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This week, SI will be released 14 back, The moving documentary by Jon Hock on the furious return of the Yankees from this deficit to the Red Sox ranking in the late summer of 1978. To register for SI TV, click here.
Over the years, many cartographers have attempted to identify the exact location of what my colleague Steve Rushin called in the 2003 Munson-Nixon line, named in honor of the former receiver of the Yankees Thurman Munson and outfielder Red Sox Trot Nixon. The line is the demarcation between Red Sox Nation and Yankees Universe (this is the official diplomatic nomenclature, no grandiosity here!), The border that signals that red gives way to blue and poindexerism giving way to the front of the pugnacious. But no one can agree on the exact place where to place it. Like the Housatonic River, the line runs north to south across Connecticut; unlike Housatonic, large-scale industrial polluters have not introduced known carcinogens. Good thing: rivalry is pretty toxic without them.
Rock for over a century, Red Sox – Yankees remains fiery and bitter, the envy of all professional leagues. The regular season series came out of its last episode on August 2nd, with 188 old games; the Yankees, as they had to do, remained in the lead, 1,185-989 (with 14 draws to show the age of the rivalry), although the Red Sox, with a sweep, had started four games closer of the evening. things in the air. Between the two clubs, they have 35 championships (ask the Yankees fans how much they are, they will know), 30 MV AL and 12 Cy Young Awards (also, the real Cy Young). Among the 20 best players of all time by Wins Above Replacement, nine played for Boston, New York or, in one case, both. It's Babe Ruth, the player with the best WAR ever sold, who has been sold from one franchise to another – maybe have you ever heard?
Although most vinegars of rivalry come from gamers, the fans are even more numerous, many of whom approach the games of the Red Sox – Yankees as if they were the only ones to be. Lose to rays or Orioles, well, that's baseball. Losing to the Red Sox or the Yankees, the heads have to roll. Listening to the New York WFAN after this recent August sweep, the callers were so discouraged that I initially thought they were Mets fans. But, despite their capriciousness, fans of both teams also think generically, even epochal, in a way that players and managers should never have. Consider the cement mason who lives in the Bronx but stimulates Boston who, in 2008, during the construction of the second Yankee Stadium, mixed a David Ortiz jersey to a lot of concrete used on the site and talked about it. The Yankees quickly hammered the jersey, then brought the case to the Bronx prosecutor, who refused to file a complaint. Knowing that the yard would be mainly Yankees fans, the team's owner, Hank Steinbrenner, envisioned another kind of justice: "I hope his colleagues escape him."
That brings me back to this border and the communities of Connecticut quite far from New York and Boston so that the fans of the two teams fight, in equal numbers, after the big matches. I happen about this both as an interested and selfless part. One of the geographical studies, published in the 2012 Wall Street Journal by Ben Blatt of the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective, used Facebook data to suggest that the most divided region between the Yankees and the Red Sox is Guilford , the waterfront city. 22,283 years old when I grew up. Before Blatt published his discoveries, Guilford High graduate Adam Greenberg, who had participated in his first participation in the Cubs' first division in 2005, had become Guilford's biggest baseball player. to the plate, for the Marlins in 2012. (He fought back.) Incidentally, Greenberg, who grew up as a fan of the Yankees, now shows up in the Senate, for the siege of Ted Kennedy Jr. where he was elected, he would represent Guilford alongside our state representative, Sean Scanlon, a Yankees fan.
The baseball fan growing up in a divided territory has the rare chance of choosing a camp. Now, baseball fans in New York, Chicago or the Bay Area could be here too for decades, but there is simply less finality and consequence in such a choice: Cubs fans and fans of White Sox. can appreciate and applaud when the other team puts an end to the prolonged drought of the championship. Even this Mets fan (I told you I was disinterested, even though now you know I'm a little lame) managed to smile at the success of the 2017 Yankees playoffs. The Mets and Yankees compete for local coverage, not divisional crowns. But the Red Sox fan who wants his team to do the World Series must hope to fight with the Yankees. The interests of the divisional opponents are opposed, and all the fans know it, even though since 2004 they have shared an AL playoff field four times without meeting each other.
