The Best Reality Show in Sports
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The Last Rivalry returns to a ballpark near you for the next three days, and just when you think the hype is becoming forced and the emotions somehow simulated, you realize Yankees-Red Sox is still the most compelling reality series in sports.
Although it always ends the same way – the two teams have played more than 1,900 times over the past 85 years, including 39 times in the past 11 months, and the tally since 1918 remains Yankees 26, Red Sox 0 – the games only seem to get bigger and more intense, the stakes ever higher.
How can this be? Is Yankees-Red Sox really this big? Or is it that everything else in sports has become that much smaller?
The truth is, there are no real rivalries in American professional sports anymore, anywhere. Unionization, fraternization, free agency, and shared representation have blurred the lines between teams, between loyalties, between the delicious hatred that used to permeate the matchup of teams, fans, and cities.
The great rivalries of the past – Ali and Frazier, Affirmed and Alydar, the Dodgers of Brooklyn and the Giants of Coogan’s Bluff – have gone the way of the twi-night doubleheader.
And the pseudo-rivalries some of our local teams have been involved in – the Mets and Braves, the Jets and Dolphins, the Giants and Eagles, the Knicks and Heat, the Knicks and Bulls, even the Rangers and Islanders – have largely perished for one simple reason.
In order for two teams to have a rivalry, they must engage in meaningful games against one another. And the sad truth is, apart from the Yankees, none of the other local teams has been able to keep up its end of the bargain.
Choose any arena, ballpark, or stadium you like in this town and they have one thing in common: Precious few meaningful games are being played in any of them these days. Except, of course, for Yankee Stadium, where every game, be it against the Red Sox or the Devil Rays, is fraught with significance and underlying menace.
They don’t come any more significant, or menacing, than the three-game series that begins tonight between the teams that are running 1-2 in the AL East. The last time they met, in July at Fenway, emotions ran so hot that Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees’ quarter-of-a-billion dollar third baseman, was moved to throw down with Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek, who is not only bigger than A-Rod but was wearing a mask and chest protector at the time.
The Sox went on to win that game, 11-10, when the normally untouchable Mariano Rivera allowed a game-winning home run to Bill Mueller. That cut the Yankees lead, once as high as 10 1 /2 games, to five. Tonight, it is down to 3 1 /2 and a Red Sox sweep will leave them close enough for Derek Jeter to smell what Kevin Millar had for lunch.
Plus, there are three more games remaining between the teams, next week at Fenway, which may wind up deciding the division championship. Or, they could even decide which of these two teams will wind up being shut out of October.
“Meaningful” doesn’t even begin to describe the significance of these games. That is why, of all the contrivances tacked on to sporting events nowadays – can you believe there is not one, but two, “boxing reality series” currently on TV, as if plain old boxing weren’t real enough – a Yankees-Red Sox series needs no further accompaniment.
The pitching matchups seem to favor neither team: ageless Orlando Hernandez vs. youthful Bronson Arroyo tonight, two question marks, Derek Lowe and Jon Lieber, on Saturday, and, as it should be, the marquee matchup, Mike Mussina vs. Pedro Martinez, as the curtain-dropper on Sunday. The momentum the Red Sox were building last week, winning 20 of 22 to chop the Yankees lead in half, seems to have slowed.
And you can throw the trends and the numbers and the matchups out the window when these two teams get together. Does anyone remember that back in April, the Sox won six of the first seven meeting between the teams, or that the Yankees came back to sweep them on the last weekend in June? That explosive last weekend in the Bronx, when the Red Sox won two of three, left this year’s version of the series at 8-5 in favor of Boston.
Who knows where, or how, it will end? Last year, the Yankees and Red Sox played 26 times, including seven in the ALCS. In that final game the two teams so enjoyed each other’s company they went 11 innings, calling it quits only after Aaron Boone sent a Tim Wakefield knuckleball into the leftfield stands.
This year, in spite of the Red Sox’s early dominance and late-summer surge, they have left themselves in the position of virtually needing to sweep these last six games, or need help from outside forces – curses, anyone? – to overcome 85 years of negative history.
The Last Real Rivalry in pro sports resumes tonight in the Bronx. May it continue long after that.