Menu

Red sox-Yankees rivalry

Daily Sports: Red Sox-Yankees & The Ruination Of A Rivalry

, , , , ,

The Yankees-Red Sox are on the daily sports docket tonight, with the opening of a three-game series in Fenway Park (7 PM ET, MLB), joining a college football game between Boise State and Air Force (8 PM ET, ESPN) as the TV showcases for this evening. With Boise having already lost to Washington and Air Force getting hammered by Utah State, even the most hard-core football fans should concede that baseball takes the lead on this Friday evening in September.

As a partisan Boston fan, I should feel that way too, and moreover, I should feel like right now is one of my high points in the Sox-Yankees rivalry. The Sawx have blown open the AL East, and have won 10 of 16 games over the Yanks in the process. Boston took three of four in New York last weekend, meaning the Red Sox have won all three series in Yankee Stadium.


If you’re a Red Sox fan, it’s a pressure-free time to watch your team, look forward to the postseason and see if you can help knock out your rival in the process. For the time being, it’s a high point and I should be looking forward to watching the games this weekend.

But I don’t feel that way.

The Red Sox-Yankees rivalry has been losing some luster for some time, since its halcyon days of 2003-05. The teams played in successive seven-game American League Championship Series and fought to a tie in the AL East race the following season. But if you’re a fan of one of the two teams, that shouldn’t matter, any more than people at Alabama and Auburn are worried if their football game is nationally relevant. The point of a rivalry is you simply want to beat your foe for its own sake, not for its broader implications.

Still, I feel like this is a rivalry that’s been ruined for me, and I boil it down to three factors…

1)Myself: Any sort of examination in all facets of life should begin here. And the fact is that I’ve allowed my distaste for the Yankees to overwhelm my affection for the Red Sox. It wasn’t always this way—when I became a convert to Red Sox Nation prior to the 1997 season, I enjoyed the Sox-Yanks games more than any other, but when Boston wasn’t playing, my feelings toward New York were more indifferent.

In the period starting in 2005, once the Red Sox had a World Series title, and I simply didn’t want to the Yanks to answer right back the following year, the approach became more negative. Now people can watch sports for any reason they want, and some have more fun rooting against a team than rooting for one. I’m not one of them.

What this has come to is that I’m more upset that New York is still in the playoff chase than I am happy that Boston has pulled away, and that’s not a spot I like to be in. It ceases to be fun. I’d prefer it if I viewed the Yankees the same way I view my team’s rivals in other sports—the Cowboys, Lakers and Montreal Canadiens. I’m happy if they’re eliminated, I’d root against them if they advanced, but in no case do they come anywhere close to distorting my focus on cheering for the Redskins, Celtics or Bruins.

That’s on me. There are two other factors, though, that have also changed the landscape of the self-proclaimed “Greatest Rivalry In Sports.”


2)Media Overhype: I trust I’m breaking no new ground in saying that the media has completely blown Red Sox-Yankees out of proportion. Friends, who are not fans of either side, would joke to me that the media views the 28 other major league baseball teams as existing exclusively to provide the Sox and Yanks with teams to play, kind of like the Washington Generals being the sparring partner for the Harlem Globetrotters.

Everything that happened in the Boston-New York games was blown out of proportion, and what was once a fun way for a fan of either team to spend a summer evening, turned into an epic clash. Even the managers didn’t like it, with Joe Torre and Terry Francona having to work to keep their team’s focus on the long haul—what a baseball team should be thinking about—rather than appeasing a media hype machine treating each one of the 18 or 19 regular season games like an NFL game.

In this same vein, the fans did not help. New York fans are rightly known for their obnoxiousness, and for a few dark years, Boston fans made a run at joining them. My defense of Red Sox Nation was, and remains, that the arrogance was coming from a new breed of fan, that signed on during the heady days of 2003-04 and had no concept of a Red Sox team that would miss the playoffs or even be irrelevant.

