It goes without saying that Red Sox-Yankees is one of the great rivalries in sports. It's up there with Auburn-Alabama and Michigan-Ohio State and my own alma mater's with that team out West. "Storied" is an adjective too often used to describe sports franchises, but few have as rightful a claim to the word as these. From a curse to a buried jersey to Giuliani's treason, their traditions are in so many cases irreversibly intertwined.
With the recent passing of film critic Roget Ebert, I can't help but think about his relationship with Gene Siskel -- how they were professional enemies, disdainful of everything the other person stood for and "unsure" why the other was necessary in the first place, but best friends, confidantes, brothers. "You may be an asshole, but you're my asshole," Siskel used to say.
The New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox rivalry is like that.
And that's the beautiful thing about sports. That you can despise another team with every atom of your being, that the sight of its logo can make your stomach turn, that its players can be your own personal representations of all things arrogant and base -- and yet, when times require it, that that distaste will melt away. Because even those of us who live for our teams are first and foremost humans, whose goodness is unleashed in times of crisis, and whose compassion for our fellow man is made stronger, not weaker, by the bonds of the rivalries between us.
It's the intensity of the hate New Yorkers feel for Boston that makes tonight's outpouring of love mean so much.
