BLOOD RIVALS: YANKEES-RED SOX -- A HISTORICAL REVIEW

BLOOD RIVALS: YANKEES-RED SOX -- A HISTORICAL REVIEW

By: Matthew Blittner

Rivalry. It's such a strong, intense word. It can be used in any number of circumstances, but is most often used in professional sports.

One of the oldest, most intense rivalries is none other than that of the Boston Red Sox versus the New York Yankees. Bean Town vs. the City that never sleeps. The Monster vs. Death Valley.

It seems like forever that the Yankees and Red Sox have been feuding with each other, not unlike the Hatfields and the McCoys.

Since the dawn of Major League Baseball's American League, there have been two franchises that have gone at it more then any other.

I'm of course talking about the Yankees and Red Sox.

With the YES Network dubbed, "Rivalry Week," approaching on August 11th, the Yankees will play the Red Sox and their crosstown rival Mets for 10 straight games.

As such, this is a perfect opportunity to delve into the history of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry.

In 1903 a fellow by the name of Ban Johnson, was scouring every city imaginable for Major League ballplayers. Johnson was tired of only having the Senior Circuit or National League. So, in order to compete with the National League, Johnson reasoned that he would have to establish strong franchises in the cities that housed National League teams.

Two cities that Johnson earmarked were Boston and New York. Not only were these cities big enough geographically, to house multiple teams, but they were also big enough market wise. That is to say that they had plenty of Baseball fans and media members to go around.

To begin his mission, Johnson put a franchise in Boston, now known as the Red Sox, and stocked it with talent so that the club could compete with the more established National League teams.

This proved to be a success, and Boston won the first ever World Series in 1903.

Now, Johnson saw a chance to capitalize. He moved the woeful Baltimore Americans to Highland Park in Manhattan, and re-christened the team as the Highlanders in homage to their home field.

In 1903, the Highlanders began anew, but they were as dreadful as they had been in Baltimore.

In order to compete with the National League, Johnson knew he had to have a strong franchise in New York, as the Big Apple was already home to the Giants and the Dodgers. If an American League team was going to succeed in the Big Apple, then it had to have talented ballplayers.

So, fresh off their 1903 World Series victory, Johnson raided the Boston team, and decided to stock the Highlanders with talent he had plucked from various National League teams. Most importantly, he instigated several one-sided trades between the Boston team and the New York team. This trend would continue into the early part of the 1904 season. 

By midseason, a genuine pennant race had developed and the fans in both cities took notice. With mere percentage points separating the teams in the standings, it seemed a very real possibility that the Highlanders would win the AL Crown.

Their crosstown neighbors, the Giants, were none too thrilled with this possibility and in August, having basically wrapped up the race for the NL crown, manager John McGraw announced that his team was content to sit on their laurels and would not meet the AL champs in the World Series. 

With that announcement, the AL Pennant became the ultimate prize for Boston and New York, and thus a competitive spark was thrown into the fire of a tense season. No longer was this just two teams battling for a prize, it was two teams, two cities, vying for supremacy over the other. 

On the last weekend of the season, with the teams essentially tied atop the American League, they embarked on a five-game, two-city series to decide the winner of the AL Pennant.

Three games into the series, no winner was yet determined, but one would be shortly. In the fourth game, the Highlanders held a slim lead going into the late innings and had their ace Jack Chesbro on the mound. A workhorse all season, Chesbro had set the Modern-Era record with 41 wins, but all those innings -- over 400 of them -- had finally taken their toll on mighty Jack. A spitballer with a devilishly hard pitch to control, Chesbro threw a wild pitch that allowed the Bostonians to take a lead that they would never relinquish. 

Boston won the series and the AL Pennant, but a rivalry was born.

More one-sided trades took place over the following decade, and the Highlanders re-christened themselves as the Yankees. 

The rivalry lacked a spark during that time, as the 1904 season was the only one in which both teams were competitive. 

Enter Babe Ruth. The trade of Ruth marked a shift in the power struggle between the teams. From 1920-present, the Yankees won 27 World Series titles. The Red Sox, only won three. 

For 86 years the Red Sox couldn't win a World Series, failing in Game 7 on four different occasions.

It would take a miracle comeback by the Sox, against the Yankees no less, to get over the hump and break the Curse of the Bambino. 

However, from 1920-2003 the two teams engaged in several famous pennant races -- 1949 and 1978 stand above the rest.

The two teams have been at each other's throats for 114 years, and will continue to do so for at least another 114 years. This may seem like the short story, and it is, but it would take an anthology to truly capture the full history of this rivalry, and no article is going to do all that.

We now stand in 2017 and the Red Sox and Yankees are once again battling for supremacy in the AL East Division. This "Rivalry Week" won't decide the AL Pennant, nor will it even decide the season of these two teams, but you can bet your bottom dollar that neither side wants to give an inch in this age old war.