Old Boss/New Boss: Yankees vs. Rays

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.

The story of how it began is familiar at this point. Elliot Johnson of the Rays plowed Yankee catcher Francisco Cervelli at the plate and touched off a rant from Joe Girardi about how you play the game in spring training. The Rays bristled at the notion that the Yankees were of a different standard and it boiled over when Shelley Duncan slid into Akinori Iwamura spikes high and touched off an old-fashioned brawl.

That's the kind of on-field fire that marked the late 90's resurgence of the Sox-Yanks feud and the kind of fire that's missing from it today. As much as the Red Sox like to complain about the Evil Empire from New York, it can be hard to see the fundamental differences between the two sides. That's not the case for the Rays, who look nothing like the Yankees and, in fact, much better resemble the kind of rebels who took down the Death Star. They've got a lot to gain by beating the Yankees, more than the Red Sox do at this point, and act like it every time the two sides meet.

As Ric Flair said, to be the man you've got to beat the man. Tampa hasn't ever been the man in their own hometown. Because they train there, because Big Stein lives there and because New Yorkers relocate there, Tampa has always been considered Yankee territory. The Rays need to claim their home turf to carve out their own niche.

The Yankees, meanwhile, don't want to lose games to the team in their owner's backyard and don't want to fuel the rise of a new contender. When the first Yankee dynasty faded out in the 1960's, it was because they got too comfortable on top and didn't adapt to the game changing behind them. These Yankees have been more proactive but they've got to recognize a potential usurper and nip the challenge in the bud.

The Rays will never replace the Red Sox, no one could, but they could make it another 18 wrenching games a year with another opponent who hates them and everything they represent. And, after so many myopic years of Boston-New York, we'll be all the better for it.