The fact that the Red Sox are now, for the last several years, a big money club like the Yankees still gives me a weird, uncomfortable feeling. BTW, how's that for a softball down the middle, Mark/Cam/everybody?! It's OK, go ahead: talk about my uncomfortable feelings. It'll be a nice change of pace from my day job.
Tom and others have heard this story, but I will share again for the newbies, with enhancements - we can call it the Platinum Edition, ha.
I grew up on the short side of the Boston-NY rivalry, as my Dad was a lifelong Yankees fan. He was born in Woodside, Queens in 1933, so he saw Dimaggio play, then the Mantle years - the whole crowd. I started playing tee ball in the summer of 1975. I was a left-handed center fielder. On TV, I saw a team with cool looking uniforms and a left-handed center fielder: The Boston Red Sox and Fred Lynn. The team did well that year, making it to the World Series. I remember listening to one of the games on AM radio on a family camping trip.
That year, and over the years, I got used to the Red Sox coming close but ultimately falling short. First, it was the Big Red Machine that won the '75 Series. Then, my Dad let me get out of school early in 1978 so we could watch the one game playoff between the Yankees and Red Sox. I was introduced rudely to Bucky F&@%in Dent. Then, in my college dorm's TV room, I watched that grounder go through Bill Buckner's legs in 1986.
When the Red Sox finally won the Series in 2004, a lot of us Red Sox fans had difficulty understanding this new role: champion. "You mean it really happened this time?" When the Red Sox won again in 2007, and at that time, the Yankees hadn't won since 2000, it was an even stranger feeling of sustained success.
So, now the baseball landscape has the Yankees and Red Sox as a sort of 1(a) and 1(b) of megateam with a megabudget. As a Sox fan, I'm excited about the infusion of new talent, but I do agree that it's not so much that "Theo is a (bleep)in' genius" - as another team's GM Tweeted this week - as it is that he has access to the biggest checkbook. So, yeah, as a casual fan, I feel a little sheepish about the process. I do empathize with the small market teams and their fans. Maybe MLB needs to adopt the kind of profit-sharing that has brought more competitiveness to the NFL.
Mark, better get me those tickets before they are a million dollars apiece.
