Last year, when Red Sox fans greeted Johnny Damon with a chorus of resounding boos upon his debut at Fenway Park as a member of the New York Yankees, Joe Torre talked smack about Sox fans. ''I guess we should feel proud. Evidently, wearing a Yankee uniform overrides winning a World Series and busting your tail for four years. Without Johnny here, they may have been working on 89 or 90 years," he said.
Torre's misguided view about Sox fans remains. For some reason, he thought that a rivalry that has been intense for more than a century would mellow in 2004 after the Sox made the greatest comeback in sports history by turning a 3-0 ALCS deficit against the Yankees into an AL pennant and a subsequent World Series title. Before the Sox edged the Yankees, 7-5, in Ft. Myers on Monday, Torre said, "I thought some of the anger would subside. Sometimes you have to remind Red Sox fans they did win the World Series, but they still maintain that personality. I mean I love Boston, don't get me wrong, but the anger that has been built up there over the years, it's still the same. There is still a lot of resentment toward the Yankees and that's what fuels the whole rivalry.''
In one respect, I shake my head and say that Torre just doesn't get it. He has managed the Yankees long enough to know that the Red Sox and Yankees have been bitter rivals long before he even arrived in the big leagues as a player. He mistakes anger with passion. Why would Red Sox fans lose their distaste for the Yankees, and their desire to win even a spring training game against the Bombers, just because they won a World Series? Don't tell me that Yankees fans don't feel the same fanaticism about defeating the Red Sox, otherwise blogs like this would not exist, and the rivalry would not be so fierce. A rivalry at its very definition requires devout interest from two sides. Yankees fans care as much about what is happening in Red Sox Nation as Sox fans do about the daily happenings of the Evil Empire.
Article comments
1 - Chris...
The greatest comeback in an ALCS in Baseball history... not the greatest comback in Sports history...
2 - MCH
So what would you consider the greatest comeback in sports history?
3 - Jeff
Guess you are a bitter Yankees fan. Only a bitter Yankees fan would not agree that the Sox feat in the 2004 ALCS is not the greatest comeback in sports history. Anything that happened inone game (such as an NFL playoff game) does not even remotely come close to matching what the Sox did in 2004. Nothing else like this has happened in NBA and MLB history.
4 - MCH
Jeff,
As a BoSox fan myself, I don't necessarily disagree. But as a sports fan, I think the argument is subjective. True, what the BoSox achieved in '04 had never been done before, but there have been plenty of other comebacks which have also been unmatched.
The Bills comeback over the Oilers in the '99 wild card game was amazing in itself, trailing 34-3 at halftime and winning by a field goal in overtime; but throw in the fact that it was accomplished by their BACKUP quarterback (Frank Reich) makes it even more incredible.
And what about Archie Moore's comeback against Yvon Durelle in 1958? Duriel floored the Mongoose three times in the first round (once just barely beating the count) and once in the fifth, before Moore cameback to win by KO in the 11th.
Again, I would still rank the '04 ALCS tops, but unlike yourself, "arguably."
5 - Michael J. West
True, MCH, but it IS hard to argue with it as the greatest comeback in baseball history. Chris's overqualification of "greatest ALCS comeback in baseball history" does kind of point toward a bias, unless he can produce an example of a greater baseball comeback...
6 - Michael J. West
Oh...and it's also true that Torre doesn't get it. The rivalry began, and intensified, back in the early-20th-century days when the Red Sox were the great World Series dynasty. It has nothing to do with the Red Sox's wins or losses in the World Series since then. It's not whether you win or lose - it's whether you do better than the Yanks.
7 - MCH
MJW #5,
No argument.
8 - Sharks
So what would you consider the greatest comeback in sports history?
IMHO May 25th 2005 in Istanbul's Ataturk Stadium Liverpool VS AC Milan.
9 - JJ
Talk about being biased
The writer is writing from his Boston perspective and is not seeing things as they really are
The Yankee fans would never put up hateful signs to degarade their past players. They cheer their past players--especially players who won WS with them
Boston is classless. Everyone understands why. When you are dominated by a team for almost a century you cant help but end up disturbed
About the comeback. Again there is no perspective in Boston. You cant attach the word great to that comeback. Boston looked like fools loosing 3 games to us. One of the game was actually a laughable blowout of disgraceful proportions. The never dominated NY in the comeback. They simply one more game than NY. Great doesnt fit--because you have to stink to even have to comeback in the first place.