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The Red Sox and Yankees can never deliver the historic version of The Rivalry again.
What accentuated the feud from Boston selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees on Dec. 26, 1919, through 2003 was the Red Sox not winning championships as the Yankees became the predominant team in baseball.
Once Boston rallied from 0-3 down in the 2004 ALCS to end The Curse against the Yankees and ultimately win its first championship since Ruth’s last Red Sox season in 1918, the element that most fueled the intensity of The Rivalry — could the Yankees forever be Lucy pulling the football away from the Red Sox’s Charlie Brown? could they forever play goal line defense against Boston to keep it out of the championship end zone (forgive two football analogies, please)? — vanished.
The games the two teams played in the regular season in 2003-04 had the drama and intensity of a World Series, and their playoff games were like scripted epic miniseries. The teams played 52 games over those two seasons, and the Red Sox went 27-25. Each team won a seven-game ALCS against the other. It was holy war as baseball.
