Jose Contreras pitches tonight, and I hope he throws a gem of a game. This will give us some confidence in him, and make me love him if he beans that SOB David Ortiz!(or anyone for that matter) 
Going against the team that he turned down to sign with us, the hostility can't get any better.
Most importantly, if we win this series, I can at least stop hearing Boston fans calling up with their infamous line "This is our year".
We hold the edge in the season series, 7-6.
</font><blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr />
Bauman: Big, but uneven, rivals
Yankees, Red Sox still baseball's biggest enemies
BOSTON -- Welcome to the Major League Baseball version of Hertz and Avis.
This is with all due respect to Alamo, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, National, Rent-a-Wreck, etc. This is with all due respect to the Atlanta Braves, too, who must be first in any current discussion of baseball teams. But when you think of a one-two punch in baseball, you cannot avoid the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. And you cannot avoid thinking of them in that order.
For the last five seasons, the Yanks and the Red Sox have been first and second in the American League East. The order has never varied. This is very frustrating for the dues-paying citizens of the Red Sox Nation. But it is bigger than that. It is older than that.
A tour group is coming through Fenway Park early one afternoon. Lots of tour groups come through Fenway Park; this is where the pilgrimage winds up if you're a baseball out-of-towner in The Hub. But this group comes up to the press box and the tour guide is giving a lively accounting of the surroundings.
"This is the press box, the highest point in Fenway Park," he tells his audience. "It's the best vantage point for seeing the field and for a view of downtown Boston, except for the last row. From there, you can't even see home plate. That's where we put the writers from New York."
Huge, appreciative laughs. Everybody gets it. The Yankees are the enemies. After all, a member of the Red Sox ownership group once referred to them as, "the evil empire." This might have seemed like overstatement to outside observers, but in New England, folks knew exactly what he meant.
If Martians invaded Boston, their arrival would create less consternation, less hostility, probably even less interest, period, than a visit by the Yankees. If the Martians invaded, at least people wouldn't be complaining about the aliens' payroll.
The Yankees are handy targets for Red Sox fans because they are the bullies on the block. The Yankees are so big that they are basically the bullies standing astride an entire continent. But here, they are on the block and they are inescapable. There are no storybook endings. There is just Bucky Dent's home run and now, year after year, the Yankees standing in the Red Sox' way and refusing to move, even once.
The Yankees are convenient in that way, for the Boston baseball public. It is more enjoyable, and easier on the emotions, to focus on the enemy without than the enemy within. There is always a lot of angst rising up among even the most loyal Red Sox followers. In fact, the most loyal of Red Sox followers have this bizarre sort of hopeful fatalism, in which they almost simultaneously seem to believe that both the best and the worst things can happen to the Sox.
They can't get away from the history. If they are not born to it, they are raised with it. And come to think of it, they probably are born to it.
"I walk down into the clubhouse," a local reporter told me, "and I see Johnny Pesky. He must be 85 years old now, but every time I see him, I think, 'He held the ball.' He'll say that he didn't, but if you watch the film, you can see it, just that momentary hesitation...."
The episode in question, Enos (Country) Slaughter of the St. Louis Cardinals, scoring from first base on a single, occurred in the 1946 World Series. The vast majority of contemporary Bostonians were obviously not yet born at that time. And yet, they all have this moment living with them like it is a member of the immediate family. So something like the ball going through Bill Buckner's legs in the 1986 Series, well, it's as though that happened earlier this week.
The Yankees serve a dual purpose here, or present a dual danger, if you choose to view it that way. They are the logical villains of the piece. They serve this purpose at ballparks throughout America and they have historically been very, very good in this role, winning as often as they have. But here, they are also reminders of what the Red Sox were supposed to be, but almost always weren't. They weren't because of themselves, or because of the Yankees, or because of both themselves and the Yankees. Any way, they just weren't.
So this weekend, the Bronx Bombers come to Fenway for three games. They lead the Red Sox by 4 1/2 games. There have been all sorts of concerns voiced about the Yankees this season, but here it is, late August, and guess who has the best record in the American League.
The Red Sox, meanwhile, are once again hitting the cover off the ball. They have won six of their last seven and even apart from the AL East race, they are solidly in the Wild Card hunt. Roger Clemens is scheduled to go Sunday for the Yanks and this would be his final game in Boston, unless, of course, these two teams meet in the postseason. Fenway Park is wonderful, but at a time like this, it should have a capacity of about 2.4 million.
Fenway Park. The Yankees. The Red Sox. More precisely, Fenway Park, the Yankees in first, the Red Sox in second. They seem to have marched together through much of history like this, baseball's Hertz and Avis. It has happened so often that it appears to be perhaps the natural order of things. But Red Sox Nation keeps hoping that this situation, viewed over the long haul -- as in maybe the history of humankind -- might be only temporary.
