skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Great little post by the movie reviewer of the Harvard Crimson, Yair Rosenberg, about the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry on the Lohud Yankees Blog. Why do the Yankees and Red Sox fans hate each other? Because they are in fact very similar, Yair says.
Like many epic enmities, the Yankees/Sox rivalry is fueled by the narcissism of small differences. What makes the competition so acute is the similarity between the two clubs in talent, style and approach, which then throws their slight disparities into sharp relief. To take an illustrative example from my backyard, the storied university rivalry between Harvard and Yale sure isn’t predicated on the vast differences between the two twin Ivy League elites; rather, it stems from their commonalities. Because the two schools are so alike in terms of academics, student body, and culture, their most minute distinctions are put under the microscope in a search for uniqueness and superiority, intensifying the rivalry to the extreme. Every detail becomes a battleground. Each side wants to be the best when it comes to the traits both so dearly prize. So to with Yankees/Sox.
Consider plate discipline. The Yankees grind out every single at-bat, jacking up pitch counts, and working one of the best OBP’s in the league. So do the Sox. Joe West was onto something when he griped that Yankees/Sox games tend to go on far longer than any others in baseball. That’s what happens when you pit the two teams with the best OBP in the American League for six of the past eight years against each other. Indeed, the front offices of both squads have cultivated many of the same virtues both at the plate and on the mound. The result? Nine-inning grinds that exhaust umpires but exhilarate fans.
Consider payroll, where New York and Boston are far and away the highest spenders in baseball, especially in the AL. Consider size of fanbase, where both the Yankee nation and the Red Sox nation leave all other teams in the dust. Wherever you look, what makes the NY/Boston rivalry so potent is the spectacle of two well-matched titans duking it out for supremacy...
I like this argument and it helps me reconcile my love of Liverpool FC (now owned by the Red Sox) my New York Yankees and Plum Island, Massachusetts one of my favourite places in the world.
...
The photograph? Proof that I am man enough to embrace an American hero even if he did bat for the other team. (And, er, get his head frozen.)
According to the BBC, the Boston Red Sox are buying Liverpool FC. John Henry, the Sox's principal owner, is buying out the Hicks family if one or two financial niggles can be sorted out. As much as the Hicks clan is despised in Liverpool this isn't great news for Scousers. Henry has shown little previous interest in association football. Its pretty much all been baseball until now. He grew up a fan of the St Louis Cardinals, then purchased a stake in the New York Yankees before helping launch the Colorado Rockies. He bought the Red Sox from The New York Times in 2002 with the express purpose of "reversing the curse" of Babe Ruth and winning the World Series. That he did just two years later in 2004, with - according to the completely unbiased Mitchell Report - a team that was utterly free of steroids. Cough, cough. ...
I grew up a fan of Liverpool FC back in the glory days of the 70's and after living in Harlem for 7 years in the 1990's I naturally became a New York Yankees fan and thus a mortal enemy of the Red Sox. I have worn a Yankees cap at Fenway Park and endured the abuse. There is however one thing I like about the Red Sox and that is Theo Epstein, the Sox's wunderkind General Manager who is generally acknowledged to be the smartest man in baseball. It was he, not Henry, who put together the team that reversed the curse of the Bambino and most of his moves since have proved to be winners. Smarts runs in Epstein's family. His father is head of the creative writing programme at Boston University and his grandfather wrote a little movie you might have heard of called Casablanca. The Red Sox's season ended last week and Epstein is going to have nothing to do for a couple of months until the winter meetings, so I'm thinking that maybe John Henry could send him over to Liverpool to sort out the Reds. We need a new manager and a new attitude. Last Saturday discontented Liverpool fans were calling out the name of Kenny Dalglish who was a star player and manager of Liverpool and has expressed interest in managing again. Before coming to Liverpool, Dalglish got his start at Celtic FC. According to the bookies the favourite to take over Liverpool is in fact Northern Irish World Cup legend Martin O'Neill who replaced Dalglish as manager of Celtic and complied an impressive record there of 219:29:40. Purely coincidentally, I'm sure, a few months ago Celtic FC played Sporting Portugal in a friendly at none other than Fenway Park, Boston.
