El Bronx, NY – One of baseballs oldest rivalries is the Yankee - Red Sox rivalry that has been around since 1919 when the Yankees purchased Babe Ruth from Boston for $125 thousand. The Babe helped make the Yankees a dynasty and the curse of the Bambino was born.
Since then the rivalry has gone through many ups and downs, but always as intense as the Yankees always wound up ahead of all the boo’s winning division championship, after division championship adding more fuel to the intense rivalry.
However, as a resident of the South Bronx, I saw the pendulum began to shift a bit when the Yankees balked on signing local high school phenom, Manny Ramirez. Manny was then drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the first round of the 1991 MLB draft, 13th overall. He made his MLB debut on September 2, 1993.
Every time the Indians came to town, the stadium would rock with Dominicans and many other local Latinos coming out to watch their homegrown hero. Manny who grew up in Washington Heights (walking distance from the stadium over the McCombs Dam bridge) would walk the streets of the South Bronx and Washington Heights and just hang with friends while visiting New York. It was just a matter of time when many young Latinos began to switch their Yankee caps for Indian caps. It also developed a sense of dislike for the Yankees by many young Latinos who believed that the Yankees should have signed Manny.
That dislike then turned stronger when after the 2000 season, Ramirez signed with the Boston Red Sox. During his time in Boston, Ramirez and teammate David Ortiz became one of the best offensive duos in baseball history. Ramirez and Ortiz led the Red Sox to World Series Championships in 2004 and 2007. Again, the rivalry with Boston now was beyond New York – Boston, now it was in the Yankee Universe and much closer to home.
Having two Dominican players who both happened to be two of the most “down to earth” guys who had no problems visiting and walking the streets of the South Bronx and neighboring Washington heights helped convert many Yankee fans to Red Sox fans. That’s when you began to see many more Boston Red Sox apparel, more than any other non-New York team. I have lived in the South Bronx since 1956 and I never saw so many people wearing Red Sox apparel as I did during that period up until today.
So the rivalry continues and when these two almost evenly matched teams face each other (since 2013 the Red Sox are 47-48 against the Yankees, including 23-22 at Yankee stadium) the stadium rocks.
After losing 3 out of 4 games in the Bronx, the Yankees are now 2.5 game behind Boston for first place in the A.L. East. This means that this particular rivalry can only get more intense.