Every kid growing up learns about the intense rivalries that have marked collegiate and professional sports for decades, those that always have tempers flaring, bodies flying, and unparalleled fervor and emotion. In college basketball, for example, the Duke and North Carolina rivalry, whose campuses are separated by just nine miles along Tobacco Road, is the most ferocious game in all of college sports. The Blue Devils or Tar Heels have won or shared the ACC regular season title 46 out of 61 years since 1954 and one of the teams has been crowned ACC tournament champion 36 out of 61 seasons including every year from 1997 to 2011 except for when Maryland won it in 2004 in overtime over Duke, meaning that every one of their games has conference and, typically, National Championship ramifications (in a 20 year stretch from 1991 to 2010, Duke and North Carolina won a combined 7 National Championships with everybody from George Lynch in 1993 with the Tar Heels to Jon Scheyer in 2010 with the Dukies).
Who can forget the game between the clubs in 1992 at Chapel Hill, where North Carolina beat eventual repeat National Champions Duke (the first team to go back-to-back since UCLA won seven in a row from 1967 to 1973), a Blue Devils team that had Bobby Hurley, Christian Laettner, and Grant Hill, to give the Dukies one of their only two losses during the season. The game also gave the world of sports the image of North Carolina center Eric Montross taking free throws with his face covered in blood, epitomizing the fierceness of the Duke-North Carolina rivalry. My personal favorite Duke-Carolina moment was back in 2007 when Tyler Hansbrough broke his nose on a hard foul from Gerald Henderson with 14.5 seconds left in the game and then got up looking for more with his face full of blood in a season where North Carolina would go on to make the Elite Eight before losing to Georgetown in overtime (Henderson has averaged nearly 15 points per game the last three years with the Bobcats, which shows that it isn't all bad in Charlotte because average NBA players can get enough playing time and shots to not actually look that bad in the Queen City. I'm telling you that there are some guys in the NBA that love playing on poor teams and taking a ton of shots and scoring a lot each game like a Kevin Martin or a O.J. Mayo).
In sports, we have had historic rivalries that date back to a time when people still thought Donald Sterling was sane, which is a very, very long time ago, like the great Minnesota-Wisconsin rivalry for Paul Bunyan's Axe that began in 1890 or the Michigan-Michigan St. game for Paul Bunyan's Trophy (yes, there is a difference) that started all the way back in 1897. We have also had rivalries that really only lasted a few years because of a few certain players like the Pats-Colts games from 2001 to 2010 that pitted Peyton Manning against Tom Brady twelve separate times including three times in the postseason or the Bulls-Pistons rivalry during the late 1980's and early 1990's with Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, and Bill Cartwright of Chicago going up against Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer, and Dennis Rodman from Detroit including four straight years in the postseason from 1988 to 1991.
Aside from Duke and North Carolina, Louisville-Kentucky is clearly college basketball's most storied rivalry with the teams playing in two of the last four NCAA tournaments with the Wildcats winning both meetings in route to their National Championship in 2012 and their runner-up finish this season. College football is also characterized by its rivalry games that are played particularly in the last week of the season, notably Notre Dame and USC, Michigan and Ohio St. in The Game, Alabama and Auburn in the Iron Bowl, and Oklahoma and Texas in the Red River Rivalry. The MLB has the Yankees and the Red Sox, the Dodgers and the Giants, and the Cardinals and the Cubs while the NHL has the Canadiens-Maple Leafs, Flames-Oilers, and Flyers-Penguins. The NFL is known for its rivalries that include the Bears-Packers, Redskins-Cowboys, and Chiefs-Raiders, as is the NBA for its contests that involve the Lakers and Celtics, Knicks and Nets, and Mavericks and Spurs. Soccer is a game that thrives off its rivalry matches more so than any other sport because of the hatred that is present at local derbies between teams that are so close in proximity like Liverpool and Everton on Merseyside, the Ruhr Derby between Borussia Dortmund and Schalke, the Old Firm between Rangers and Celtic, the Rome derby between Roma and Lazio, the Milan Derby between AC Milan and Inter Milan, and the Derby of the Eternal Enemies between Olympiakos and Panathinaikos. If you throw in Federer vs Nadal, Agassi vs Sampras, McEnroe vs Borg, Ali vs Frazier, Snead vs Hogan, Arnold vs Jack, Phil vs Tiger, and even Affirmed vs Alydar, you have your biggest rivalries in all of sports right in front of you.
