E-Mail This Article to a Friend Long-time adversaries square off in Boston; plus, a Yankees–Red Sox book review BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

We’re here today to talk about rivalries. The kind you read about in books. In fact, later in this column, you can read about a book about the kind of rivalry you read about.

First up, we have one long-time rival leaving town, perhaps not to be seen again in these parts for, oh, perhaps years. Depending on the ability of the two feuding parties to work out an amicable agreement this fall regarding the NHL labor agreement, there’s no telling when we will next see the dreaded CH logo of the Montreal Canadiens in this town. Yet by virtue of Thursday’s game-five loss by the Bruins to their hated nemesis to the north, Boston has delayed and perhaps even lost its opportunity to advance to the Eastern Conference semifinals, in the process losing momentum and the chance for a few days’ rest before battle-tested Toronto or Ottawa comes to town for the next four-of-seven series.

And just as the rejuvenated Habs head out of town to prepare for game six on Saturday, into our fair city wanders the region’s other most notorious rival for an early-season four-game Marathon-weekend hardball hoedown. Red Sox versus Yankees — there is nothing that ranks higher in these parts than the long-standing athletic competition between these two archenemies.

Oh sure, there’s the Celtics and the Lakers, but the Green haven’t won a post-season series over their West Coast brethren in 20 full seasons. And they won’t meet again this playoff season unless the Almighty decides to have a good laugh and allows a 36-46 team to advance all the way to the NBA Finals. That’s as likely as Kobe Bryant winning NOW’s Man of the Year award.

The Bruins and Canadiens’ tussles go way back to the days when the two squads were part of the league’s Original Six. This was indeed a solid competition up until about 1946, when the scales began to tip in Montreal’s favor during the two teams’ post-season meetings. "Tip" may actually be an understatement; from 1947 on, the Habs won 17 straight playoff series against Boston, which seems almost as unlikely as the fact that the B’s went an amazing 29 straight seasons between Stanley Cups (1941-1970) despite the presence of only five other teams in the entire NHL during that period. Long-timers know that all kinds of strange things go on whenever the two teams play, and the head-to-heads never could be deemed a true "rivalry" until Boston finally got off the schneid and broke the 42-year losing skein with its six-game division-final victory over Montreal in 1988. Including that post-season, the Bruins have won five of their last seven playoff meetings heading into this year’s match-up. Still, everyone around here knows what happened two years ago, when the eighth-seeded Habs knocked off the top-seeded Bruins, and Montreal is proving pesky again in extending this series to a sixth and perhaps seventh game.

Up next for Boston (should it avoid ignominy and advance to the conference semis): another north-of-the-border foe, and perhaps even a match-up with the Maple Leafs — another Original Six team that’s fast becoming the Bruins’ second-most-hated rival.

Meanwhile, as housecleaning gets the Habs’ rooms vacuumed and dusted, the Bronx Bombers wait in the hotel lobby, ready to restart their 91-year territorial dispute. Last year’s ALCS has people in both cities hungering even more for a summer-long fight to the death (or at least the World Series), although it’s a bit silly to put too much emphasis on an April series that will provide just 4/19ths of the 2004 regular-season competition between the two. Last year’s dramatic ALCS provided the jumping-off point for the rest of the history between the two teams, and Bostonians — ever aware that next year’s Sox squad could have a completely different look to it — feel that this is their best (and perhaps last) shot at unseating the Pinstripers for American League supremacy.

Still, the scoreboard of this rivalry has remained the same since the 1920s: one figure continues to spiral upward like the national debt, and the other remains hollow and empty. Indeed, baseball’s greatest rivalry is not so much of one when the tallies are all in: New York 26, Boston 0.

But for Sox fans, that, of course, was then, and this is now. And the scoreboard-watching begins on Friday night.

* * *

When you write for a newspaper, you tend to get a lot of stuff in the mail. Most of it you throw away, as you do with junk mail at home, but every once in a while you get free books — ostensibly to review and get the word out. Based on their subject matter and quality, some are worth perusing. Others take a spot in the bookcase, never to be re-opened.