If there’s one thing Bobby Valentine achieved, it was to cleanse the fan base of this people, and the enthusiasm that longtime Red Sox loyalists showed over the franchise blow-up trade with the Dodgers in August 2012, was a demonstration that a lot of Boston fans just wanted their team back.

3)The Current State Of The Yankees: The New York Yankees are an organization with an honorable history. From Gehrig to DiMaggio to Mantle, they’ve produced some of the game’s all-time great players.

Their most recent dynastic run—the four World Series titles and five pennants from 1996-2001—were done with players who played the game the right way. This was a team worthy of respect, and I’ll cop to having pulled for them in their 1996 and 1999 World Series victories over the Atlanta Braves, due to my distaste for Ted Turner and Jane Fonda.

The current state of the Yanks is not a high point in this franchise’s history.


It boils down to Alex Rodriguez. We begin with the fact that the Yankee front office has shamefully attempted to use his looming suspension as a way of getting out from under his contract. When that was only partially successfully, and he was suspended for a year (pending appeal in the offseason), the team shifted gears.

I don’t fault the Yanks for playing A-Rod—they really had no choice in the matter, and every team has PED users. But this is a man who not only trashed the game and it’s integrity, we now know he threw some of his own teammates under the bus, ratting them out to the league office to try and save his own skin.

Yet what has happened? Baseball observers seem universal in identifying the turning point of the Yankee season as being when A-Rod was plunked in the back by Boston’s Ryan Dempster last month, obvious retaliation for PED usage. Yankee players—notably Brett Gardner—stormed onto the field, furiously defending their “teammate.” Manager Joe Girardi later called it “the angriest I’ve ever been on a baseball field.”

What the hell kind of men are these people? Girardi spent a career as a major league catcher and has seen countless people plunked, most for no better reason than having hit a home run the last time at-bat. Now a player who trashed baseball’s ethics and dragged it through the mud gets nailed, and it’s the worst thing Girardi has seen? The manager’s comments were a monumental disgrace.

And what about Gardner and his pathetic display of rage? Do the Yankee players really think A-Rod would hesitate to throw them under the bus—be it PED or anything else? This was a typical jock display, where as long as a person is a good athlete and can help your team win, everything is justified.

Keep in mind I’m not suggesting Girardi or his other players shouldn’t want A-Rod to get hits. The practicalities of the business mean he has to play, they want to win, and I understand that. But when a retaliation pitch—that clearly had nothing to do with Red Sox vs. Yankees and had everything to do with Clean vs. Dirty takes place, try doing the right thing. Just sit on your hands in a courageous display of silent protest against a man who represents everything wrong with athletics in American culture.

Girardi and Gardner’s displays were so pathetic that they are no longer even men worth rooting against. It was fun to cheer against Torre, Jeter, Mariano and that group. Even today, players like C.C. Sabathia and Curtis Granderson meet that category. You can root against them, but if they beat your team, they’ve earned respect.

Today’s cast of Yankees might win—let’s face   it, they might still win the World Series—but it’s been done in a way that defiles baseball and even the finest moments of their own organization. A-Rod is the principal wrongdoer, with his manager and teammates the chief enablers.

TIME TO CLEANSE

What it boils down is that for the first time in a long time, my TV won’t be tuned to Red Sox-Yankees this weekend, nor was it last weekend. And not because football has started—baseball in general, and the Red Sox in particular, are still the lead source of sports entertainment for me. But the only way I’ll even consider watching  these teams is if they meet again in the postseason, and even that’s 50-50.

The biggest reason I’m tuning the Yankees out, is because I don’t like the fact that my current state of mind has blinded me to the genuinely positive things this organization—and yes, it’s often obnoxious fans have done. In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, stadiums across America played “Sweet Caroline”, in solidarity with Boston. In most stadiums it was simply played. In Yankee Stadium, the fans sang it with gusto, a truly classy display.

New York fans in other sports—namely hockey—did not join in the same of the criticism Boston took in other places for using the “Boston Strong” mantra that came about after the terror of last April as a sports rallying point. Because more than any other American city, New York knew what it meant for a city to use sports as a healing salve after a tragedy.

