Coming from the West Coast, I have long hated the overblown Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. Each of the teams’ 19 regular-season match-ups are analyzed and hyped like each is game seven of the World Series. Meanwhile, the rest of the baseball world is held hostage to this spectacle and largely ignored. Call me crazy or call me jealous. I don’t care.
What bothers me the most, however, is the character that this rivalry has developed in the last five years. It is always the poor, lowly Red Sox pitted against the “Evil Empire” of George Steinbrenner and the boys in pinstripes. Most New Englanders bemoan the fact that the Yankees have seemingly inexhaustible resources and can just throw money at their problems. Boston always was portrayed as getting the short end of the stick and helpless against the deep pockets of the New Yorkers. (https://www.creditcadabra.com) Although most of this talk subsided after the Red Sox won it all in 2004, that popular perception still exists.
But Tuesday night, in bidding an astounding $51.1 million merely for the right to negotiate with the Seibu Lions’ ace pitcher, Daisuke Matsuzaka, the Red Sox forfeited any right they have to whine about the economic advantage of their rival. By placing the bid, which doesn’t even count the money that will be needed to sign the Japanese star, Boston has lost all credibility in their popular role as the “feel sorry for us because we don’t have as much money as the Yankees” underdog team. $51 million is more than the five lowest payrolls in MLB last season. It is enough to put together a starting rotation of last year’s top-five MLB ERA leaders, sign the league’s top-saves man and still have seven million left over.
There can be no more suggestions that only the Yankees’ financial situation can squash the competition in the rest of baseball, and no more talk about how the Red Sox must make due with less. This is simply not the case. While the Yankees can outspend the Sox, the Sox can do the same to the other 28 teams in baseball and now find themselves in the discussion as the rest of baseball bemoans the financial superiority of the top teams in the AL East.
It must be clear now that the Red Sox have few, if any, payroll limitations. Only the Yanks have spent more than them the last five years. Even before Alex Rodriguez joined the hated pinstripes, the Sox had the distinction of signing a player to the second-highest contract in the history of the game. Revenue sharing doesn’t address the problem of competitive balance in baseball because no amount of redistributed income can put a team from Tampa Bay on the same footing as one from New York or Boston.
Next season, the Red Sox will charge the highest average ticket prices, make boatloads of money off of their NESN network and will bring in even more money as a result of the first year of the richest radio rights deal in sports. Boston largely reinvests this money into their team and could have around a $150 million payroll next season.
This is all well and good for balancing out the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, but Bostonians must be careful to no longer portray themselves as the poor, redheaded stepchildren of the “Evil Empire.” If they don’t watch out, they will be a part of that empire before they know it.
