The restoration of The Rivalry is upon us. And that is good news.
No: That is great news.
Look, the very best iterations of the Yankees-Red Sox feud that’s heading for its 100-year anniversary in 14 months are so epic, so electric, so addictive that it’s understandable if we try to find villains and vigilantes on both sides even when none exist.
Hell, I plead guilty on all charges there. And let’s be honest: For most of the 15 years connecting 2014 and this year, it hasn’t exactly been easy to replicate the very best of the DiMaggio-Williams years, or the Munson-Fisk years, or the Papi-A-Rod years. Nobody ever worked themselves into a lather over some great Pedroia-Cano debate. No books have yet been authored on the Curse of Jacoby Ellsbury.
But if we learned anything from the baseball season that ended late Tuesday for the Yankees, and the four-game beating the Sox applied in winning their Division Series, it is this: For now and for the foreseeable future, we can keep the hyperbole in hibernation because we are about to enter a fresh chapter of this Yanks-Sox passion play.
It may be too early to jump right in and say, with a snarl and a sneer, “These teams simply don’t like each other.” Still, there are embers of enmity in our midst and they are easy to spot.
Or, in the case of the Red Sox’s clubhouse, easy to hear …
“Theeeeeeese … little town blues …
Are …. melting away
I’mmmm … gonna make a brand new start of it …
In old New York …”
Honestly, I thought it was hysterical when Aaron Judge blasted Ol’ Blue Eyes on his way past the Red Sox’s dressing room at Fenway Park on Saturday night, as he headed for the bus after the Yankees evened the series with a resounding 6-2 thumping. Anyone who spends five minutes around Judge knew it was cheeky, a subtle stab at fun.
This wasn’t Bill Lee calling the Yankees “brownshirts” like back in the day, despite what Mark Teixeira (who spent his career as a Yankee almost entirely removed from any true Yankees-Red Sox bitterness) has to say, OK?
But, well, look: Most bulletin-board material, in a vacuum, is silly until the clipping actually winds up on the bulletin board. And this much we know: The Sox sure took great delight in cranking up a certain song in question during their postgame celebration early Wednesday, and it wasn’t Bobby Darin’s “Sunday in New York” or Ace Frehley’s “New York Groove.”
There is also the matter of Jersey Guy Rick Porcello, who threw 5 2/3 terrific innings at the Yankees this series (the first two-thirds as a crucial stop-gap reliever in Game 1, the last five muffling the Yankees in decisive Game 4). Someone relayed to Porcello that CC Sabathia had taken issue with the umpiring slapstick that is the Angel Hernandez Show, blasting Blue on the record: “He’s absolutely terrible.”
“Throw the ball over the plate, CC,” Porcello retorted. “I thought Angel Hernandez called a good game. You gotta put the ball over the white part of the plate and then you get the strikes called.”
Again: Maybe this isn’t Lee saying Gene Michael was “waving a purse” while engaging in a 1973 brawl at Fenway Park. Maybe this wasn’t Graig Nettles three years later, cold-cocking Lee at Yankee Stadium and grinning afterward, “Was he hit with a purse?”
But it’s something. And then you add the best part of all: The Yankees aren’t going anywhere. The Red Sox certainly aren’t going anywhere. Both teams are fortified by a young base of talent, both have more money than a convention of sheiks, both are going to spend a lot of time in October the next few years.
And that’s always the best way to gauge how feisty the rivalry is. Very little blood was spilled in, say, 1966, when the teams were battling for ninth place in the American League. There wasn’t a whole lot of rancor in, say, 2014, when the teams combined for a 155-169 record.
That record was 208-116 this time around.
That’s when bloodstreams boil and nerves fray and tempers grow quick. That’s when we always have the very best of The Rivalry. That’s what we have now. That’s where we are now. If they also don’t happen to like each other very much going forward?
That’s king of the hill, kids.
Top of the heap.