And the Yankee organization still does classy things—its moment of silence—even called publicly “a moment of silent prayer” for our service men and women—is perhaps one of the great moments in any American sports stadium.

The current state of affairs in the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry has obliterated those good things in my mind. I can’t control media distortion, I certainly can’t control the current cast of the Yankee lineup and management, but I can recognize when sports is ceasing to be fun. It won’t be this way forever, but I’m taking a break and tuning out the “Greatest Rivalry In Sports” (a moniker I suspect college football fans in the south and fans of the Steelers-Ravens or Packers-Bears find aggravating) for a little while. 

Red Sox-Yanks Renew Rivalry For Fenway’s 100th Anniversary

, , , , ,

They’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park this weekend as the New York Yankees come to Boston for a three-game series.  While there are other series that are probably better from a purely baseball standpoint—namely, Texas-Detroit in a rematch of last year’s ALCS, nothing draws TV cameras in this sport like Sawx-Yanks, and it starts with MLB network matinee coverage on Friday afternoon, Fox on Saturday and ESPN on Sunday night. TheSportsNotebook takes a look at the early returns for both teams…

NY Yankees (7-6): After being swept in their season-opening series in Tampa, the Yankees have settled down a bit, answering with a sweep of their own in Baltimore and taking 2 of 3 from the Angels, before having to salvage a split of a four-game series at home with Minnesota earlier this week.

The offense is off to a good start, with Derek Jeter positively blazing. The Captain is hitting .389 with four home runs, and his four doubles show he’s also driving the ball into the gaps with consistency. There’s no one else in the lineup who’s a major storyline at either extreme right now. On the plus side, Curtis Granderson unleashed for the first time in 2012 when he hit three home runs against the Twins last night. On the negative, Mark Teixeira hasn’t hit a home run and his batting average is a pedestrian .267. But Teixeira usually starts slow with his power and his patience at the plate is such that his OBP is still up over .350. Speaking of patience at the plate compensating for a lack of hitting, how about catcher Russell Martin? He’s only hitting a buck-48, but having already walked nine times, his OBP is .410. Martin is actually a reasonably productive offense player without actually getting hits. New York as a whole is second in the American League in runs scored, both getting runners on base and hitting the ball for power at solid clips and there’s no reason to think that won’t sustain itself.

Pitching is the problem in the Bronx, where the team is 7th in ERA and could easily be worse. Yankee pitching is in the bottom four of the American League in terms of preventing base runners and preventing power production. Either that improves, or the ERA likely follows into the bottom four. Hiroki Kuroda looks overmatched in the American League and Freddy Garcia looks old. That’s the bad news. The good news for Joe Girardi is that C.C. Sabathia, with a 5.59 ERA after three starts is another notoriously poor April pitcher who can be expected to get significantly better. And the bullpen looks really good—Cory Wade, David Phelps, Boone Logan and Rafael Soriano are all pitching well, and there’s some guy named Mariano at the back end.

If the Yankees are going to get the 95-100 wins they expect, they’ll need the starting pitching depth to come through and that’s no guarantee. But if they just get Sabathia on track, they can ride one horse, a great offense and a solid bullpen to about 92-93 wins, which I think will be enough to win the AL East this season.

Boston (4-8): About the only good thing that has happened for the Red Sox is that the Yankees and Rays haven’t gotten off to blazing starts, so Baltimore’s 8-5 currently leads the AL East. Granted, the Red Sox made some of that positive happen themselves when they beat Tampa three of four last weekend. That’s been the only winning series though, as Boston was otherwise swept in Detroit, lost 2 of 3 in Toronto and were beaten two straight by Texas this week at the Fens.