As great as it feels to support your own team and fall in love with your players and coaches - unless you are a Raiders fan where your best quarterbacks since Rich Gannon led the team to a Super Bowl appearance in 2002 include Rick Mirer, Andrew Walter, Aaron Brooks, JaMarcus Russell, Jason Campbell, Carson Palmer, and Matt McGloin - it is sometimes just as nice to root against a team that you cannot stand (essentially, a club full of players where you hate every guy as much as LeBron despises Lance Stephenson, or as much as Lance's teammates often loathe Lance Stephenson). There are fans who even find more satisfaction in seeing teams that they hate lose than watching their own team succeed because as sad as it sounds, seeing guys fail is sometimes even more invigorating and exciting than watching athletes live up to their greatness. As incredible as it was to watch Auburn, a team that went 3-9 in 2012 just two years after winning the title with Cam Newton in 2010, come back under first year head coach Gus Malzahn and get to the SEC Championship Game and eventually the BCS National Title against Florida St., what made them getting there that much more special was that they beat Alabama in the Iron Bowl along the way, a club that had bullied all of college football ever since Nick Saban took over in 2007 and had been a ridiculous 72-7 since 2008 with three National Championships in four years at the time of the contest. Auburn's second trip to the title game in four years had more meaning because they knocked off their undefeated, powerhouse rival to get there.
LeBron James became the rival of every team and fan-base in the NBA upon his arrival in Miami, as people were more inclined to root against James than any athlete ever before him after he left Cleveland following the worst 75 minutes of television that does not include two episodes of The Hills with The Decision in 2010. More fans passionately cheered on the Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals than their own team throughout the season, which was an odd sight to see. It did, however, have some benefits because people were finally able to truly witness the genius of Rick Carlisle, even without a very talented roster, and one of the greatest seven power forwards of all-time go to work and get his first NBA title with Dirk Nowitzki (the other six being Duncan, Elvin Hayes, Malone, Bob Pettit, Kevin Garnett, and Charles Barkley). The year long LeBron hate tour at every arena across the NBA, especially in Cleveland, reminded me that people love to root against athletes more so than they even like to support them (LeBron is not the only one either because people love to rip on Dwight Howard, Tony Romo, Grant Balfour, Johnny Manziel, and Carmelo Anthony to name a few others).
As a Red Sox fan, I normally have two rooting interests during the seven
month long major league season, which are the Sox and the team that is
playing the dreaded New York Yankees (I took that from a t-shirt, but it
is still very applicable to this discussion on rivalries). I still
remember like it was yesterday the MLB playoffs in 2003 because of just
how happy I was that the Marlins with Derrek Lee, Mike Lowell, and Josh
Beckett beat the Yankees in the World Series, the Evil Empire's second
loss in the Fall Classic in the three years with the other one being to
Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling, Luis Gonzalez, and the Diamondbacks in
2001. After the Yankees fell in the World Series to Florida, the sting of Grady
Little bringing in Tim Wakefield, knowing that one mistake with a
knuckleball pitcher on the mound would cost the Sox the game and the
series in the ALCS, which it did because of Aaron "Bleeping" Boone, did
not feel nearly as bad as it did the previous week. There was really no
reason to be less upset about another season without a Sox World Series
because another year had passed without the Sox making the World Series
(the last time being in the infamous 1986 Fall Classic with the Mets) or
capturing the Commissioner's Trophy, which it had not done since back
in 1918 with Dutch Leonard, Carl Mays, and Babe Ruth. In fact, the 2003
team with a pitching staff that included Derek Lowe and Pedro Martinez
and a lineup highlighted by Nomar Garciaparra, Manny Ramirez, and David
Ortiz was the Sox best chance to capture a World Series since that 1918
season so long ago. Nonetheless, the fact that the Yankees, who were
heavy World Series favorites over the Marlins, somehow fell in 6 games
to Florida, did not make the season seem like a complete and utter
nightmare for Red Sox Nation. Since New York did not win it all
either, the Yankees loss in the World Series, for some reason, did serve as a unconventional
consolation for the Sox.
