It’s been seven years, my friends. That’s right. Seven long years since the Red Sox and Yankees met in a playoff series. That was quite a memorable event; Boston’s biblical comeback from an 0-3 series deficit. It was better than any Stanley Cup, Super Bowl, or NBA Finals against the Lakers. Given the century of history and Sox frustration, coupled with the new millennium introductions of Alex Rodriguez and the Evil Empire, the Sox-Yankees ALCS of ’04 forever will be the greatest sports story ever told.
Sox catcher Jason Varitek, one of the few holdovers from the glory days, said, “Sometimes it seems like it was just yesterday.’’
And it’s time to go back.
I understand that we’ve got to give due props to the teams in Detroit, Cleveland, Anaheim, and (especially) Texas. The Rangers, after all, were in the World Series last year and they made some good moves at the deadline and are capable of beating the Red Sox and Yankees.
But it’s not going to happen. There were other heavyweights on the planet in the early 1970s, but Ali and Frazier were the only ones who mattered.
Here in Boston, we’ve lived through the Thrilla in Manila and the Rumble in the Jungle. We’ve had Grady Little and Aaron Boone and Dave Roberts and Johnny Damon. We’ve seen the best of this rivalry and it’s time to go back to the golden days of Boston and New York.
There are just a few guys left from those magical times. The Yankees still have Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and (certainly by October) Rodriguez. The Red Sox have David Ortiz, Tim Wakefield, Varitek, and Kevin Youkilis (he was on the Division Series roster in ’04). These players are like Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. They know things that no one else knows. The new generation of Sox and Yankees can only imagine what it’s like to be involved in a Boston-New York baseball playoff. At its height, Sox-Yankees makes Patriots-Jets look like a pickup game at the local YMCA.
