Rivalry? Yanks and Sox Don’t Know What It Means
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Rivalry, schmivalry. A real rivalry flourishes year-by-year, decade-by-decade, whether it has championship implications or not. In football it’s Harvard vs. Yale, Alabama vs. Auburn, Michigan vs. Ohio State. In baseball, it’s the Cardinals vs. the Cubs – and how many times has that rivalry decided a pennant? – or the Dodgers vs. the Giants, a rivalry that has survived a change of cities and coasts. In comparison, the Yankees-Red Sox is a press driven creation of the last couple of decades, and one that hasn’t always been on the front burner even in recent years.
Last year at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center in Montclair, N.J,, roughly 100 supporters gathered to watch the World Series with the man who has played in more of them than anyone else. Between innings, Yogi fielded questions. Someone wanted to know if the Yankees in Yogi’s day went at the Red Sox – and the Red Sox at them – harder than they did other teams. Yogi’s reply was somewhat eye-opening for the younger fans.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t think we really thought about the Red Sox all that much, not really much more than anybody else, and for a few years not as much as we thought about the Indians,” he said. And with good reason. For most of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Indians had better teams than the Red Sox, and the Yankees’ concern wasn’t beating Boston – or really beating anyone in particular – but winning the World Series.
I asked some other veteran writers and players about the so-called biggest rivalry in baseball. Ray Robinson, biographer of Christy Mathewson and Lou Gehrig, said, “I don’t think I ever heard anyone even mention a Yankees-Red Sox rivalry throughout the thirties and forties, until 1946 – which, come to think of it, was when Boston won its first American League pennant since Babe Ruth went to the Yankees.”
Jim Bouton, who pitched seven seasons for the Yankees from 1962-68 and later wrote about the experience in “Ball Four,” said, “I don’t really recall the games with the Red Sox being that big, at least not any bigger than Cleve land or Baltimore, especially Baltimore. It was hotter with Baltimore in 1964 because we were locked in a pennant race, and in 1966 because they won the pennant, then it heated up a bit in 1967 with the Red Sox because they won. But outside of that, it was nothing special, except that maybe the Boston fans were a little nastier than those in other cities.”
Bouton could have simply said “more resentful,” because that’s essentially all that distinguishes Red Sox fans from other fans – their resentment of the Yankees, the flames of which have been fanned in recent years by the Red Sox-centric New York press, in which several of the leading baseball commentators (most notably the Daily News’s Mike Lupica and ESPN’s Peter Gammons) are Red Sox homies. (We should also pause to mention that the New York Times and Boston Red Sox share ownership.)
Thus, we have artificially pumped up myths like the Curse of The Bambino, which scarcely existed in anyone’s mind before Dan Shaughnessy’s 1990 book that blamed the Red Sox’ miserable history since 1919 on trading Babe Ruth. As if it was the Yankees who made Ted Williams hit .200 in the 1946 World Series; as if it was the Yankees against whom Bill Buckner couldn’t glove a practice grounder; as if it was Babe Ruth who made the Red Sox management such a bunch of ignorant bigots they wouldn’t try to sign Willie Mays.
Prior to 1978 and “Bucky F–in’ Dent,” there was really just one memorable Yankees-Red Sox pennant race, in 1949, and the Red Sox lost that one, too. Contrast that with the Dodgers and Giants, who have been at each other’s throats for decades and whose pennant races in 1951 and 1962 (both of which went to the final game of best of three playoff),and 1965 produced some of the most famous moments in baseball history. Cardinals and Cubs fans drive the 295 miles between Wrigley Field and Busch Stadium just to tailgate ballgames where the only thing at stake is who’s going to end up in the cellar. That’s a rivalry.
Sure, this weekend’s Yankees-Red Sox games are sold out, as have been all their series during the last couple of years. But does anyone think we’d be talking rivalry if both teams were fighting to stay out of the bottom half of the division? Was anyone talking “rivalry” or “curse” in 1990, when the Red Sox finished 21 games ahead of the Yankees but got swept out of the AL Championship Series by the Oakland A’s? (The highlight of that one was in the final game when Roger Clemens was ejected in the second inning for cursing at an umpire.) Did anyone much care about the Red Sox or Yankees from 1991 to 1993, when neither team finished within six games of the division leader?
Someone once said that the Red Sox have produced more books than any team in sports history. Let’s see them at least successfully defend their only World Series championship in 86 years before we start calling them the Yankees’ rivals. The Yankees and Red Sox will be a great rivalry when the Yankees call it one. Until then the Red Sox are merely opponents.
Mr. Barra is the author of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.