Coaches are often defined by how they fare in their very important rivalry games, especially in college sports, because of all the resentment that is present between two heated rivals and how important it is to be better than that other team every single year (I'm sure Kansas St. basketball fans still talk about the 1989 season when they beat beat Kansas twice in one year despite having the worse end of the rivalry). Forgetting his numerous idiotic mistakes off the field (and there were a lot of them) Jim Tressel is
revered in Columbus for going a dominant 9-1 against arch rival Michigan
(technically speaking, it was 8-1 because the win in 2010 was later
vacated) with 6 of those victories over Lloyd Carr, making him the
second most successful coach in the rivalry behind only Woody Hayes (16 wins) and
helping Ohio St. become the first team in the rivalry to win at least
six consecutive games since Michigan did so under Fielding Yost, George
Little, and Elton Wieman from 1922 to 1927. Despite leading Ohio St. to
an incredible 106-22 record overall with eight double-digit win seasons,
a National Championship in 2002, and two straight BCS National Championship Games in 2007 and 2008, Tressel is admired by the
fans for his complete domination of the Buckeyes rival way more than anything else he did from 2001 to 2010 with the program.
Everybody in sports wants to be apart of a transcendent rivalry
that is stepped with history, intense passion, and championship implications, and some fans even go as far as to construct their own rivalries as a means to manufacture the profound hatred that so many other teams share with one another. Maryland would always embrace their very heated games against Duke, especially since the 1980's, and the teams did have some unbelievable battles like when Duke was down by ten points with 54 seconds left in 2001 before Jay Williams sparked the miracle minute with eight points in fourteen seconds to miraculously send the game that was all but over into overtime, a period where Shane Battier would eventually put the finishing touches on one of the craziest college basketball comebacks of all-time at the old Cole Field House (look up Illinois-Arizona 2005 Elite Eight or USC-Oregon Pac-10 game from 1999 if you want to see some other ridiculous comebacks in college basketball). I am still stunned by that Duke comeback every time I see it although I know exactly what is going to happen and I still haven't watched one guy pull his team back from the dead like that since Tracy McGrady scored 13 points in 35 seconds for the Rockets in a 2004 victory over the Spurs by one point in Houston. Despite the passion and fire that Maryland fans would always bring to their games against the Dukies, the Cameron Crazies would never bring the same vigor or feeling to the contest and would always serenade the Maryland players with chants of "You're not our rival," in reference to the real Duke-North Carolina rivalry. The game meant much more to Maryland than to Duke because it was, in the eyes of the Terps, their biggest rival.
If we look around the world of sports today, the landscape of rivalries, especially in pro sports, has changed quite a bit. The hottest rivalry in the NFL right now is clearly the Seahawks and the 49ers in the NFC West, two teams that are a combined 47-16-1 the last two years with the 49ers being the first team to make three consecutive conference championship games since the Eagles did so from 2001 to 2004 and the Seahawks winning their first ever Super Bowl this year with a crazy 23-17 win over the 49ers to get there (I haven't seen two groups of people hate each other as much as the 49ers and Seahawks since the Jets and the Sharks in West Side Story). The best rivalry in the NHL today is arguably the Kings and the Sharks, which really has begun to kick off this decade. The California teams met in the first round of the 2011 Western Conference playoffs, where the Sharks won in six games, but the Kings have gotten their revenge, as they knocked off the Sharks in seven games in the 2013 Western Conference semifinals, a series that saw the road team win all seven games, and then again in the 2014 first round when the Kings became the 4th team in NHL history along with the Maple Leafs in 1942, the Islanders in 1975, and the Flyers in 2010 to win a series after trailing 3-0. In the NBA, the Heat-Pacers rivalry, despite it being very one sided in the favor of LeBron, D-Wade, and Chris Bosh, is likly the most intense NBA rivalry, as the clubs have met in the playoffs each of the last three seasons and are the first teams to have an Eastern Conference Finals rematch since the Heat and Pistons did so in 2004 and then again in 2005. Finally, in the MLB, and possibly all of sports, the most fierce and fiery rivalry you can find right now is actually between the Red Sox and the Rays and it is not even close.
