Anyone involved in Major League baseball cannot ignore the rich history of this sport. This is also marked by numerous rivalries. The biggest here is the one between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, which will continue to provide great moments until 2018. SPOX sheds light on the most significant stages of a unique enmity.
A four-game series between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees starts on Thursday in Fenway Park. You can watch Game 3 of the series on Saturday from 22.05 in the LIVESTREAM FOR FREE on SPOX.
Sport lives on rivalries. This is especially true in the USA, where every league has various rivalries. The NFL has the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, the NBA is particularly hot on the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, the NHL has historically seen above all the Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins as the biggest rivalry.
If you look at Major League baseball, you’ll find Boston again. In fact, the Boston Red Sox, which has been competing with the New York Yankees for over 100 years.
The rivalry between these two top MLB teams goes deeper than just in the sport, because both cities are not exactly green. Boston used to be considered an elite city, with all its culture and the fact that Boston’s port was the closest to Europe – a very important factor from a commercial point of view, of course.
In Boston’s view New York was more like the ugly little sister you look down on. New York seemed more like a small start-up compared to the big, progressive Boston.
In the course of time, however, this changed dramatically; in the meantime, the omens have changed, also because NYC has grown exorbitantly and thus has not only left Boston on the east coast behind. However, the fundamental rivalry between the cities has always remained.
Looking back at the beginnings of both teams in the then newly founded American League in 1903 – the National League had already been playing since 1876 – one quickly realises that the relationship between the two franchises has always been tense.
The first game between the then New York Highlanders and Boston Americans already saw a brawl on the court. It was also the beginning of numerous historical events.
There is the first appearance of the Highlanders in the legendary Pinstripes, the pinstripe jerseys that are synonymous with Yankees baseball today. Just days later, the then rebaptized Red Sox Fenway Park, probably the most iconic ball park in North America, opened. Incidentally, this was only five days after the Titanic sank.
What happened in 1919, on the other hand, was to eclipse everything. At that time Broadway producer Harry Frazee had already taken over the Red Sox. He was not really engaged in his role as owner of the Red Sox. His passion was another stage. When he ran out of money to finance the musical “No, No Nanette”, he saw only one way out: the sale of players.
The most valuable player in his team, and probably the entire league, was a pitcher and outfielder who had just set the record for most home runs in a season (29). His name: Herman George Ruth, called “The Babe”. Frazee sold it to the Yankees for $125,000 plus a loan of $300,000.
It was only the beginning of numerous sales to the Yankees – Frazee was good friends with the then owner of the Yankees, Jacob Ruppert, which was a nuisance for the American League and its commissioner. The other owners wanted to get rid of him, so that in the end he could only do business with the Yankees – and the Chicago White Sox, who fell out of favor due to a manipulation scandal.
Ruth, however, was the one who hurt Boston’s fans the most, after all, in the years that followed he became the legend of the sport – in the pinstripes hated in Boston. Ruth’s sale ushered in a long dry spell for the Red Sox, which then plunged into a prolonged sporting crisis and failed to recover for decades – the “Curse of the Bambino”.
Until then, the Red Sox was the creme de la creme of the AL. Not only did they win the first World Series ever (as Americans), they won the title five times until 1918. In 1904 they also won another AL Pennant, but there was no World Series because the NL champions New York Giants did not want to compete against what they saw as the lower AL teams. It was not until 1905 that the World Series became a regular event.
In the following decades, it was almost exclusively the Yankees who dominated the comparison with Boston. So the eighties became the only decade in which neither the Yankees nor the Red Sox won at least one World Series.
While the Yankees stayed away from the playoffs completely, the Red Sox were even close in 1986 – very close even. In the series against the New York Mets, Boston was only one out away from winning the series. But then they collapsed, finally First Baseman Billy Buckner made the biggest mistake in the history of the Red Sox and let a ground ball roll through his legs in his direction. The Mets won Game 6 and then also Game 7.
By then it was clear to everyone that the Red Sox had to be cursed, the Bambino kept haunting.
All in all, the 80s must be regarded as a rather leisurely time between the two anyway. What followed was clearly more intense. But even what came before that was not from bad parents.
In the 70s the big rivalry really blossomed again. In 1973, for example, there was a fierce conflict between the two star catchers: New York’s Thurman Munson slipped with the spikes ahead into the Home Plate that had blocked Boston’s Carlton Fisk. It got heated and resulted in a huge brawl. In one game in 1974, there were even several fights in only one game.
But the Red Sox also returned to the sporting scene and got more and more involved. Especially 1978 went down in history as one of the most intense years of this rivalry. In mid-July, the Sox were still ahead of New York with 14 games.
Then followed a fateful four-game series in Boston, which New York clearly won by sweep – this was called “Boston Massacre” and the Yankees ultimately pulverized the deficit. In mid-September they even lay in front of the Red Sox again, before they caught up and overtook again.
In the end, both teams had the same results and the first tie-breaker game since the introduction of the MLB division system took place. In Fenway Park it was the inconspicuous little infielder Bucky Dent who made history. His 3- Homun in the seventh inning took the Yankees into the lead and playoffs after trailing 0-2. In the end, they won the World Series.
But that was also the end of glory. 18 lean years followed until the next triumph. It wasn’t until the 1995 season that the Yankees made the leap back into the playoffs. This was also the first year ever in which both Boston and New York started in the playoffs at the same time. However, both were kicked out in the AL Division Series.
The Yankees won four of the following five World Series and started their latest dynasty, while the Red Sox did their best to keep up. Also because New York kept setting certain pinpricks.
There is the commitment of Wade Boggs, the former darling of the Red Sox. The Third Baseman joined the Yankees in 1993 and created one of the most iconic images in the Bronx Bombers’ World Series history: After his triumph in 1996, he suddenly sat on the back of a police horse that had found its way to Yankee Stadium. But Boggs entered the Hall of Fame with the B on the cap on his badge.
Perhaps even more painful, however, must have been the commitment of pitcher Roger Clemens. The right-hander was eliminated by the Red Sox before the 97 season and traded to the Toronto Blue Jays. With those, “Rocket” won two Cy Young Awards and finally joined the Yankees in 1999, with whom he won the World Series twice.
In 1999, however, the two clubs met for the first time in the playoffs. In the American League Championship Series, however, there was no great tension. The Yankees won 4-1.
It was not least this clear result that led a sports journalist of the time to compare this rivalry with that of a “hammer and a nail”.
Page 1: Curse of the Bambino, Boston Massacre and Boggs on horseback
Page 2: Rodriguez-Trade, comeback of the century and the newly inflamed rivalry