As a baseball fan and a long-time observer of the Boston–New York contretemps, it was with great optimism that I recently received the newly published coffee-table publication, Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry (Sports Publishing LLC), written by sports author Harvey Frommer, along with his son, Frederic J. Frommer. Its title is self-explanatory, and it’s likely that this is the best publication on the shelves in terms of dissecting the history and nature of this seemingly never-ending feud. Among its 10 chapters are 1) a timeline of the two teams’ respective histories; 2) a chapter completely devoted to last year’s ALCS clash; 3) a look at the memorable 1978 season (culminating with the one-game playoff at Fenway; 4) a comprehensive account of the history of the franchises; 5) the cultures of Red Sox and Yankee fans and some of the memorable events that shaped them; 6) a look at the two ballparks; 7) profiles of the respective teams’ two arguably most-prolific icons: Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams; 8) the "marker" games (key contests along the way); 9) reflections from fans and observers from both sides on their feelings toward the rivalry and their favorite memories (including comments from Rudy Giuliani, Bud Selig, George Steinbrenner, Mario Cuomo, Michael Dukakis, and countless others); and finally, 10) a breakdown of the two organizations’ capsule histories, awards, Hall-of-Famers, year-by-year records, and so on.

Good stuff, all.

I do have a few minor quibbles, however. First is the photography. If you’re going to publish a coffee-table book, then the photographs should be pristine and memorable. Yet the great majority of the photos included are black-and-whites — not unusual if you’re detailing the early years of the franchises — but why, pray tell, are photos of such modern legends as Luis Tiant, Willie Randolph, Fred Lynn, Rod Guidry, Jim Rice, Wade Boggs, Mo Vaughn, Roger Clemens, and Yaz not in color? Furthermore, a lot of the B&W shots are either very low quality to begin with, or were scanned or printed poorly. Seeing as how last year’s ALCS is included, perhaps this publication’s production was a bit rushed in order to get it out in time for Opening Day 2004. But it sure does appear that the quality of many photographs was compromised, which is unheard-of for a publication of this nature. A lot of the photos used are from the "Frommer Archive," but the authors would have been much better served had they contacted someone like Dick Johnson over at the New England Sports Museum to secure top-notch archival footage. Take the inside-front and inside-back panoramas of Yankee Stadium: was a mid-1990s shot of a two-thirds-full stadium in a game against Oakland the best they could do for a Yankees–Red Sox book? And what about the center-spread shot of Fenway? Is a black-and-white panoramic taken from the upper reaches of the right-field bleachers the best shot available?

It’s not the elder Frommer’s fault that he spent nearly 20 years writing for Yankees Magazine, or that he has written a couple of definitive works about the franchise. Now that he lives in New England, his allegiances are supposedly somewhat torn as he recounts this memorable tale of two cities. Nonetheless, Sox fans might sense some Bronx leanings in the prose, and they also might want to inform the Frommers that "BoSox" is not an acceptable moniker around these parts for the local nine. That’s not wicked hahd to understand.

And glossing over the eighth-inning doings of last year’s ALCS game seven in this fashion? "[Pedro] Martinez retired the first batter in the bottom of the inning, and the Red Sox found themselves in the identical position the Cubs had been earlier that week: up by three runs, nobody on base, and only five outs away from the World Series. For those who believe in curses, it wasn’t a good place to be. The Yankees added a run, put two more on base, and then tied the score on a two-out, two-run bloop single by [Jorge] Posada. Pedro was done."

That’s all there was to it?

Don’t get me wrong: there is plenty to like about this book, and there’s nearly everything you’d want to know about the rivalry (although one could argue that Don Zimmer didn’t actually "tumbl[e] end-over-end a few times" in his game-three altercation with Pedro, and that the deaths of former Yankees Lou Gehrig and Thurman Munson deserve at least some mention in the timeline). Still, the photography brings the book down a notch rather than lifting it to the extraordinary levels which the subject matter deserves, and one wishes a little more time were spent in the photo archive when it came to narrowing down the choices. (A photo of a bottle of "Red Sox 1986 Champions" blush wine is used twice.)

Still, the Yankees are coming to town for the first time since last October, and there’s no better way to get the juices flowing for the upcoming four-gamer than sitting down for a couple of hours and re-familiarizing ourselves about how these two teams got to this point in time.

As they say up in Hab-land: laissez les bon temps rouler!

"Sporting Eye" runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com