Obviously, the Red Sox-Rays rivalry will never get close to anything that the Yankees and the Red Sox have had few more than 100 years. The Yankees have had iconic names that everybody knows like Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle, DiMaggio, Rivera, Berra, Jeter, Whitey Ford, and Reggie Jackson while legends of baseball like Williams, Yastrzemski, Ortiz, Pedro, Tris Speaker, Jim Rice, Foxx, Cy Young, and Fisk have strolled around Fenway Park. To counter those Hall of Famers, or future Hall of Famers, the Rays can give you Carl Crawford or Evan Longoria, who don't exactly belong in the same conversation with some of the greatest baseball players to have ever lived. The Yankees and Sox met in the playoffs three times in six years from 1999 to 2004 with the winner making the World Series each time while the Rays have only made it to the postseason four times total in their 16 years as a MLB franchise. The Red Sox and Yankees have had the sale of Babe Ruth in 1920, Lou Piniella running over Carlton Fisk in 1976, Bucky Dent's home run in the one-game playoff for the AL East in 1978, Don Zimmer vs Pedro in game 3 of the ALCS in 2003, Aaron Boone's walk-off homer in game 7 of that same series, A-Rod vs Jason Varitek in 2004, and, of course, the Sox improbable comeback from 3-0 down in the 2004 ALCS thanks to Dave Roberts, Bill Mueller, David Ortiz, Curt Schilling's bloody sock, and Johnny Damon's grand slam. No other two teams in sports can match the incredible Red Sox-Yankee moments over the past century, especially not a club like the Rays that did not have a winning season as an organization until 2008 and was 327 games under .500 in a 10-year stretch from 1998 to 2007 (645-972) without a season with more than 70 wins.
While the history of the Red Sox-Rays rivalry is not in the same stratosphere as the Red Sox and Yankees, it is the most tense, passionate, and testy game in the sport right now. The Sox and Rays are two teams that genuinely do not like each other in any aspect of life, which generally means that when they come together on the baseball diamond, things tend to get very uneasy. Often times in sports, rivalries are just way too contrived to make them appear full of tempestuous fervor, as in actuality, the players sometimes do not feel anywhere near the same emotion that the fans so desperately want to see in a true rivalry. Despite both being apart of the original six in the NHL, having won a combined 30 Stanley Cups since 1915, and having faced off against each other in an incredible 34 different postseasons including ten out of eleven years from 1984 to 1994, even Boston Bruins coach Claude Julien admitted during the Canadiens-Bruins series in the Eastern Conference semifinals this season, "We know that since the beginning of the playoffs lots of things have been exaggerated to build an off-ice rivalry. But we're taking care of our own affairs, and we respect other people's opinions." People tried to hype up the Knicks-Heat rivalry after Carmelo Anthony was traded to New York in February of 2011 like it was back in the late 1990's and early 2000's when Patrick Ewing, Allan Houston, Larry Johnson, and Latrell Sprewell went up against Alonzo Mourning, Tim Hardaway, and Jamal Mashburn for four consecutive postseasons. The fan bases, though, neglected the fact that LeBron and Carmelo are good friends off the court (LeBron's St. Vincent-St Mary's played Carmelo's Oak Hill in high school, they both came out of that amazing 2003 draft class, and they played together on the 2004, 2008, and 2012 US Olympic Teams) and that the teams have no legitimate ill well towards one another like many players had back in the day with one another. We often tend to glorify the past in sports, but Larry Bird was never friends with Bernard King when the Celtics and the Knicks played in the 1980's nor were Michael Jordan and Isiah Thomas hanging out during the Bulls and Pistons encounters in the 1980's and 1990's, but times have changed, and as LeBron James said, "There is no real rivalry in the NBA these days." However, in the case of the Red Sox and Rays, the two squads do have true hatred and hostility towards each other, which does create the most heated rivalry in all of sports at this present moment.
