You might think that Boston Red Sox fans would finally be a bit more secure, even somewhat sanguine about their team, after the 2004 miracle comeback against the New York Yankees and that curse-busting romp over the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. You would be wrong. The Yankees remain baseball’s gold standard, and Boston fans remain obsessed with the threat they represent, easily rattled by each rumble of big lumber–and they have been legion of late–emanating from the Bronx.
Boston fans should be reveling in an embarrassment of riches. The New England Patriots are favored to win their fourth Super Bowl of the decade. The Boston Celtics, after more than a decade of total irrelevance in the NBA, have retooled so dramatically that Vegas odds on their championship prospects plummeted almost overnight from 90-1 to 5-1. Even the MLS’s New England Revolution are in first place. And the Red Sox still own the best record in baseball.
But none of that matters now that the Yankees have carved some 10 games off what once appeared to be an insurmountable lead in the American League East for the Red Sox. Indeed the Yankees are so hot that they are threatening to reclaim their rightful place atop the division–New York has won nine A.L. East titles in a row. For those of a certain age, it is déjà vu all over again. And nobody here welcomes any reminder of the epic collapse of ‘78, a succession of events that turned a journeyman shortstop, Bucky Dent, into an eternal four-letter word in this city.
Last weekend you could feel the mood escalate from tense to borderline hysterical. For several weeks fans here had consoled themselves with the notion that New York had been feasting on the weak part of its schedule while Boston was still playing solid ball. Then this past weekend the Yankees went into Cleveland and swept the contending Indians while Boston’s prized trade-deadline acquisition, reliever Eric Gagné, blew two games to Baltimore. Eschewing the charms of French-Canadian pronunciation, local newspapers and sports talk radio have competed over how many ways they can force “Gag-Me” into headlines and conversation.
You don’t need much grasp of baseball, Freud or history to understand how this perpetual runner-up status gnaws at a city that never got over ceding to New York its once-upon-a-time standing as economic and intellectual capital of the nation. But it’s past time for Boston to get over that. And, frankly, past time to get over the Yankees too. Any fan familiar with baseball’s recent history–admittedly a dwindling percentage among those “Sweet Caroline”-serenading newbies of Red Sox nation–know that winning the division, while nice, is not paramount. Red Sox fans need to keep their eyes on the prize (as do Yankee fans for that matter). And the prize is playing baseball in October. A wild-card entry to the post-season playoff fray is every bit as good a path to a championship as a division title.
It certainly hasn’t been lost on Yankee fans that their team hasn’t won a World Series since 2000, despite all those division wins. In fact, in recent years, wild-card teams have fared better than the division champs. Over the past five seasons, six out of the 10 teams that reached the World Series have been wild-card qualifiers and three of those–the 2002 Marlins, the 2003 Angels (over the Giants in an all-wild-card Series) and the 2004 Red Sox–won the Series.
This statistical overrepresentation of wild-card teams in these recent World Series may simply be an anomaly. After all, only two wild-card entries–the ‘97 champion Marlins and the 2000 Mets–made it to the World Series during the first seven years of the wild-card era. But I suspect the recent trend represents something more significant. Major League Baseball’s new millennium is an era of increasing parity with seven different champions in the past seven years. Parity means that the wild-card entries to the playoffs tend to be strong contenders. During the past five seasons, the American League wild-card team has averaged just over 96 wins, or one more than the World Series champs have averaged throughout the wild-card era. Moreover, parity assures that the wild-card race is often the most competitive in baseball. Right now, for example, San Diego holds the wild-card spot in the National League, but six teams are within 4.5 games of the Padres. With those wild-card races going down to the wire, the winners are often the hottest teams in their leagues.
