Scoreboards

The spectacle of sport is enhanced if not created by rivalries and no rivalry has lasted as long as the Boston Red Sox vs. Yankees. The Red Sox Yankees rivalry not only matches some of the best baseball teams of this era but consistently has matched up some of the best baseball teams in history.

Whether it comes from being two big East Coast cities that happen to be close in proximity or it comes from being some of the initial teams in the Major League, both the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox have had their defining moments against each other. From a comparison of records and titles, it has not been much of a rivalry. Though the Red Sox (then called the Americans) dominated the early league with 4 championships, the Yankees have run away with the titles after that. Since 1920, New York won 26 World Series championships and took the pennant home 39 times of fielding some of the best baseball teams in history. During that same period, Boston managed no World Series titles and just 4 pennants.

The rivalry, however, runs much deeper than the apparent dominance of the Yankees by the number of titles. No matter the season, it always seems that the games that matter come down to the Red Sox vs. Yankees. The have consistently met at the end of the season with the playoffs on the line only to have the Yankees pull out a miracle win. Probably the most famous examples was in 1978 when the Red Sox were comfortable at the top of the division when the Yankees put together a winning streak to overcome a 14-game deficit and tie the Red Sox for first place. The last four games of this streak were won at Fenway Park, when the Yankees outscored Boston 42-9, earning the series the nickname, “The Boston Massacre.” Worst yet for the Red Sox, they met again the next month to split the tie at first. In a moment that typifies the rivalry, Yankee Bucky Dent broke the game wide open with a three-run shot over the famed Green Monster to send the Yanks into the postseason.

Lately, this rivalry has changed. Ever since the Red Sox overcame the Yankees in the American League Championship Series in 2004 in dramatic fashion, Boston has won the World Series twice. After they won their first in 80 years, in 2004, the Red Sox were said to have finally broken “The Curse of the Bambino,” a supposed curse that had haunted Boston since they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920. Now both clubs face each other routinely with fury on the field and also during the offseason as both have unleashed huge amounts of cash to seemingly try to outdo one another on who can spend more on free agents. Payrolls in recent seasons were $218 million for New York and $123 million for Boston where the median Major League team spent just over $80 million.