Any two divisional opponents in the MLB, even those as seemingly innocuous as the Royals and the Indians (see the incident involving Jonathan Sanchez, Shin-Soo Choo, Jeanmar Gomez, and Mike Moustakas in 2012), are destined to get into some scraps over time just because they play each other 19 different times each season (in comparison, the Red Sox play fellow AL ballclub the Seattle Mariners just 6 times this year, which is a little bit sad because Boston will now only get a chance to see Robinson Cano not run to first base in 2 series during the season rather than in 6 series if he had stayed with New York). Just like, for instance, the Giants and Padres in the NL West or the
Mariners and Angels in the AL West, the Sox and the Rays have of course gotten into some
scuffles and tense exchanges here and there because that is just the
nature of baseball. However, while the Sox-Rays games began to really escalate over the past several years, especially since the always confident and daring Joe Maddon took over in Tampa Bay and turned the club around by bringing them to the World Series in 2008 in their first ever postseason appearance as a franchise, there has always been some real bad blood between the clubs for years.
Boston and Tampa Bay played a game fourteen years ago where eight Devil Rays would ultimately get ejected because of an obscene five altercations over the course of the first seven innings of the contest. In his amazing Cy Young winning year in 2000, Pedro Martinez had one of his only two poor starts of the entire season against the Devil Rays when he went just 4 innings versus Tampa on August 14 (that season was so good that Pedro's 1.74 ERA was the 5th lowest in the majors since 1969 and his 0.737 WHIP was the lowest ever in a season). When the teams met just 15 days later at the Trop, Pedro, most likely intentionally due to his frustration, plunked the Rays leadoff hitter Gerald Williams in the first inning on a high fastball, which led to a huge benches clearing brawl and Jason Varitek having to tackle an incensed Williams to keep him from Pedro. In retaliation, Rays pithcer Dave Eiland hit Brain Daubach along with Nomar Garciaparra and was tossed, and so was Cory Lidle after he threw behind Daubach. On May 5, 2002, there was a game between the clubs that saw Ryan Rupe hit Normar Garciaparra after Normar hit a home run off him and then Shea Hillenbrand in the back, which led to Trot Nixon "losing hold of his bat" and practically throwing it at Rupe and Sox pitcher Frank Castillo hitting Randy Winn in an act of reprisal for everything else that had gone on. A little more than two months later on July 18, 2002, things got heated once again, as the night after Manny Ramirez hit a home run and a double against Tampa, he was hit by Rays starter Tanyon Sturtze up high in the first inning and had to duck from a pitch in the ninth inning. The Sox, however, got their retribution when Rays batter Brent Abernathy was hit by both Boston pitchers Fank Castillo and Tim Wakefield (how much could that possibly hurt) that same game, and later on that year on September 9, 2002, Red Sox pitcher David Lowe hit Felix Escalona with a pitch as more retaliation for the Rays hitting Manny. The total contempt between the Red Sox and the Rays continued over the next few years, including in 2004 when Red Sox starter Bronson Arroyo hit both Aubrey Huff and Tino Martinez, which led to a Devil Rays retaliation of Scott Kazmir plunking Boston sluggers Manny Ramirez and Kevin Millar on back-to-back at-bats, and also in 2005 when Lance Carter threw at the head of both Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, causing the benches to empty and providing yet another example of an early incident that established the backdrop for what is now a very strained and sour rivalry between the squads.
Now more than ever, the Red Sox and Rays AL East rivalry is at such a point that when the clubs come together on the ball field, there is always some real tangible edginess and hatred that can be seen during every contest, even more so than the normal dislike that two divisional opponents have for one another just by the sheer annoyance of having to play the team so many times in a season. When Joe Maddon came to Tampa in 2006 after working with the Angels for many years, he had to change the entire culture of a team that had went eight straight seasons with more than 90 losses. Although it would take him two full years and two more seasons of 90 plus losses to do so (they did have the worst record in the MLB in his first year with the team), Maddon has turned the Rays into a very formidable ballclub that teams really do not like to play, not only because of their really good pitching staff and Evan Longoria at the plate, but also because every player on the entire roster is ruthless and unyielding. More often than not, the way pro teams play on the field closely resembles the nature of their coach and the Rays unforgiving and impulsive play comes directly from Maddon (in San Francisco, for example, their tough style of football comes right from Harbaugh's personality). One of the main ways that Maddon was able to instill this sense of fearlessness in his players was to get his team to go after their opponents so that they would no longer be seen as the feeble Rays, a team whose most successful season before Maddon showed up was a 70-91 campaign in 2004 under Lou Piniella, where they still finished 30.5 games behind the divisional leading New York Yankees.
