Is That a Shark Below Us?
Why yes it is New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. I realize it’s trite to say this, but Sunday night might have officially been the night the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry jumped the shark. Granted, we’ve been headed in this direction since the moment Boston completed its comeback in the 2004 ALCS, but tonight it officially went over the edge.
Why now after all the media saturation over the last decade? Because Sunday was the perfect storm. First you had a Red Sox jersey being buried in New Yankee Stadium, trumped only by the Yankees actually stooping to digging the garment up, trumped only by Hank Steinbrenner saying the fan who buried the jersey should have his ass kicked, trumped only by the fan appearing on a phone call on SportsCenter and sounding like he has as many brain cells as David Ortiz has hits this season.
Perfect storm indeed — a perfect storm of lameness.
This was followed up by an excruciatingly dull and difficult-to-watch Sunday night game in which neither Phil Hughes nor Daisuke Matsuzaka could throw strikes and which took just shy of four hours to complete. Hey, marathon games are fun when they’re in life-or-death situations or when there is a brawl in the middle, but we haven’t had that in this rivalry for four years.
Of course, that isn’t to say these teams DON’T play good games anymore — they do because that’s what happens when good teams play each other — but it doesn’t really jive with the relentless media hype that the rivalry gets. When you add in the truly annoying attention it receives in addition — from Hank’s grousing to Red Sox Nation cards to “curses” to the truly tiresome elements in the fandom on each side — I think we could all use a little break from the rivalry, and that’s coming from someone who was born and raised in New England.
P.S. I realize many outside of the Northeast will feel like I’m way late to the party here, but today struck me in particular because the dual fatigue I feel with the rivalry was so utterly apparent — the game itself was lame and so were the fans and ownership on both sides, and it all happened in basically a 24-hour span.