Sep 19, 2004

Sox-Yankees

by Cliopatria

This weekend the Red Sox are at what threatens to be a rainy Yankee Stadium (aka"The Toilet Bowl in the Bronx") for a three-game series that will help settle the American League East race. But it means so, so much more than that.

Currently the Yankees have a 3.5 game cushion and the Sox are comfortably ahead in the Wild Card race, so whatever happens, both of these teams should easily make the playoffs. Nonetheless, I have been giddy all day, nay, all week, about these three games (all of which will be on national television, which is manna from heaven for this texas cowpoke).

On August 15th, the Yankees held a 10.5 game lead on the Sox. Now they can feel our breath on their necks as we close in on them. The logical parallel is with 1978, the year the Sox collapsed (though the apex of their 1978 lead came in July) and the Yanks came back. In the last week of that season the Yankees opened up a lead from which the Sox recovered to force a tie (People always forget that part) and a one-game playoff, the results of which have been lost to history, never to be recovered.

Suddenly the glove may be on the other hand. The Red Sox have been playing first-rate baseball. The Yankees have shown that their aging dynasty is more age, less dynasty. They are ever dangerous, of course, and no one in Red Sox Nation takes them lightly, but they are vulnerable.

In September of that fateful summer of 1978 the Yankees played a four-game series in Fenway in which the pinstripers pounded the Sox by an aggregate score of 42-9. It has forever been known as the"Boston Massacre," and even as a professional historian, whenever I hear that name, I do not think of the event that helped to precipitate the Revolution by showing the lengths to which the ruthless Redcoats would go to suppress colonial intransigence, but rather it conjures up events that cause night sweats in any respectable Boston fan.

So this weekend (and next weekend, when the two teams will meet in Fenway, aka"God's Favorite Place") is huge. The AL East is at stake, home field in the American League playoffs is at stake, but beyond that, intrinsically, the games themselves each simply mean something, everything. My apologies to fans in other sports or of other great and storied rivalries, but this is the best, most heated, most intense rivalry in sports. It is Athens v. Sparta, USA v. USSR, Rocky v. Appolo, all rolled into one. It is the only event that matters on the calendar this weekend. It is what September baseball is all about -- rivalry and joy and tension and release and glory and imagination and hope. Always hope.

Go Sox!!!!!

More Comments:

Derek Charles Catsam - 9/20/2004

Stranger things have happened. Lord knows the Red Sox effect my mood. Ask my students today.
dc

Jesse David Lamovsky - 9/19/2004

Derek,

I've been around. For some reason I fell silent at about the same time as the Indians' bats. It may be a coincidence, but I can't rule it out.

Derek Charles Catsam - 9/18/2004

Sure, but even in college football, others stake a claim and are equally passionate -- as SI's state by state surveys clearly showed, despite the passion of college sports, even in states with huge traditions of college football or basketball, people are bigger pro sports fans. OSU-Michigan, like Auburn-Alabama, Florida-Tennessee, or Williams -Amherst, are huge, but their appeal on a relative scale is far more limited than pro sports rivalries tend to be. Look at the ratings -- and any MLB game is 1 of 162.
1949 is a good parallel, but given that my Dad was not even born yet, i thought 1978 was a more logical parallel.
Good to see you back -- i thought you might have been abducted by Steelers fans. Or perhaps by Art Modell.
dc

Jesse David Lamovsky - 9/18/2004

Derek,

1978 is the obvious parallel. But like you said, the Red Sox had that 14-game lead in July, and they did have to come back from three down in the final week (thanks in part to Cleveland's Rick Waits). But in '49, the Red Sox were eleven-and-a-half out in August and wound up taking a one-game lead into the final two games at Yankee Stadium, both of which, of course, they lost (Ted Williams also lost a chance at three Triple Crowns in that two-game set). This year the BoSox have better pitching and defense than they did in 1949. Matter of fact, the Red Sox are a better team than the Yankees this year. They ought to beat them. And unlike '49 and '78, the Red Sox don't have ex-Yankees like Joe McCarthy and Mike Torrez to betray them.

And I'm going to leave the "best rivalry" argument alone- we beat that subject into the ground before- but for my money, it's Michigan-Ohio State, the third Saturday in November.