And so we turn to the Red Sox and the Rays as the perfect match for two major leagues teams to create the most heated rivalry in all of sports at this current time. Under Maddon, Tampa Bay has desperately tried to distant themselves from their anemic past and has taken very ostensible strides to show the baseball world that they are not afraid of getting under the skin of their opponents, no matter which team they are playing, and that includes their divisional foe the Red Sox. On the other side of things, Boston was picked on by the baseball world and the baseball gods from 1918 all the way until 2004 when they finally broke the Curse of the Bambino (long live the curse of the billy goat), so when opposing ballclubs try to take advantage of the Red Sox they will have none of it, even more so than other teams because of all the hardships but also toughness that is bred into the city and the players that compete at Fenway Park. With the Rays refusing to back down from any other team regardless of the circumstances and the Red Sox always feeling very protective about themselves, the Sox and the Rays getting into some uneasy altercations over the years was more destined to happen than Kevin Love trying to leave the circus that is disguised as the Minnesota Timberwolves (Flip Saunders lost in the first round of 7 straight NBA playoffs from 1997 to 2003 with the T-Wolves and KG, was never able to get a very experienced Pistons over the hump after they made two consecutive NBA finals with Larry Brown, and was downright terrible in Washington and is now somehow the coach of Minnesota again and is also their President and a part-owner. The Timberwolves have missed out of 10 straight postseasons and now much should change with Flip in charge). Whenever Boston and Tampa Bay do come together, it always feels like we could get a round of Gatti vs Ward because of all the enmity between the clubs.
In a series in the summer of 2008, the rivalry between Boston and Tampa Bay really began to intensify to the point of no return (if you haven't seen the 1993 movie with that name I would definitely advise that you watch it on a side note). On June 4th, in a testy game between the clubs, Coco Crisp was upset with Rays shortstop Jason Bartlett blocking the base with his knee and causing the Red Sox outfielder to injure his thumb on a steal in the 6th inning, so Crisp took Rays second baseman Akinori Iwamura right out two innings later on another stolen base attempt. Later that inning, Joe Maddon and Coco Crisp exchanged some words during a pitching change (they weren't asking each other out for coffee either) and it set off a change of events that would occur the next day at Fenway Park that would display the full bitterness present in the blossoming rivalry. In the second inning of the ballgame on June 5th, James Shields threw at Coco and hit him in the hip and after Crisp dropped his bat and waited for a second it was on like Pacquiao vs Marquez in a very heated and very large benches clearing brawl between the teams. Shields, who I was happy to see leave Tampa Bay for the Kansas City Royals in the trade for Wil Myers in 2012 because he always killed the Red Sox (Boston had a .252 batting average and just a .409 slugging percentage against Shields in 25 games), Crisp, and ironically enough future Red Sox World Series Champion and one of the best team players to have in sports, Jonny Gomes, were all ejected for throwing punches in the fight that would come to symbolize the rancor between the clubs, especially since Maddon imparted a new sense of boldness in his players.
