Everything began to change in the American League East on the night of June 25 at Fenway Park, Yankees against the Red Sox, beginning of a 4-game series. The Yankees young ace, Cam Schlittler, was on the mound. The Yankees were 48-31, in first place in the division. The Red Sox, at 32-46, were 15 ½ games behind the Yankees. You see where both teams are now. There was one season before that night. There is the season we have now. That’s the one in which the Bogeymen are back for the Yankees. Or Bogeyman. You pick. But once again, that’s who the Red Sox have become for the Yankees.

That hasn’t changed, despite all the last-place finishes for the Red Sox since they last won a World Series. The Yankees never finish last and deserve all credit in the world for that, though it never seems to be as much as they think they deserve. It is the Red Sox, though, who have won four World Series to the Yankees’ one in this century. And as crazy as this would have sounded at the start of summer, they might be setting themselves up for a shot at No. 5.

Whether or not they do make it, what has happened over the last six weeks with them — and with the way they wiped out that huge Yankees’ lead over them in the loss column — has been as shocking and as unexpected as the Sox coming back from 0-3 down in the 2004 American League Championship Series. Of course no one would suggest that mid-summer stakes in baseball are the same as October stakes, especially not between these two teams. But in ’04, the Red Sox had just lost Game 3 to the Yankees, 19-8. So the Sox looked as dead as a team could look before changing the history between the two teams and baseball history. The ’26 Red Sox looked just as dead in the last week of June. They seemed to be at the bottom of everything when it came to scoring runs. Garrett Crochet, their best pitcher last season — and second-best in the league last year — was hurt and so was Roman Anthony, the team’s best player last season before HE got hurt.

The Yankees, back at the top of the division, looked like they were headed back toward another October. The Sox? They were sliding away from it, toward what would have been a  fourth last-place finish since they had won their last Series in 2018.

Then this happened on June 25 at Fenway:

The Yankees started kicking around the ball as if they were a World Cup soccer team. They made four errors in that game. “Sloppy,” Aaron Boone said afterward. Was it ever. The Red Sox won that night. Won the next night. And the next.

Finally on the last Sunday night of June, the national game on NBC, Fernando Cruz couldn’t hold a 2-run lead in the bottom of the 10th and the Red Sox walked them off for the sweep that probably shocked them as much as the baseball world.

They were still 10 games under .500 at that point. The Yankees were still 11 ahead of them in the loss column. Since then, however, the Red Sox have ripped off a historic 15-game winning streak — for them — and had extended another one to nine on Friday night against the A’s when they scored more runs in a night — 13 — than the Yankees have been scoring in a week.

After the night of June 25, the Red Sox put together a record of 31-5. They were 21-4 in July, the best month in franchise history. Starting July 3 on they are now 27-3. On top of all that, they have now swept series from four first-place teams: Yankees (again: in first at the time), Rays, White Sox, Dodgers.

The rest of the season will tell us — and them — how the rest of the season will play out. But what we have been reminded of once again, as if anybody needed reminding, is how quickly the narrative can change across a season as long as baseball’s. So it would be crazy, after the crazy six weeks we’ve just witnessed, to try to predict where everybody, and not just the Red Sox and Yankees are going to be, six weeks from now.

At a time when the Yankees were focused on catching the Rays in the East, the Red Sox, charging hard from all the way back in the pack, caught them in the loss column on Thursday night. Six weeks after it looked like the Yankees had a chance to bury them on Jersey Street, Boston.

It was early in the Red Sox 15-game winning streak that a Sox fan I know sent the following text:

“Summer back on.”

And not just the baseball summer in Boston. Just like that, because of these six weeks, we now have the chance at a Red Sox-Yankees summer that no one could have seen coming when the Sox were still in last place (again), and had fired a World Series manager in Alex Cora and most of his coaches. Now it looks as if Cora’s replacement Chad Tracy — who came to all of this from the Worcester Red Sox and as the son of the old Dodgers manager Jim Tracy — might end up being an interim who ends up Manager of the Year.

It really did all begin on the night when the Red Sox began that sweep. The way Schlittler was going at the time, people still believing he was going to be the starting pitcher in the All-Star Game, how would you have bet on the opener of that 4-gamer? But then he surrendered a bunch of unearned runs. Now here we are.

There was a first-round match at the U.S. Open of 1991 when 39-year-old Jimmy Connor began his own improbable run to the semis. It started at old Louis Armstrong Stadium when he came from two sets and 0-3 down against Patrick McEnroe. Later in that Open, Patrick’s older brother, John, said, “Look at the monster you unleashed.”

That is what the Yankees did with the Red Sox, who still don’t have Crochet, and still don’t have Roman Anthony. But not only have they looked like the best team in baseball lately, they just added catcher Adley Rutschman at a time when the Yankees were looking for catching help and a big, strong reliever named Erik Miller at the same time.

Again: It wasn’t so long ago that the Yankees looked like one of the best teams. And might very well look that way again if and when Aaron Judge is back. Still: It’s like they say in that commercial: Life comes at you fast. So, too, have the Boston Red Sox.

SLOW DOWN THE LOMBARD HYPE MACHINE, DODGERS AREN’T FOLLOWING THE SCRIPT & WELCOME BACK, TED …

Even in New York, can’t we let George Lombard just sort of BE, without turning him into the next anything?

Or maybe that’s a bridge too far around here.

As soon as the kid hit one home run and made a few nice plays, the hype machine was cranked right up, to full volume.

He did provide a spark this week, without question, at a time when the Yankees still can’t hit, as much as they’ve been grinding to win games like Friday night’s against the Braves.

Now we see if it lasts.

That Hall of Fame game between the Panthers and Cardinals was kind of fun the other night.

There.

I said it.

About a preseason NFL game.

When the Dodgers lost their seventh in a row on Friday night, to the Diamondbacks, I was thinking that they’ll probably go back to ruining baseball next week.

You know we’ve been hearing that, far and wide — and hither and yon — from just about everywhere except L.A. since they swung that deal for Tarik Skubal.

But if they don’t make it three World Series in a row, what then?

The Dodgers nearly lost to the Padres two years ago.

They were down three games to two to the Blue Jays in the last World Series, and still behind in the bottom of the 9th of Game 7 before coming back.

But now they’re the Baseball Bogeyman all over again for a star pitcher who still might turn out to be a rental.

If all it takes is money to win in baseball, how come Uncle Steve’s Mets haven’t managed to do that yet?

And please check the standings again in the AL East and remember that the Rays and Red Sox are spending around the same amount of money — combined — as the Yankees are this season.

If you watched the first episode of “Ted Lasso” for Season 4, you already know how great it is to have the show back, at a time when we need a show like it as much as ever.

And how they’ve brought back a cool Season 1 vibe to it.

Finally today:

The great Seymour Siwoff, my late friend and the founder of the Elias Sports Bureau (they know everything), was posthumously honored with the Ralph Hay Award at the Pro Football Hall of Fame Gold Jacket Dinner.

The award is presented by the Professional Football Researchers Association to recognize lifetime achievement in pro football research and historiography.

But Seymour, bless his wonderful heart, was more than just the most important statistician of them all.

A lot more.

He was the war hero with the gravelly voice who connected generations with all of his numbers — in baseball most of all — in a way no one else ever had.

Hard to believe now, but there was a time when we didn’t need Google to come up with just the right stat when writing about baseball.

We had Seymour.

James Patterson and Mike Lupica’s new thriller, “The Country Road Murders,” has spent its third week on both the New York Times and Publishers Weekly Best Seller Lists.