Red Sox vs. Yanks: The Good- Bad and the Ugly

By C. Eric Lincoln

As a New Yorker, born and raised, I’ve decided to see what it is that makes Red Sox Nation such a unique cultural attraction. Join the Fenway faithful, share a smile and some baseball chatter. So far? As soon as the locals discover that you were raised in the land of Mantle, Mays and Snider, smiles fade and handshakes disappear. These people genuinely seem resentful that your life has been filled with such baseball gems, such good memories. You’ve got to feel sorry for people who believe in a Curse and were subject to the whims of owner Tom Yawkey, a cheap man who never cared about any rivalry.
Of Red Sox and Yanks, it is generally believed that these combatants have waged a rivalry for the ages, some sort of generational border war above and beyond all other sporting match ups– a duel of culture and custom that, in its storied past, has seen the rich dandies of New York swat the pesky Mayflower descendants and sent them scurrying into culverts and shacks where they now sorrowfully mind lobster pots in the remotest corners of Maine.

Not so.

No, no Nanette.

Not so.

The pollsters at Quinnipiac University have released their latest opus, telling us that 42 per cent of all Connecticut residents, for example,are now Yankee fans — loyalists of the dreaded Evil Empire — while only 35 per cent now admit that they are still rooters of Red Sox Nation. The remaining Connecticut residents say they side with the New York Mets.

Shocking? Not really.

When it comes to a real rivalry, there is more fluff here than the real stuff.

If there is any rivalry at all, it is lodged in the minds of Red Sox Nation. Not even the Yankee Stadium bleacher creatures get overly hyped and over heated when the Red Sox come to town.

Jim Bouton, the former Yank righthander, author, and my neighbor in western Massachusetts, says the rivalry resides in the minds of the fans.

Bouton admitted that as a rookie in 1962, Yank teammates warned him to stay clear of the Fenway faithful when getting off the team bus. “Those fans were loud,” says Bouton, “and sort of strange.

“Fenway is so compact, players hear everything the fans say.

“But I’ve never believed in any real rivalry between the teams. When I played we didn’t have anything against the Boston players. And they had no reason to dislike us.

“The rivalry is between the fans.”

Bouton recalls the days when Giants and Dodgers roamed the New York landscape. A Giants fan growing up in New Jersey, Bouton recalls running crosstown to say a few choice words to his best friend. a Dodger fan, after Bobby Thomson slugged his “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” to beat the Dodgers in the 1951 NL playoff.

When Bouton reached his friend’s home, windows were shuttered, drapes drawn. The mother came to the door and said that little Billy wouldn’t be coming out for for a long awhile.

“That was a real rivalry,” says Bouton.

Bouton also reminds us that in order to have a rivalry you have to be in position to be rivaled.

“When I was a Yankee,” says Bouton, “everyone wanted to be our rival. Everyone in the American League was always chasing after us and everyone wanted to knock us off.”

And that included Tigers, White Sox, Indians Orioles, Senators, and the blessed Red sox, all suitors to the crown.

As for the Red Sox, until recent seasons, they were in no position to rival the Yanks.

The owner back in Bouton’s days did not like to spend money on players. Tom Yawkey was also the last man to hire an African-American, which was plain unfortunate for the kinfolk of Red Sox Nation, who were loyal to a fault.

“All they could do was root against a (the Yankees) winner,” says Bouton.

The Red Sox didn’t knock on the Yankees door until the New Yorkers had fallen back to earth in the mid 1970s. The Red Sox found a poster child in catcher Carlton Fisk who started a mini-rivalry with Yankee catcher Thurmon Munson.

It was in that era that Yank third baseman Graig Nettles tossed Bill “Spaceman ” Lee on his left pitching shoulder, to which, Lee still says, “The bum ended my career.”

Add the Yankees Bucky Dent’s 1978 playoff home run, Aaron Boone’s walk off shot in 2003 and catcher Jason Varitek’s attempt to throttle Alex Rodriguez, and you may have the makings of a rivalry filled with some edginess.