The growing issues between the teams has been evident over the past several years with the variety of on and off field altercations that have occurred at Fenway Park, Tropicana Field, and beyond, which is why the rivalry has so much built up bad blood. In game 1 of the ALCS in 2008, Grant Balfour, who was amazing with the A's last season with 38 saves and just 3 blown saves and is now back with Tampa, hit J.D. Drew in the shoulder, a pitch up so high that it caused some Red Sox players to yell at the hurler from the dugout. In 2012, the rivalry really amped up after Adrian Gonzalez was hit by Rays pitcher Matt Moore and Red Sox lefty Franklin Morales retaliated by plunking Will Rhymes, who would later pass out on the field after taking the hard mid 90's fastball to his right elbow. In the following series, Burke Badenhop of the Rays hit Red Sox star second baseman Dustin Pedroia and a pitch sailed over the head of Daniel Nava because Tampa was so upset with what had happened to Rhymes the week before. With the nature of baseball, however, Boston could not just let Tampa hit their stars, especially after they thought Morales was just pitching inside to Rhymes, so this time Morales, who seems to be at the center of all this, threw behind Luke Scott, then tossed two pitches inside, before finally hitting him in the leg on May 25, causing the benches to clear and showing even more outward anger and acrimony between the ballclubs. In June of last season, the animosity that is apparent in the rivalry continued, as John Lackey drilled Rays outfielder Matt Joyce in the back, causing the benches to clear after the always cantankerous Lackey was upset that Joyce took his time rounding the bases on a first inning home run and then dropped his bat like he had hit a homer on a 3-0 swing in his next at-bat when the ball was actually foul, which led to the surly Lackey shouting at the Rays dugout. Joe Maddon said Lackey was a "bad teammate [because] he can get one of his own players hurt," suggesting that the Rays would not be backing down and that they would have some sort of retribution to continue the derision in the rivalry. On May 25 of this year, the Red Sox and Rays were pushing and shoving on the field once again after the Sox, and specifically backup catcher David Ross on the bench, were upset with Yunel Escobar stealing third base on defensive indifference after Tampa was already up by five runs in the bottom of the 7th inning (this is one of baseball's unwritten rules that I don't really understand because a five run lead is by no means insurmountable, so why shouldn't a guy be allowed to try to take an extra base to add more runs. If you don't like it, stop them from scoring is the attitude I have always liked when it comes to sports whether it be a team running up the score or taking another base on a steal).
All of these past incidents had an aggregate effect on the David Price-David Ortiz fiasco that happened just this past week at Fenway Park that had Big Papi saying, "It's a war," because the Red Sox and the Rays really just hate one another. After the Rays beat the Rangers in the Wild Card tie-breaker game and then the Indians in the actual Wild Card game behind a great performance from Alex Cobb last year, they met the Sox in the ALDS. With Boston leading the series 1-0 and the Rays absolutely needing a win to have a fair chance of winning the five game series (only five times since divisional series began in 1995 had a team trailing 2-0 ever gone on to win the series with the 1995 Mariners, the 1999 Red Sox, the 2001 Yankees, the 2003 Red Sox, and the 2012 Giants being those teams), David Price was roughed up for 7 runs over 7 innings in a 7-4 Tampa loss, which included two long solo home runs from David Ortiz to right field in the 1st inning and then again in the 8th inning.
Everybody knows that feeling of frustration when even the littlest of things in life can just piss you off because you are in such a terrible mood. After David Price became the first left handed pitcher since Cliff Lee to win the AL Cy Young Award in 2012 with a 20-5 record, an AL best 2.56 ERA, and the second best AL WAR for pitchers at 6.9, Price had an uncharacteristically poor season last year and seemed frustrated each time he took the mound with his inability to locate his pitches and find the same success as the year before. Despite throwing a 2 run, complete game for the Rays against the Rangers in their big one game playoff victory, Price seemed agitated all afternoon against the Sox in his ALDS loss to John Lackey, who was somehow the Sox biggest bulldog and fighter last season. Meanwhile, anybody who has watched the Red Sox over the years knows that David Ortiz likes to watch and admire his home runs (he was plunked by Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia in 2011 after staring at some of his home run balls from earlier in the series), and I would too if I was Ortiz and averaged 34 home runs, 108 RBI's, and a .572 slugging percentage from 2003 to 2013. However, David Price does not quite agree with that logic and on Big Papi's second home run in game 2 of the ALDS, Price was undoubtedly upset with Papi sitting back and watching his ball at home plate all the way until it sailed over the Pesky Pole in right field. Price said after the game, "He knows how I've pitched him the last year and a half, probably two years. He steps in the bucket and he hits a homer, and he stares at it to see if it's fair or foul - I'm sure that's what he'd say. But as soon as he hit it and I saw it, I knew it was fair. Run." Baseball players are typically very sensitive, especially pitchers, and they remember guys that they think showed them up in any type of fashion for the next time they go up against that same opponent whether it be the next game or years down the line. Price seemed to be a little bit exasperated throughout the 2013 season, and so when that frustration is boiling up and somebody like Papi in a big game doesn't leave the batters box and watches a home run all the way until it is out of the park for his second of the game, even if he is just seeing if the ball is going fair or foul, that sense of irritation leads to a pitcher becoming even more upset with the batter than usual.
