The New York Yankees prevented the Boston Red Sox from clinching a third straight American League East title on Tuesday night, but in a strange twist, they also gave their rivals a little breathing room.

New York’s come-from-behind victory in the late innings Tuesday kept Boston’s AL East lead at 10.5 games with 11 to play, giving the Sox another day to retrieve a division championship banner that had fallen off a delivery truck and was all but forgotten by the cars running over it just outside the city limits.

On Somerville’s McGrath Highway, friends and Red Sox fans Louie Iacuzzi, James Amaral and Randy Baldasarri stopped off on a coffee run when they spotted a brown paper bag, according to WPRI-TV.

“One person ran it over and hit it a little bit,” Iacuzzi told the news. “I’m like, ‘Pull over, what is it?'”

When they unfurled the bag’s contents, it was the team’s official division championship banner, which will presumably be unveiled at Fenway Park when the Sox return from a six-game road trip on Sept. 24.

First, though, Boston will try to close out its division title with a win in at least one of their next two games in New York, before heading to Cleveland for a three-game set with the AL Central champion Indians. In the meantime, the Red Sox were trying to retrieve the banner by Wednesday morning.

“I’m going to give them back the banner,” Iacuzzi told WPRI-TV, refusing to believe losing a banner before clinching the division could be a bad omen, “and that’s going to be the good luck charm.”

Keep the champagne and beer on ice for another day and hire a better delivery service this time.

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Ben Rohrbach is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach

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