde, who also found slugger Ben Rice, who hit 41 homers, at Dartmouth.

Schlittler, 6-feet-6, started getting stronger once he joined the Yankees organization and began touching 100 mph with his four-seam fastball. While in Double-A last year, he added learned a cut fastball. Since coming to the big leagues, he’s added a two-seam, or sinking fastball. So can throw pitches that rise, sink or swerve at a velocity that gives the hitters a millisecond to process, usually with exceptional accuracy.

“Regardless of who you’re facing, your job is to go up there and grind at-bats, grind at-bats,” Tracy said. “It becomes even more prevalent when you’re facing really good pitching. There’s never a goal of like go out and get his pitch count up. Well, if a guy’s filling up the strike zone, you’ve got to be ready to hit. The goal is to go up and take good at-bats. The more good at-bats you put together as a group, the more you give yourself a chance to score runs.”

Tracy came up from Triple-A to take over as manager in April, and beginning late June led an out-of-nowhere 32-5 run that got the Red Sox back in the playoffs. In their games against the 93-win Yankees, they showed a knack for making starters throw a lot of pitches. They faced Schlittler four times, and beat him once, but only once did he complete the sixth inning. Though he walked only 49 all year, the Red Sox coaxed five walks from him in a late-August start.

The way to beat a pitcher like this if he is on his A-game, in this day and age more than ever, is to stay with him, make him work, outlast him and get to his relievers. That will be the Red Sox’s task tonight, unless they can crack the aura of unhittability and invincibility that has formed around Cam Schlittler, ace in the sport, and the latest ‘It Guy’ in the Red Sox-vs.-Yankees lore.

“I’s natural adrenaline,” Schlittler said. “I expect it to be loud. It’s going to be an electric experience. Again, just treat it like any other game. Do what I always do, you know? Prepare, throw, throw a good bullpen, execute some things, get some good sleep, go over the scouting report. Nothing changes regardless if it’s a regular season game for a postseason game.”

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