Going into the Red Sox-Rays three game series this year from May 30 to June 1 and knowing the history of the teams and all the hatred they have for one another, and with the clubs playing just five days after they had just had a benches clearing brawl because of the Yunel Escobar stolen base, major league baseball likely should have given both team warnings before the game to let them know that they would not tolerate any throwing at batters (major league rules states, "If, in the umpire's judgment, circumstances warrant, both teams may be officially "warned" prior to the game or at any time during the game.") Although as David Ortiz said after the game, "Later on he [Price] called me and apologized because he knows he was wrong. He apologized in public [for criticizing TBS analysts Dirk Hayhust and Tom Verducci]. He apologized to myself. Everything was cool," the MLB still had every right to tell the umps to warn both teams before the game so that they could ensure that the revengeful Price would not get caught up in his attempts to get back at Ortiz and the Sox.
However, they did not and of course on the first pitch of Big Papi's first at-bat of the season against Price, he was nailed with a 94 mph fastball right in the back, causing Ortiz to give the "I can't believe he just did that look" and Red Sox manager John Farrell to got tossed. Despite both benches getting warned because of the obvious intent of Price throwing at Papi, the left hander was surprisingly not ejected after he hit Mike Carp up in the arms in the 4th inning. Ortiz, who is a very prideful and emotional guy that likes to be shown a certain amount of respect because of all that he has accomplished in his career, was absolutely furious with Price for throwing inside to Carp when the benches cleared after he had already hit him and Red Sox bench coach Torey Lovullo was then ejected. As an act of reprisal to get back at the Rays for hitting Ortiz and Carp, one undoubtedly intentionally and the other one whose intent can be debated, Boston starter Brandon Workman threw behind Rays star Evan Longoria and was tossed along with the third Red Sox manager of the day, Brian Butterfield.
If you think that three hits batters (Jonny Gomes was unintentionally hit in the 10th inning by Rays reliever Joel Peralta), a pitch behind a batter, and four different Red Sox managers wasn't good enough for the next chapter of the Red Sox-Rays bad blood, the post-game comments by the clubs only added on to the disgust that is present in the rivalry that is growing to the point where it is the most heated in all of sports and has more bickering than George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. David Ortiz said, "Next time I see him [Price], he better put his gloves on. I have no respect for him anymore... It is over now. I have no respect for him... You can't be acting like a girl out there... If you are going to be acting like a little b---- every time you give it up and put your teammates in jeopardy, that is going to cost you," while Price replied, "Nobody's bigger than the game of baseball. You ask pitchers from 10-15-20 years ago. That's normal, part of the game."
From a casual baseball fan perspective, the latest drama in the Red Sox-Rays rivalry could not get any better because it adds even more fuel to the fire and puts hostilities to a new high between the clubs. Although I don't think that baseball should be as controlling as the mother in Black Swan and micromanage teams before games, I am still adamant that the umpires should have stepped in before this particular contest to do something because of the circumstances of the rivalry, especially with Price on the mound after what hew angrily said about Ortiz after game 2 in the ALDS in 2013. The big problem that arose in the game on May 30th was that not only did the Red Sox not have a chance to get retribution for Price hitting Ortiz because of the warnings to both benches, but the former Cy Young winner was not even tossed after hitting another batter, which seems to not be very fair or balanced and will only lead to more antipathy in the future. Regardless of your stance on the right for a player to throw at a guy for not running around the bases fast enough, staring at his hit for too long by celebrating a home run, taking an extra base with a big lead in a game, running acorss the pitchers mound, or flipping the bat, you can't argue against guys standing up for their teammates because if you don't, you lose the respect of your entire ballclub no matter what and that is what divides teams. If you place a dirty hit on Alexander Steen, T.J. Oshie, or David Backes of the St. Louis Blues, Ryan Reaves will let you know about it, and the same goes for baseball players protecting each other. Lukily for us baeball fans, the Red Sox and Rays play 10 more times just this season to settle the score in the game's most passionate and testy rivalry, so as David Ortiz said, "It's on."
No comments:
Post a Comment