In one of baseball’s most storied rivalries, anything Red Sox can do, Yanks can do better

On Sunday night in Fenway Park, the Boston Red Sox will renew their rivalry with the New York Yankees at 7 pm in a game that can be seen on NBC and Peacock. Roger Clemens — who has stared down batters from both sides, will serve as a guest booth analyst.
Who knows more about the Yankee/Red Sox history than the Rocket Man? Roger’s first major league manager was Ralph Houk — the same man who managed Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Yogi Berra.
Advertisement

How do you tell the story of a rivalry that began in 1920 and is still festering — mostly with the fanbases — more than one hundred years later?
This isn’t a story that can be told simply with numbers. This is a story that can be best seen through the lyrics of a classic showstopping song from a Broadway show called Anything you can do (I can do better).
The Yankees’ superiority complex over the Red Sox lives mostly now with the fanbases. In truth, New York must worry more this season with the Toronto Blue Jays (who eliminated them last October, dethroning them as American League champions) and the Tampa Bay Rays. Since Boston won the 2018 World Series, the Yankees have the best record in the American League, followed by the Astros and Rays.
But Yankee fans still love beating the Red Sox and reminding them, well, that they’re not the Yankees. Over the last 30 years, there have been so many memorable games between the clubs. As former player/broadcaster/Hall of Famer Jim Kaat called it, Yankees/Red Sox games were “four hours of trauma and drama.”
Advertisement

One reason the Yankees have had just two managerial changes in the last 30 years is this:
Aaron Boone: 73-57Joe Girardi: 94-91Joe Torre: 104-89That includes Boone going 4-1 in the first five meetings this season, including a sweep at Fenway Park in late April.
NBC’s crack Research team tells us that there are more than 250 players to have worn both Red Sox and Yankee uniforms, one of course more famous than all the rest. To start at the beginning of this rivalry, you start with Boston owner Harry Frazee, who was a New York theatre producer that bought the Red Sox in 1916. After 1918, the Red Sox won five of the first 15 World Series. In 1919, Babe Ruth was transitioned from ace starter (87-45 in a five-year period beginning in 1915, completing 140 of 154 starts) to slugging outfielder. Ruth broke the single-season home run record with 29 in the 1919 season.
Advertisement

Frazee was leveraged big time. World War I had taken a toll on both Broadway and baseball, and Frazee was strapped for cash. He sold Ruth to the Yankees following the 1919 season. After the 1920 season, Waite Hoyt was yet another good Boston pitcher sent to New York in an eight-player deal.
Hoyt was young and emerging in Boston. He became a Hall of Famer with New York. Hoyt would pitch in 11 World Series games for the Yankees (10 starts) and have a 1.83 ERA in them. On the 1927-28 Murderer’s Row teams, he was 45-14 in 529 innings.
Ruth was just 25 when he joined New York. He was great in Boston and became immortal in New York.
It took Boston generations to recover from what was to be called “The Curse of the Bambino.”
Advertisement

If players were good in Boston, they would become better when playing with NY on their pinstriped jersey.
Red Ruffing, like Ruth and Hoyt, started his career with Boston. In his first six full seasons, he pitched for dreadful last-place Boston teams and was 39-96, with a 4.61 ERA.
On May 6, 1930, Boston traded him to the Yankees for backup outfielder Cedric Durst and $50,000. Ruffing went 15-5 in 197 innings for New York the rest of the season (and batted .364 with 4 HR).
Ruffing would win 231 games for the Yankees and establish a Hall of Fame career. He was part of six World Series championships. Ruffing was 7-2, 2.52 ERA in 10 World Series.
Advertisement

The Yankees were even more dominant in the late 1930s and 40s than they were in the 20s, in large part due to Joe DiMaggio.
The Red Sox had a terrific centerfielder in the 1940s that made seven All-Star teams (and lost three prime years to World War II). His name was also DiMaggio. Dom DiMaggio hit in 34 consecutive games in 1949, still a Boston record. He was real good, but he wasn’t his brother.
Joltin’ Joe played for nine World Series title teams in his 13-year career. Only two franchises (27 for the Yankees and 11 for the Cardinals) have won more than nine in the history of baseball.
For much of history, anything a Red Sox player could do, a Yankee did it better.
Advertisement

It wasn’t just a curse that Boston didn’t win a championship after 1918. They were owned by Tom Yawkey from 1933 until his death in 1976. While he was a dedicated baseball man, he whiffed big time when baseball integrated. He was the last owner to desegregate his baseball club, taking more than a decade after the Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson.
The Yankees weren’t exactly progressive when it came to signing Black players, but Elston Howard was the American League MVP in 1963.
Boston came close to winning the World Series in 1967, when they were aided in the second half of the season by a rookie left-hander who pitched out of the pen named Sparky Lyle.
He led the team in saves in 1969, 70, 71. In yet one more infamous trade for the Red Sox, they dealt Lyle to the Yankees for Danny Cater. The first baseman would spend three seasons with Boston, accumulating two Wins Above Replacement. See ya’ later, Danny Cater.
Advertisement

Lyle, meanwhile, won a Cy Young Award in 1977 and was a part of two World Series championship teams.
Roger Clemens was a Boston rookie in 1984, soon to be the best pitcher in the game. Still, Boston couldn’t get over the hump with Roger having a late lead in a potential Game 6 clincher in Queens, New York in the 1986 World Series.
Clemens didn’t win a World Series until he became a Yankee following the 1998 season. He started and defeated the 103-win Braves team in the clinching game of the 1999 World Series. He earned his second ring the next season, hurling eight scoreless innings in a dominating performance in Game 2 of the 2000 World Series.
Not every pitcher that worked first for the Red Sox and later for the Yankees has worked out. By the time the Yankees acquired former Boston hero Luis Tiant, he didn’t have much left in his tank. And Tom Gordon — a budding star reliever with Boston in the late 1990s — gave up huge hits in the 2004 postseason for Joe Torre’s Yankees. In Game 5 with the Yankees up 4-2 and needing six outs to advance to the World Series, Gordon gave up a home run to David Ortiz and then allowed two more baserunners before being removed. Ortiz would win that game in the 14th.
Advertisement

When pitchers went the other way — from New York to Boston — they seldom performed as well as they did on the New York stage.
Case in point: Mike Torrez. Torrez won two games for the Yankees in the 1977 World Series, including the Game 6 clincher when Reggie Jackson hit three home runs. He signed with Boston as a free agent, and the following October was on the hill against the Yankees in Game 163. It was Torrez that allowed Bucky “Bleepin’” Dent to hit a three-run homer over the Green Monster. It was Torrez that gave up a fourth run that inning.
One clear exception is Nathan Eovaldi. Nathan was a good Yankees pitcher for a couple of seasons, going 14-3 in 2015. Pitching for Boston in 2018, he was outstanding in the postseason, beating the Yankees in the Division Round, beating the Astros in the ALCS, and working the last six innings of the 18-inning World Series Game 3 vs. the Dodgers. Nathan would also defeat the Yankees in the 1-game Wild Card in 2021, outdueling Gerrit Cole.
Perhaps Aroldis Chapman and Sonny Gray — two former Yankee hurlers now toiling for Boston — will out-do their New York performances.
Advertisement

Let’s just say these two franchises share so much rich history.
Editors’ Note: Elliott Kalb – dubbed “Mr. Stats” decades ago by Marv Albert and Bob Costas – is the former Senior Editorial Director at MLB Network and a longtime contributor of research and information to NBC Sports’ telecasts.
Read More Feedzy