Yankees fans and Red Sox fans are kind of like Israelis and Palestinians–warring clans with a common ancestor, Babe Ruth our Abraham, Issac AND Ishmael, who share a pure passion for the game and the kind of hatred for one another that is only bred of a family feud.
For my part, the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry as civil war splitting families is more than metaphor. My Dad, a Norwood, MA-native, is a life long Red Sox fan; his three children, native-NYers, are all Yankees fans. In the end, I have to admit, after watching the weight of my Dad’s 70-years of suffering, never to see his beloved Sox win, I was almost rooting for the Sox in the middle of last decade. (When the Sox finally won, and I phoned him to congratulate him, he told me he was down in his den talking to the photo of his late father which hangs there.) That the first Sox championship my Dad got to see came thanks to a brutal Yankees choke that depressed me for years and still sits in the pit of my stomach like a chronic ulcer, in the end felt right–a “why have your forsaken me” moment for Yankees fan– after all, Jesus was raised in a Jewish family, I was raised by a long-suffering, Catholic Red Sox fan.
These are the kind of thoughts that fill the mind of the baseball fan on the day after a rain out, with no game news to discuss. But all this Biblical and religious rumination is offered just to let you know that after the Yankees the team I follow most closely is, of course, the Boston Red Sox–my arch nemesis and the topic of conversation at many a family gathering.
I’m worried about the Sox this year. They have the best starting pitching in baseball, an excellent bullpen, and–although it ain’t what is was in the heyday of Manny and Papi–an offense that should be 
improved with a full year of Victor Martinez, and a perhaps-revived Adrian Beltre. (I’m not sure about Beltre. He hit 48 HRs the year that random steroid testing was implemented in baseball, then reverted to a more typical 15-20 per season. But he is hitting .570 in the early spring going.) Like the Yanks they have a lot of age–Papi, Lowell, Drew–and they don’t have a great outfield. But they’re deep with scrappy players. I don’t think they’re as good as the Yanks, who can just about match the Sox starting pitching, probably have an equally good bullpen, and have a significantly better offense. And I know, with so much age on both rosters, may fans and pundits are focusing more on the Rays than I do. (I see them as improved this year with a closer, led by a rotation with quality but largely untested young arms, and full of offensive talent like Crawford and Pena motivated by expiring contracts, and of course the league hasn’t figured out how to get Longoria out yet.)
But in my idle baseball hours last night I found my thoughts inevitably drifting to the Red Sox, the threat they represent, and the tormented struggle we remain locked in. Renewal of hostilities is just 23-days away.
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