As a baseball fan, I had the chance to grow up in the late 1990s, early in the last generation, where kids knew the loyalties of all classmates' leagues rather than their favorite Fortnite player. The decade began with baseball in both cities, but the Boston Globe scribe Dan Shaughnessy wrote The Curse of the Bambino, making Boston's bad luck years pathological. George Steinbrenner executive duties during a series of June in Fenway. Over the years, while the rivalry had not yet reached its climax, Alex Rodriguez was still a sailor; Theo Epstein was still graduating from law school at San Diego's night school – both teams were improbably well placed, and Connecticut's kids were hooked on every project.
In Guilford, despite Facebook data, many superficial indicators show the New York trend. The city 's sporting goods store has always stocked more Yankees items than Red Sox items, although I learned later that it was only because the owner was a fan of New York. Five years ago, on a day off during his last season, Yankees star reliever Mariano Rivera and his family came to the main attraction of our town, Bishop's Orchards, to pick apples; the Shoreline Times wrote it. If Rich Garces or another Sox thrower had already packed baskets in Guilford, I think I would have heard about it.
Most likely, in this medium term, you relied on your father's or my mother's team – I have never heard of a kid so fascinated by the Sox that I've heard about it. he pushed his parents in love with Bombers -. For anecdotes, Irish families loved the Red Sox and Italian families loved the Yankees (Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra will have this effect), and people who also did not like the Sox. Defection, even in the era of New York rule and "1918" songs, was unthinkable. Yankees fans even tried to get me on board, harassing me in the Little League, telling stories of Derek Jeter's heroism. (I never remember Red Sox fans doing the same thing, maybe they were worried about throwing the 1986 World Series in the face, even though none of us had survived. at the test of Bill Buckner.) Tell these kids, "Of course, Jeter did some games, but have you ever seen Rey Ordoñez throw after making a coin on his backhand? He does not even need to jump! (I did not make many friends.)
In fifth grade, in the fall of 2001, we were retreating two nights during the World Series. When we left for the camp, the Diamondbacks had a lead of 2 to 1 sets. The two mornings, when we woke up, we discovered at breakfast that the Yankees had mounted improbable returns at the end of the round and won. Even now, as an adult, I find it hard to think of more unbearable characters than the 11-year-old Yankees fan, jubilant about what Jeter had done in a game he did not even have. looked.
The only thing was, the Bombers of that era won and won and won even more – four titles from 1996 to 2000 (and they would have added another one in 01 when the greatest of all time was able to withdraw Tony Womack). But soon the fortune of Boston began to turn. The new direction has arrived. The gap has narrowed. Team 03 was an offensive heavyweight, scoring the second-highest number of points in franchise history. The leading-edge team that the Sox faced in the 2003 ALCS had won 101 games against 95, but the series was almost identical (10-9, New York) and the series played in October was tight in all the senses. . Manny Ramirez accused Roger Clemens; Pedro Martinez threw 72-year-old Yankees coach Don Zimmer on the ground by his noggin; Yankees Karim García and Jeff Nelson fought a Fenway goalkeeper in the basement. It was only the third match, which, thanks to the match No. 7 of New York's third player, Aaron Boone, who finished season 7, would not even have become the most famous game of the series.
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And the ALCS 2003 would not even be the most exciting championship series that the teams have played in two years, with the unprecedented return of the Sox after a 3-0 deficit in the ALCS 2004, followed by Boston who won his first title. Since then, fans on both sides know the year well. It was a good time to become inducted into the rivalry. But unlike the Housatonic, there is really no bad place to enter.
And that's the enduring pleasure of the Red Sox – Yankees. Ninety-nine years after Harry Frazee sold Ruth to Colonel Jacob Ruppert, the rivalry still found a way to renew itself. The young baseball fan would have found something to admire in 2018, which has already brought new names to join those mentioned above: Joe Kelly, the reliever of the Red Sox who launched to Tyler Austin after a difficult slip; Austin, the field player who loaded the mound and unleashed a clean-up battle of the bases after Kelly's ball ball; Alex Cora, the Red Sox rookie manager who despised the referees after a series of throws in August; and Boone, the new Yankees rookie, who … well, it's hard to imagine him as a player. Without a doubt, he will try.
At a time when the country is torn by a disagreement over what we should be defending and should stand up to, it may seem counterintuitive to adopt another source of partisanship. But we would all be better off if our fellow citizens exhausted their passion for baseball and approached everyone else with equal level and serenity, about the only phenomena ever seen among the Red Sox-Yankees. To the good people of Guilford and all the Nutmeggers: do your worst!
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