In the days preceding the World Series, we were pummeled with references to the rivalry between the Dodgers and New York Yankees.
The Dodgers and Yankees are all about history, about tradition, about the rare chances to charge outrageous prices to see baseball’s two biggest brands on the same field.
Today, however, the Dodgers and Yankees are not a rivalry. Jackie Robinson and Mickey Mantle are not walking through that door.
In the Dodgers’ last decade in Brooklyn, the teams met six times in the World Series. When the teams met this October, they had not clashed in the World Series in 43 years. Movies in black and white and stories from Bob Costas get old after awhile.
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Rivalries — at least the few that attract national interest — are born in October. We enjoyed what is now the best rivalry in baseball this October, just not in the World Series.
The Yankees and Boston Red Sox shattered the bounds of a regional rivalry largely because of the 2003 and 2004 playoffs, when the teams met in American League championship series, each of which amplified the drama by lasting the maximum seven games.
In 2003, Boston’s Pedro Martinez flung Yankees coach Don Zimmer to the ground, two Yankees players jousted with a Fenway Park groundskeeper, Boston manager Grady Little left Martinez in the decisive game too long, and the Yankees won on a walkoff home run by third baseman Aaron Boone. Wonder whatever happened to him.
The 2004 series is best remembered for the Red Sox becoming the first and still only team to win a seven-game postseason series after losing the first three games: The catalyst: the pinch-runner who stole second base and scored the tying run in the ninth inning of Game 4, Boston outfielder Dave Roberts. Wonder whatever happened to him, too.
But that was 20 years ago. ESPN can air the Yankees and Red Sox every Sunday night — and the network would if it could, with good ratings to show for it — but the Red Sox have not been nationally relevant in years.
In the five seasons since they traded Mookie Betts to the Dodgers, the Red Sox have finished in last place in the American League East three times.