Michael Bauman is a columnist for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
www.yankees.com
<hr /></blockquote><font class="post">
Going against the team that he turned down to sign with us, the hostility can't get any better.
Most importantly, if we win this series, I can at least stop hearing Boston fans calling up with their infamous line "This is our year".
We hold the edge in the season series, 7-6.
</font><blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr />
Bauman: Big, but uneven, rivals
Yankees, Red Sox still baseball's biggest enemies
BOSTON -- Welcome to the Major League Baseball version of Hertz and Avis.
This is with all due respect to Alamo, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, National, Rent-a-Wreck, etc. This is with all due respect to the Atlanta Braves, too, who must be first in any current discussion of baseball teams. But when you think of a one-two punch in baseball, you cannot avoid the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. And you cannot avoid thinking of them in that order.
For the last five seasons, the Yanks and the Red Sox have been first and second in the American League East. The order has never varied. This is very frustrating for the dues-paying citizens of the Red Sox Nation. But it is bigger than that. It is older than that.
A tour group is coming through Fenway Park early one afternoon. Lots of tour groups come through Fenway Park; this is where the pilgrimage winds up if you're a baseball out-of-towner in The Hub. But this group comes up to the press box and the tour guide is giving a lively accounting of the surroundings.
"This is the press box, the highest point in Fenway Park," he tells his audience. "It's the best vantage point for seeing the field and for a view of downtown Boston, except for the last row. From there, you can't even see home plate. That's where we put the writers from New York."
Huge, appreciative laughs. Everybody gets it. The Yankees are the enemies. After all, a member of the Red Sox ownership group once referred to them as, "the evil empire." This might have seemed like overstatement to outside observers, but in New England, folks knew exactly what he meant.
If Martians invaded Boston, their arrival would create less consternation, less hostility, probably even less interest, period, than a visit by the Yankees. If the Martians invaded, at least people wouldn't be complaining about the aliens' payroll.
The Yankees are handy targets for Red Sox fans because they are the bullies on the block. The Yankees are so big that they are basically the bullies standing astride an entire continent. But here, they are on the block and they are inescapable. There are no storybook endings. There is just Bucky Dent's home run and now, year after year, the Yankees standing in the Red Sox' way and refusing to move, even once.
The Yankees are convenient in that way, for the Boston baseball public. It is more enjoyable, and easier on the emotions, to focus on the enemy without than the enemy within. There is always a lot of angst rising up among even the most loyal Red Sox followers. In fact, the most loyal of Red Sox followers have this bizarre sort of hopeful fatalism, in which they almost simultaneously seem to believe that both the best and the worst things can happen to the Sox.
They can't get away from the history. If they are not born to it, they are raised with it. And come to think of it, they probably are born to it.
"I walk down into the clubhouse," a local reporter told me, "and I see Johnny Pesky. He must be 85 years old now, but every time I see him, I think, 'He held the ball.' He'll say that he didn't, but if you watch the film, you can see it, just that momentary hesitation...."
The episode in question, Enos (Country) Slaughter of the St. Louis Cardinals, scoring from first base on a single, occurred in the 1946 World Series. The vast majority of contemporary Bostonians were obviously not yet born at that time. And yet, they all have this moment living with them like it is a member of the immediate family. So something like the ball going through Bill Buckner's legs in the 1986 Series, well, it's as though that happened earlier this week.
The Yankees serve a dual purpose here, or present a dual danger, if you choose to view it that way. They are the logical villains of the piece. They serve this purpose at ballparks throughout America and they have historically been very, very good in this role, winning as often as they have. But here, they are also reminders of what the Red Sox were supposed to be, but almost always weren't. They weren't because of themselves, or because of the Yankees, or because of both themselves and the Yankees. Any way, they just weren't.
So this weekend, the Bronx Bombers come to Fenway for three games. They lead the Red Sox by 4 1/2 games. There have been all sorts of concerns voiced about the Yankees this season, but here it is, late August, and guess who has the best record in the American League.
The Red Sox, meanwhile, are once again hitting the cover off the ball. They have won six of their last seven and even apart from the AL East race, they are solidly in the Wild Card hunt. Roger Clemens is scheduled to go Sunday for the Yanks and this would be his final game in Boston, unless, of course, these two teams meet in the postseason. Fenway Park is wonderful, but at a time like this, it should have a capacity of about 2.4 million.
Fenway Park. The Yankees. The Red Sox. More precisely, Fenway Park, the Yankees in first, the Red Sox in second. They seem to have marched together through much of history like this, baseball's Hertz and Avis. It has happened so often that it appears to be perhaps the natural order of things. But Red Sox Nation keeps hoping that this situation, viewed over the long haul -- as in maybe the history of humankind -- might be only temporary.
Michael Bauman is a columnist for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
www.yankees.com
<hr /></blockquote><font class="post">
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