Meaningless hype. Boring games. Inane off-field shenanigans. With every meeting, it looks more and more like the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry has jumped the shark. Old Boss/New Boss is FanHouse's look at some baseball rivalry alternatives.
Old Boss: Cubs/Cardinals New Boss: Cubs/Brewers
The Cardinals-Cubs rivalry is an old one, but it's no secret why it's stood up so well over time. It's all geography: The Cardinals own downstate Illinois, the Cubs pipe their Superstation all over the country, and the results form a weird fulcrum in the middle of the state where no one can really get along. Peoria loves its Cubbies! Springfield loves its Cardinals! You get the point.
Still, geographic clashes aside, Cubs-Cardinals, at least in 2008, is a rivalry only in name. The Cardinals are so bad this year -- and if their cranky monster of a first basemen shuts it down, likely to get worse -- that it's hard to feel any sort of tension in the air. Both teams' fans go about their business, hateful as ever, but if the games don't mean anything, the rivalry feels lessened. Besides, when one team has a bevy of World Series to its name and the other is just wrapping up its first winless century, there's too much power on one side of the table.
Meaningless hype. Boring games. Inane off-field shenanigans. With every meeting, it looks more and more like the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry has jumped the shark. Old Boss/New Boss is FanHouse's look at some baseball rivalry alternatives.
As competitive as the AL Central has been over the years, it hasn't featured many rivalries that have garnered national attention. Sure, some over-eager fan may have deemed the White Sox and Twins' rivalry worthy of a Wikipedia entry for their back and forth earlier this decade, and there was no love lost in the late 90's when the Sox were perennial runner-ups to the Indians, but for the most part there hasn't been a trademark feud. Expect this to change by the end of the season.
Early-season anomalies aside (they currently occupy the bottom two spots in the division), the Indians and Tigers each think they're the best team in the division. And why not? They finished 1-2 in the Central last year and each got stronger over the offseason.
Plus, and this cannot be understated, Michigan residents simply loathe their neighbors to the south. (As someone who's lived in the Great Lakes State most of my life, I'll personally attest that Ohio has no redeeming qualities beyond the Toledo Mud Hens and Cedar Pointe.) Conversely, citizens of Ohio are so blinded by their hatred of all things Michigan that they've been known to inexplicably break out in song at the most inappropriate times.
Meaningless hype. Boring games. Inane off-field shenanigans. With every meeting, it looks more and more like the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry has jumped the shark. Old Boss/New Boss is FanHouse's look at some baseball rivalry alternatives.
Old Boss: Giants/Dodgers New Boss: Rockies/Diamondbacks
There's one thing that truly defines a rivalry: success. The Marlins and Nationals could play eighteen knock-em-down drag-em-out baseball games every year, but not many people would notice because neither team is very good. That's why the Rockies and D'Backs are the budding rivalry to watch in baseball right now. Maybe they play out west and finish their games after lots of fans go to bed and maybe they're both relatively new franchises in the grand scheme of things, but neither of those things should diminish their rivalry.
So why D'Backs and Rockies? Why not D'Backs and Padres? Or Rockies and Padres? The answer, of course, is their meeting in last year's NLCS. The Red Sox/Yankees feud went from something that only Sox and Yanks fans cared about to being shoved down everyone's throats in 2003 and 2004 when they met in the ALCS two years in a row. Maybe the Rockies and Diamondbacks aren't quite to the level that you'd consider a true rivalry, but the seeds have been planted. Follow along after the jump as we examine them.
Meaningless hype. Boring games. Inane off-field shenanigans. With every meeting, it looks more and more like the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry has jumped the shark. Old Boss/New Boss is FanHouse's look at some baseball rivalry alternatives.
Old Boss: Mets vs. Braves New Boss: Mets vs. Phillies
The day that Steve Avery plunked Jose Vizcaino in 1996 after Vizcaino thrust his arms up on the basepaths after a Met home run was the day the Mets/Braves rivalry started to take shape. The rivalry reached new heights after Chipper Jones' "put on your Yankee gear" quote towards Mets fans after the 1999 NLCS where the Braves beat the Mets in six games. Throw in John Rocker and all he stood for, and you had what might have been the nastiest rivalry in sports at that time.
But Mets/Braves has been overtaken by Mets/Phillies, probably for good. Until last season, the Mets and the Phillies have never had a chance to develop a rivalry because the teams had never, ever, been good at the same time. During the times that the Phillies have been good, the Mets have been terrible ... and during the few pockets of time that the Mets have been competitive, the Phillies have been mired in mediocrity. The Mets rivalries have always been forged out of the standings at the time.
Then came Jimmy Rollins' "we're the team to beat" quote, followed by the Mets collapse and the Phillies division title, and Mets/Phillies has been cemented this as the rivalry in this division.
Meaningless hype. Boring games. Inane off-field shenanigans. With every meeting, it looks more and more like the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry has jumped the shark. Old Boss/New Boss is FanHouse's look at some baseball rivalry alternatives.
Old Boss: Yankees vs. Red Sox New Boss: Yankees vs. Rays
Let's just get this out of the way right up front, nothing in the AL East will ever touch the Red Sox and Yankees for impact on the game of baseball. Other than the Giants and Dodgers, no rivalry can ever encompass so much of the game's history nor involve as many of the most important men to ever don stirrups.
But it's gotten awfully stale of late. The networks forego coverage of other games to bring us all 18 of their meetings on national television, blowhard executives of both teams fight over who has a bigger fan club and the increasingly dunderheaded machinations of the fans of both sides have taken the focus off the field. Last weekend's t-shirt nonsense is a perfect example. Every part of it, from the dope who buried the shirt to the dope who dug it up to the dopes who promulgated the existence of a curse, was perfectly stupid and a sign that there's more style than substance.
What can replace it in the American League East, though? The Orioles are a non-factor and, while the Blue Jays have a nice team, there's not much heat coming from Toronto. That leaves us with the nascent ill-will between the Yankees and Rays.
