The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
How I stayed friends with a Red Sox fan
My friend Scott Smith and I are living proof that Red Sox and Yankees fans can play well together.
It didn’t hurt that the early ’90s, when we shared a Stamford apartment and were newsroom coworkers, were hardly prime years in the timeline of a rivalry that has lapped the century mark. The Yankees finished 20 games south in the 1992 standings. At least we were ahead of the last-place Sox (23 out).
Even that chill in the rivalry didn’t ice it. During the subsequent hot stove months, Scott valiantly drove through a Saturday snowstorm to meet deadline. He asked only that the driveway spot be saved for his return. I shoveled the space, then blocked it with a snowman wearing Scott’s clothes, including his sunglasses and beloved Sox cap.
Only a Boston fan would ruin my snowman.
The 2021 edition of The Rivalry keeps summoning memories from my personal highlight reel. Typically, Scott and I took in games at Yankee Stadium, where he boldly wore said cap. A few weeks before my wedding, we drove to Fenway Park in Boston for the Aug. 14, 1995, Yankees-Sox game. I brought my Yankees cap. Scott brought his dad, Stephen, a Massachusetts native who had few rivals for love of the BoSox. After the Sox won, 9-3, I jested to Scott’s dad that he seemed to enjoy my headgear getting jeered even more than the win. But I realized this one-time Connecticut Math Teacher of the Year used baseball in life’s lesson plan. He instilled in Scott the importance of respecting baseball over team, to always keep it civilized. What Scott and I share is an appreciation of the game’s history.
The Yankees-Sox relationship is deemed “arguably the fiercest rivalry in all of American sports” by no less an expert than Wikipedia (how could they be wrong?). But it’s more like a sibling rivalry, as they share more common DNA than other teams. They are just brothers squabbling across generations to claim the same toy ring.
It’s more like a sibling rivalry, as they share more common DNA than other teams. They are just brothers squabbling across generations to claim the same toy ring.
Clothes are important in The Rivalry. As Jerry Seinfeld famously pointed out, sports is essentially about rooting for laundry, as players are interchangeable (“I want my team’s clothes to beat the clothes from the other city”).
I wore a Boston cap at Scott’s wedding, and borrowed some Sox garb a few years later to wear to a Halloween party. My wife, Lisa, and I decided to depict the origins of The Rivalry, the 1919 sale of Sox superstar Babe Ruth to the Yankees, aka “the Curse of the Bambino” superstition blamed for keeping Beantown from claiming a crown for 86 years.
Lisa painted her face a ghostly gray and wore a wool Yankees uniform I saved my quarters up to buy when I was 10 (my mom ironed on Ruth’s No. 3 in the ’70s). I put on a Sox cap and Scott’s jacket (albeit in disheveled fashion) and painted on a black eye. Scott wasn’t at the party, but his wardrobe had a great time.
The Sox broke the curse in 2004, while shaming the Yankees in the playoffs by rebounding from a 0-3 deficit (the only time this has happened in baseball history). A few months later, I had an afternoon to kill in Boston and walked through a gentle snowfall to Fenway.
I felt like I’d snuck into the opposing dugout during the tour. The young guide offered a history lesson in the press room. He garbled details about Ruth’s move to New York. Then he mangled Carl Yastrzemski stats like a rookie Little Leaguer trying to spell the name. I kept looking around at other guests, all dressed in similar red and navy blue team colors. No one seemed to recognize that he’d clearly failed to memorize the script.
Then he pointed to Pesky’s Pole in right field and scored another “E” on that history. It seemed wrong for the Yankees fan to bark from the cheap seats about Fenway history, but I couldn’t keep my native New York mouth shut. Just as I raised my hand, an older man in front of me gracefully corrected every detail without raising his voice, the thick accent using fewer “Rs” than the ratings on Disney Plus.
I bought a souvenir championship cap for Scott and sought four places (representing each base) where I could rub in some Fenway grit. After the guide drifted away from the perch over the famous left field wall (famous to most people, if not to him), I reached over and ran the hat across the Green Monster.
The cap also took a trip along the dugout roof and what I deemed the perfect seat behind it. As the stadium was getting a face-lift at the time, we weren’t allowed on the field. I made a pitch to the tour guide’s supervisor and got permission to add some soil and grass to the cap’s character.
Yes, I gave Scott a dirty cap.
Six years later, when we adopted our son, Scott gave The Kid (which is not a reference to Ted Williams)
a piggy bank hand-painted with the Yankees logo.
The twists and turns of the past week revived memories of a high point (or low, if you’re a Sox fan) of The Rivalry, the 1978 season that ended for Boston with help from unlikely Yankees hero Bucky Dent, who ripped a dinger over the Monster in a one-game playoff on Oct. 2.
After the Yankees swept last weekend’s series from the Sox to take the edge in the Wild Card race, Scott and I met for lunch at Las Vetas Lounge in Fairfield.
Again, it all came back to laundry. Boston had chosen to dress the color of Tweety Bird since new alternate uniforms carried them through a win streak. They’d clearly forgotten the lesson about superstitions.
“So, what’s your take on the yellow jerseys?” I asked.
“Hate ’em,” Scott muttered.
We swapped memories, some of which I’d forgotten.
“I still haven’t forgiven you for assigning me to interview Mike Torrez,” he wryly reminded me of our days in the Greenwich Time sports department.
Oh, that’s right, Torrez threw that doomed fastball to Dent.
The line to the counter finally thinned, so we left our on-deck circle. As Scott started to order, I noticed we were framed by a hanging replica of the iconic Yankee Stadium frieze.
The guy behind the counter gestured with his pen toward the Red Sox mask on Scott’s face. Laundry again.
“That’s gonna cost you a 15 percent surcharge.”
So I paid for lunch. It’s the price of being a Yankees fan.