It's Time For Red Sox-Yankees Rivalry To Reignite
By Johnny Carey, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- It has become trendy to say that the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is dead.
At the beginning of each season, there is inevitably an article rebuking that claim while declaring "This'll be the year the rivalry reignites!"
And ... nothing.
Well, you guessed it: This is that article, and yes, this'll be the year the rivalry reignites.
Watch some of the highlights, get in the mood, and try to remember the good times.
For as awesome as these moments were, the actual baseball being played between the two teams was even better. The Red Sox and Yankees teams of the early-to-mid 2000s were juggernauts whose polarizing styles of play could only be rivaled by their personalities. Every matchup between the two teams was must-see television.
Four-and-a-half-hour Sunday Night Baseball games don't have quite the same juice when the two teams are competing only to not come in last place.
Simply put, the rivalry has mostly sucked lately because both teams have mostly sucked. At the very least, they haven't been competitive in the same season since 2011, when the Red Sox collapsed and the Yankees conveniently blew a seven-run lead to the Rays in the last game of the season. (We all know that meatball to Evan Longoria was no mistake.)
They haven't been in the playoffs in the same season since 2009, and haven't faced off in a playoff game since Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS.
It's hard to maintain a hatred for that long when you aren't playing meaningful baseball against each other.
That's the easy reasoning: both teams haven't been very good, so why hate another team that isn't challenging you for anything?
2016 won't see the Red Sox and Yankees competing for 100 wins each, but it should see each team alive in the race for a wide open AL East.
Last season, the Red Sox flat-out could not pitch. They scored the fourth most runs in the majors (despite horrible seasons from Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez), but a rotation whose most consistent pitcher was Wade Miley had no chance to succeed.
Enter David Price, who will do more for the rivalry than just win games.
Red Sox fans know better than anybody else how much David Price can rile up an opposing fan base. He's good, and he knows it. Price won't shy away from anyone, while bringing a fire to the Fenway mound that's been lacking for years. Yankees fans will quickly take over the David Price Haters Club from Red Sox fans.
Additions of Craig Kimbrel and Carson Smith in the bullpen should also help keep the Red Sox competitive with a stacked Yankee back-end in 2016.
Still, great rivalries go deeper than each team's win-loss record. They require players who feel strong loyalty to their own team, as well as real hatred for the other. Throughout the past few seasons, the Red Sox and Yankees rosters have undergone such radical transformations that it has become difficult to find players that fit these criteria. Rivalries need players who will stick around.
Who could you really hate on the Yankees other than A-Rod? Didi Gregorious? Brett Gardner? Meh.
Michael Pineda had the pine tar incident, which was fun at the time. Maybe him? No, not really.
Jacoby Ellsbury switched sides, how about him? Well, he got $153 million to hit .265. It's hard to really be mad about that.
It's been tough for a Red Sox fan to truly hate anyone on the Yankees, while Yankees fans have been stuck with the same feeling of apathy.
In 2016, this mindset will change as each team has groomed a new core group.
Promising young players such as Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Blake Swihart, Jackie Bradley Jr, Rusney Castillo, and Henry Owens are all poised to make significant contributions for the Red Sox this season. These young pieces have spent time in the Red Sox farm system, and haven't played anywhere other than Boston in the big leagues. There's no identity crisis with these guys -- they're Red Sox.
On the surface, the Yankees roster is old, mainly made up of veteran players who have spent time with multiple teams.
Look a little deeper, though and you'll find that a similar, homegrown youth movement is occurring in New York.
Yankees GM Brian Cashman showed his belief in the Yankees farm system this off season by completely staying out of the free agent market. New York signed zero major league free agents over the winter which signals that the team will rely more on homegrown players over the next few years.
Rob Refsnyder, Dellin Betances, Luis Severino, Slade Heathcott and Gary Sanchez all come from the Yankees farm system, and will likely make an impact on the team in 2016--they're Yankees.
These young players are set to clash head-to-head for years, which makes for a group that won't like each other one bit.
New Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman is likely to stir the pot as well, considering his alleged domestic abuse scandal. He's definitely an easy target for Red Sox fans to hate in 2016.
Finally, there's the David Ortiz farewell tour factor.
Farewell tours are the worst. They produce excessive feelings of goodwill towards players that were never beloved (or even liked) by other fan bases. Essentially, these tours create the opposite effect of a rivalry. After all, Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter were cheered at Fenway to the point of overkill during their final seasons.
Don't expect the same for Ortiz if both teams can remain competitive.
The circumstances surrounding Ortiz's final season are likely to be far different from those surrounding Rivera and Jeter, whose came in 2013 and 2014, respectively.
The constant in each of these seasons was the lack of competition between the two teams. While the Red Sox were on their way to a World Series title in 2013, New York finished in fourth place. In 2014, both teams stunk. It was easy to cheer for Rivera and Jeter, yes, because they were both classy players, but also because the matchups between the two teams were basically meaningless.
It's hard to imagine Ortiz being cheered in the Bronx during a divisional race.
If each team lives up to its potential, that shouldn't be a problem. After all, it just doesn't seem plausible that David Ortiz would retire without providing one more big moment in the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry.
See, it's already begun! They can't stand each other! #BadValentineIn5Words is the 2016 version of a bean ball. The rivalry's back!
OK, if that series of tweets has become news in the "Greatest Rivalry in Sports," we really do need a change. That change, however, should come sooner rather than later.
Johnny Carey is a senior at Boston College. You can find him on Twitter @JohnnyHeights.
