RUSTY RIVALS
Yankees hope to widen gap against Boston
Yankees-Red Sox weekend series fails to generate usual buzz John Harper & Mark Feinsand,
HAS THE BEST rivalry in baseball lost its luster?
It wasn’t all that long ago that a meeting between the Yankees and Red Sox meant a clash of American League East powerhouses with first place on the line. Every contest between the two age-old rivals felt epic, the eyes of the entire baseball world focused squarely on them.
The fans may be j uiced up when the Red Sox visit Yankee Stadium this weekend, but for the Bombers, a series against their rivals might actually feel like a letdown after three straight series with the Blue Jays and Orioles, the two teams currently ahead of them in the division.
“Every AL East series at any point is important,” David Robertson said. “We’re all looking to knock one of the other teams off the ladder. We don’t want to be that team; we want to turn around and do it to the other side. Hopefully the Red Sox aren’t playing at their best and we can take a series from them.”
The Yankees trail first-place Toronto by three games, having averted a disastrous sweep with a win over the Blue Jays on Wednesday.
The Red Sox also salvaged the final game of their series Wednesday, and while they avoided a sweep at the hands of the Mariners, they come to New York having lost five of their last seven and were eight games out of first, after Toronto’s win over the White Sox on Thursday night.
“Seven or eight ga mes is nothing; that’s a good week,” Robertson said. “You want to knock them back even further. Even though it’s early in the season, the further back they are, the harder it will be for them to come back, one le s s team we’d have to deal with.”
Between 1998 and 2009, the Red Sox were typically the only team the Yankees had to deal with. They finished 1-2 in the AL East 10 times during that 12-season stretch, including an incredible eight-year run of the Yankees finishing first and the Red Sox second.
In seven of those 12 seasons, both teams qualified for the postseason, setting up three ALCS showdowns between them, including the historic seven-game battles in 2003 and ’04.
The Blue Jays and Orioles occupy the top two spots i n the AL East, leaving the Yankees and Red Sox i n chase mode.
The Yankees and Red Sox haven’t finished a year as the top two teams in the division since 2009, which also marks the la st time both clubs reached the playoffs in the same year. With Tampa Bay, Baltimore and Toronto becoming bigger factors during the past five seasons, the Yankees and Red Sox are no longer automatically the teams to watch in the AL East.
“Wit h t he pa r it y in ou r division, I think no matter what two teams are playing in our division, it takes on huge importance,” Joe Girardi said. “Maybe it wasn’t always that way.”
Girardi believes the atmosphere will still be electric this weekend, a by-product of the fans’ passion for the rivalr y. They met seven times in the first 22 games this season, with the Yankees winning three of four at the Stadium and two of three at Fenway Park, but it’s been more than two months since they’ve laid eyes on each other.
“We haven’t seen them in some time,” Girardi said. “I always think there's a buzz when they come in.”
Boston might be seven games under .500, but hav ing just snapped a f our-game skid of their own, the Yankees aren’t taking anything for granted.
“They’ve had their struggles just like us,” Girardi said. “They’ve had good streaks and bad streaks, and you never really understand completely why it happens. You try to put a finger on it and get a pulse of your team, but they’ve lost some tough games just like we have, but we know they ’re still extremely dangerous.”