The Red Sox are similar to their rivals in that the offense looks pretty good, but the pitching is a problem. Underneath that superficial similarity are substantial differences through. Offensively, Boston still ranks just 8th in the American League in runs scored. The positive here is that they’re a top five offense in both OBP and slugging, something consistent with past norms and if that holds, the runs will catch up (just two days ago the Sox were 4th in runs scored, but the Texas pitching staff cured that). David Ortiz is red-hot and the fact he’s only hit one home run has to be more heartening to Bobby Valentine. Ortiz is slugging .596 thanks to seven doubles, a fruit of his new determination to go the other way more frequently. Ryan Sweeney has been a pleasant surprise early on, with an OBP/slugging line of .424/.656. Kevin Youkilis is off to a slow start. I would comment more on that, but I’m not physically or emotionally enough into this column to really evaluate it.

On the mound, it’s the bullpen that’s doing Boston in. Yes, the starters have been a problem. Daniel Bard’s  4.63 ERA is the best in the rotation, but both Josh Beckett and Jon Lester have pitched extremely well in two of three starts, with one complete meltdown driving the ERAs into the 5s. In the pen though, only Scott Atchison and Matt Albers are pitching well, and given that they’re the long relief guys, that spells trouble. On the positive side, perhaps some better outings from Alfredo Aceves his last two save opportunities mean he’s settling in.

Boston (of whom I’m a fan, in the interests of full disclosure) is the toughest team in baseball to evaluate. On paper, while the flaws are real, there’s no reason to think they won’t win 85-90 games, which can get them into that one-game wild-card showdown at the end of the season. Anyone in Boston would take their chances with Beckett or Lester, plus that offense in a one-game shot to reach the Division Series. But the games aren’t all about what’s on paper, and while I generally try to avoid evaluating clubhouse chemistry too much because I don’t have the information, it seems safe to say there aren’t too many secrets in the Hub right now, and what’s out in the open is all negative.

But as 100th anniversary festivities start, a plea to Red Sox Nation—for this weekend alone, let’s focus on the positives and the richness of the Red Sox heritage. Come Monday, call WEEI and start tearing the team apart again. And to ESPN—please avoid showing 50 shots of Bobby Valentine during the Sunday night game. There are really other players on the team, some of whom actually have full ring fingers.

Boston’s Agony: The 1978 Red Sox, Bruins & Patriots

, , , , ,

This is part of a series of sports history articles celebrating the best in 1978 sports. This piece asks the question of which geographic fan base had the best year in ’78.

1978 wasn’t a year that was about where you wanted to be, as much as where you didn’t want to be. While championships were spread out across the America, one city had it rough—at least if you’re a fan who believes the worst fate is that of hopes raised and dashed. The city of Boston had three teams look like championship material, but in the end, the Bruins, Red Sox & Patriots all came up short.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
Start reading today. 

The tale of the 1978 Red Sox is infamous in franchise lore, for spurting out to a 14-game lead over the New York Yankees, giving it all back and more and then losing a crushing one-game playoff for the AL East title. The Yankees went on to win the World Series, while the Red Sox had the second-best record in all of baseball.

New Englanders love their hockey and the Boston Bruins were putting excellent teams on the ice. The problem was that the archrival Montreal Canadiens were doing it even better. The 1978 Boston Bruins made the Stanley Cup Finals for the second year in a row…and for the second year in a row lost to Montreal.

The near-misses of the Red Sox & Bruins were frustrating enough, but in both cases the teams had to watch their archrivals do the celebrating at Fenway Park and Boston Garden.

Football wasn’t on the Boston sports radar the way it is today, now that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady have transformed the city’s sports culture. But the 1978 New England Patriots had a season that followed the same pattern as their baseball and hockey brethren. The Patriots won the AFC East, were rolling along and then self-inflicted wounds ended their season in disappointing fashion.

The Patriots lost their playoff game on New Year’s Eve, and maybe that was appropriate. It was an all-to-fitting end to a once-promising 1978 for the city of Boston as a whole. All that was left was to hope for the future—at the very least, Larry Bird’s arrival to rejuvenate the NBA Celtics was less than twelve months away.

Read more about the 1978 Boston Red Sox
Read more about the 1978 Boston Bruins
Read more about the 1978 New England Patriots