‘THE RED SOX AS THE U.S.S.R.’ or the trouble with sports analogies

One of the greatest rivalries in professional sports history was surely that between the Red Sox and Yankees from 2003 to 2011. They were the best teams in baseball many of those years. They participated in two of the greatest playoff series of all time. They brawled. They fought over free agents. The Yankees were generally slightly better, but the Red Sox still triumphed in two World Series. They were like the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. But, now, as then, we have a winner.

So The Yankees are The United States and the Red Sox are the Soviets. Does that mean the rest of baseball the 5 billion people held in their nuclear cross-hairs, forced to take sides as rivaling megalomaniac superpowers threatened the world with Armageddon for 40 years? Will Joe Girardi stand outside Fenway and tell John Henry to tear down the Green Monster? Will we have to look forward to New York spending more on their payroll as the rest of baseball combined in the effort to guard against the threats to the Yankee way? When can we expect the invasion of Kansas City?

At what point is this just a game and not when is every George Will sonnet not worth saving? When can the rest of the world escape from under the crushing, decaying, myopic, selfish New York Yankees’ sphere of influence?

(Source: newyorker.com)