Sonny Gray gets candid on failed Yankees stint before trying to save Red Sox’s season

When he waived his no-trade clause this winter to join the Red Sox, Sonny Gray endeared himself to his new Boston fans by memorably taking a shot at a fanbase with whom he did not get along.

“It feels good to me to go to a place now where it’s easy to hate the Yankees,” Gray said in December, which fans in The Bronx surely will remember on Wednesday when he takes the mound as the biggest obstacle from the Yankees sweeping the wild-card series.

After dropping the opener, 9-0, Tuesday, the Red Sox will give their season to Gray for one of the bigger days of his life. Before the stakes were clear, he was reflective of some of the worst years of his life, which he said snowballed in a way that only became fully apparent in retrospect.

Nearly a decade ago, Gray was shipped from the then-Oakland A’s to the Yankees at the 2017 trade deadline under circumstances that since have come under scrutiny.

Gray has said he “never” wanted to be a Yankee; Brian Cashman later responded that Gray had sent backchannel messages, through the Yankees minor league video coordinator, that he wanted to be in The Bronx and competing for a title.

Regardless, Gray never was happy, did not pitch well and made his discomfort clear to Cashman only after the 2018 trade deadline, when he told Cashman he was surprised he was not dealt away and never wanted to be a Yankee in the first place.

After that season, Cashman dealt Gray to the Reds, ending a 1 ¹/₂-year tenure in which Gray pitched to a 4.51 ERA and was hit particularly hard, by opponents and fans, at Yankee Stadium.

And so four teams and eight seasons later, Gray pondered why New York and the Yankees were such a terrible fit.

“I came from Oakland, and Oakland to here,” Gray said as part of a nearly three-minute reflection. “I think that maybe during my time [in New York] there was a lot of outside this, outside that, unfamiliarity with me and my situation and my family.

“It’s kind of like one of those things that you have a snowball or whatever, right? And there’s a snowball that kind of starts rolling down a hill. If you don’t ever stop it, then the snowball just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and it picks up traction and it just gets more snow. And it just continues to go down this thing. And then the bigger the snowball gets, the harder it is to stop it or take a step back.”

The longer Gray stayed in New York, the worse it became.

He was showered with boos June 30, 2018, after lasting just 2 ¹/₃ innings and giving up seven runs to these same Red Sox. He was out of the rotation by August of that year.

“It just took me to get away and get myself into a different environment and then reflect on those things, right — reflect on what was good, what was bad, what didn’t work. And that took some time,” said the 36-year-old, who has been either good or great with five other franchises and was miserable with the Yankees. “But I do know that playing here made me a stronger person, made me a better man, a better husband. Ultimately, it made me a better pitcher, a better baseball player. And that’s kind of what I take from my time here.”

His time as a Yankee is over. His time as a Yankees rival will reach its culmination Wednesday.

What kind of reception is he expecting?

“I think it will be a playoff energy on the road, playoff atmosphere on the road,” Gray said. “As far as reception, this or that, it will be what it will be. I’m not going to sit here and try to control something that I can’t control because I ultimately have no control over that.

“It will be what it will be, and I’ll just do my part to be ready to go out there and compete and to pitch and to go win a game.”