The last great American rivalry

Brian Cashman, watching the offseason theatrics with fascination, and from one of the best seats in the house, preferred to think of the Henry outburst as mere emotion, rather than part of an "Evil Empire" strategy.

"I wouldn't turn up the heat," Cashman said. "You mess with a beehive, you're going to get stung."

He let the words sink in.

"I think they are too smart for that," Cashman added. "The great thing about the fans of Boston is they now have fans running that team, real passionate fans that are smart. But on the short-term stuff, the negative reactions toward things that we might do with an emotional response, that just gets us more emotional. That's not healthy for everybody else. This is like Russia and the United States -- we're being the United States, they are Russia -- it's the two big superpowers, and now it's like: How many missiles do we need? We're going to increase our missiles, and you're going to increase your missiles. Oh, you got another one? We're going to increase ours now."

It's easy enough to see why Cashman does not like the drift of events. Who can blame him? But his vision of mutually assured destruction, baseball-style, makes a lot of sense. That is just what the Henry group wants. John Henry may once have been a shy and awkward boy too timid to come out and ask the neighbor kids if he could play in a ball game in his own yard, but he's not making that mistake again. He could not be more involved in this rivalry, and he's willing to roll up his sleeves and get a little dirty if that's what it takes. He's putting himself on the line in just about every way imaginable. If Steinbrenner challenged him to go at it mano a mano, right there between home plate and the pitcher's mound, John Henry just might surprise people and take him up on it. Imagine the ratings that would get.

Henry and Lucchino know that the old story line of perpetual disappointment had a potency and power that could always find a way to snatch success away from them at the last possible moment. They believe in the power of story. They believe in a narrative's ability to keep moving itself forward, even when it seems to have spent its force. So they have assembled a baseball club with great pitching and great hitting, and yet they know that the battle cannot be only on the diamond. Their verbal sparring and their Steinbrenner-like spending have helped turn this rivalry into something it never was before: A national happening. Fans in other markets may get tired of the unfairness of it all, but everyone senses that this is building toward a fascinating conclusion. The twists and turns in the rivalry have an off-the-map feel to them, and anything seems possible. As with any media spectacle, people are simultaneously annoyed to have their attention grabbed so aggressively and curious to discover whether the events themselves will live up to the hype.

"That's what sells our game," Cashman said. "Now that reality TV is so successful, people are like: Turn on a baseball game, that's reality TV."

The off-the-charts intensity and fan interest give the Red Sox just what they have been craving for decades: A fresh context. So the crazier this gets, the happier they are. After all, they know they are the ones willing to steer this rivalry off the road and go smashing through windows and shopping malls like Jake and Elwood Blues. The added intensity pays dividends for the Red Sox. Among other things, it guarantees that if the high-priced Yankee lineup falters against the Red Sox, a Steinbrenner back-page tongue-lashing will never be long in coming. Steinbrenner got the better of Henry in the "Sour grapes!" exchange, but sometimes losing is winning and winning is losing. The "Evil Empire" strategy of throwing everything toward the goal of beating the Yankees might or might not pay off for the Henry ownership, but they are having one hell of a time playing their hand as if they are sure they were going to get the last laugh on Steinbrenner.

Red Sox fans who talk about the decades of pain and disappointment they have suffered are really talking about something else. They are talking about the luxury of caring about something deeply. Nowhere has a deep and abiding attachment to a team been passed from generation to generation the way it has been in Boston. Most sports fans aren't so lucky. Passion like that has become rare in American life, where allegiances tend to last weeks or months. People move from state to state, picking up new teams and new loyalties and leaving others behind. Fans outfit themselves head to toe in the loud colors of their new team and scream their lungs out -- on cue -- at state-of-the-art stadiums and arenas. They celebrate their new teams' victories like a personal entitlement. But do they really know anything about passion without living through bleak times that test their loyalty? New England fans do. Oh how they do.

Reprinted by permission of Atria Books. Copyright © 2004 by Steve Kettman

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