New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Hamden native Castiglione: Red Sox-Yankees rivalry still ‘electric’
Joe Castiglione doesn’t recall knowing any Red Sox fans when he was growing up in Hamden in the 1950s and ’60s.
There were a few New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers fans, but for the most part Castiglione was surrounded by Yankees fans. And he was one of them.
“We all learn from our mistakes,” Castiglione quipped on Monday afternoon.
Currently in his 39th season as radio voice of the Red Sox, his shift in allegiance over the years is understandable. While Castiglione hero-worshipped Yankee star Mickey Mantle and radio broadcaster Mel Allen as a kid, his voice is now a staple of New England summers for legions of Sox fans from Boston to Block Island to Branford.
Castiglione knows both sides of the Sox-Yankees rivalry, arguably the greatest in all of sports, though one that’s lost some of the urgency and straight-out venom of the late ’90s andearly 2000s, when even a New England Patriots Super Bowl parade in downtown Boston was interrupted by chants of “Yankees Suck!”
Now, Tom Brady’s return to New England and postgame meeting with Bill Belichick dominates the headlines, even with the Sox and Yankees set to meet on Tuesday night in a win-or-go-home, American League wild card game at
Fenway Park.
Castiglione said he’s felt the rivalry revving back up this season, when Boston took the first seven games of the season series and the Yankees dominated the latter half. He’s expecting plenty of energy on Tuesday night in a game with similar stakes as the famous one-game playoff, “Bucky Dent” game of 1978.
“I think it’ll be an electric atmosphere, there’s no question about that,” Castiglione told Hearst Connecticut
on Monday. “Even the last series, which the Yankees swept, was pretty electric.”
Is the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry still a thing?
“Lately, yes,” he added. “I think it’s building up to that. I think the focus will be on this game, especially since it’s a one-and-done. That’s huge. I don’t know if it’s quite the extent of ’03 and ’04. But, we’ll hear a lot of the chants, probably right from the start (Tuesday), about the Yankees.”
“When both teams are good,” added Rich Marazzi, “that’s when the rivalry is at its best.”
Marazzi knew a few Red Sox fans while growing up in Ansonia during the same era, but for the most part, it was all about the pinstripes — as it was for Marazzi. For the past 17 years, however, he’s been employed by both teams — along with 10 others — as a rules official.
“Once games start, I’m a Yankee fan,” said Marazzi, who hosted a Yankees radio show on ESPN from 1997-2013. “But otherwise, anybody who needs assistance, I’m there. And after a while, you learn to root for people. If the Red Sox win, I’m happy for the people that I work with.”
But, he quickly added,
“If (the Yankees) win, I’m happy for them.”
In a certain way, the split allegiances of Castiglione and Marazzi over the years mirror that of their home state. It’s the age-old question: Is Connecticut Red Sox or Yankees territory? Or is it pretty much split down the middle? A 2012 study by the Harvard Sports Sports Analysis Collective reveals the latter, with Route 9 roughly serving as the Mason-Dixon Line.
A lot has happened since then — the Red Sox winning two World Series to the Yankees’ none, as well as eliminating the Bronx Bombers from the 2018 playoffs. But one thing remains true: According to a 2016 Quinnipiac poll (the most recent found online), Yankees fans top Red Sox fans, 44 to 36 percent, in the Nutmeg State. Maybe not as overwhelming as Joe Castiglione’s Hamden of the 1950s, but a solid majority, nonetheless.
“I don’t know where the (border) line is now — Meriden, maybe?,” said Castiglione, 74, who lives in Marshfield, Massachusetts but gets back to Hamden a few times a year to visit family, including his mother, Pamela. “I think New Haven has some more Red Sox fans. We know Fairfield County is Yankees (territory). I’m surprised the Mets don’t do better in
those surveys.”
The Mets, incidentally, earned 13 percent of the state’s baseball fandom in the 2016 poll — nearly doubling their output of 2015.
While Red Sox games have been broadcast on WTIC since the 1950s, when the Red Sox were perennial cellar-dwellers, Castiglione believes the Sox started to take hold more in Connecticut after their “Impossible Dream” season in 1967.
Perhaps an even more important year was 2004, when the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the ALCS by becoming the first (and still only) team to battle back from a 3-0 deficit. They ultimately swept the St. Louis Cardinals for their first World Series title in 86 years.
It was also the year that NESN, the Red Sox’s regional sports network, became available in New Haven.
And don’t underestimate ethnic allegiances, either. The New Haven area’s large Italian-American population historically backed the Yankees and their long list of Italian stars: Tony Lazzeri, Frank Crosetti, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto.
And, above all others,
Joe DiMaggio.
“My grandfather knew nothing about baseball,” Castiglione recalled, “but he knew about DiMaggio.”
Marazzi noted that the first baseball jersey he ever wore bore DiMaggio’s No. 5 on the back. And while such ethnic allegiances aren’t as common these days, fandom often remains in the family, for current 10-year-olds to sport their Aaron Judge No. 99 jerseys without knowing or caring why their grandfather wore
No. 5.
While New Haven may still be Yankee country,
Yale has certainly had its influence on the Red Sox in recent years. Yale grad Theo Epstein was the general manager in 2004 who helped “Reverse the
Curse.” Craig Breslow, a Trumbull product, was a key reliever on the Sox’s 2013 title team. And curMedia
rent Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom is another Yalie.
Like Epstein, he’s also a fan of Modern Apizza.
Back in June, Modern owner Billy Pustari visited Fenway for a game and, as he always does, brought a pizza up to the radio booth for Castiglione. Knowing Bloom’s appetite for Modern, Castiglione called him up to the booth.
“And while he was up there partaking in the pizza,” Castiglione reported, “we scored about six runs. It was good karma.”
Last week, Pustari brought pizza up to the booth again, but the Yankees beat the Sox 6-3 on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball.
“The luck didn’t work that night,” Castiglione noted. “I don’t know about (Tuesday).”
Connecticut’s influence on the wild card game will extend beyond pizza. Matt Barnes grew up in Bethel, trying to imitate Derek Jeter’s patented jump-throw. Now, he’s the Red Sox’ all-star closer and second-longest tenured player.
Although Barnes has struggled since returning to Boston after a rehab outing at Hartford’s Dunkin’ Donuts Park a couple of weeks ago, perhaps he’ll emerge as this year’s Curt Schilling or Keith Foulke — hero of a Red Sox postseason vanquishing of the Yankees.
Or perhaps from the Yankees dugout emerges a hero like Bucky Dent or Aaron Boone, whose 2003 ALCS walk-off kept the “Curse of the Bambino” alive for another year, and who now manages the Yankees and lives in Greenwich, where his sons play for the Greenwich High football team.
One thing is certain: once Tuesday night’s game ends, about 44 and 36 percent of Connecticut baseball fans will either be elated or crushed. And the 13 percent of Mets fans probably won’t care either way.