Published by Taylor Trade Publishing ISBN 978-1-58979-918-9
Trade paperback, $18.95, 274 pages
Growing up in a baseball family, my dad and sister were Boston Red Sox fans and my mom and brother liked the Yankees. The heated rivalry that has been decades long in the making played itself out in our home growing up.
Red Sox Vs. Yankees: The Great Rivarly by Harvey Frommer and Frederic J. Frommer does justice to perhaps the most famous rivalry in all of sports history. Frommer wrote for Yankees Magazine for over twenty years, but now lives in New England, so he gives both sides their fair say.
The book is a comprehensive overview of how the competition started, and goes in-depth in covering some of the greatest moments in the history of the rivalry. The authors begin with the end of the infamous "Curse of the Bambino", when the Red Sox finally beat the Yankees when it counted- the 2004 American League Championship, where the Sox came back from a 3-0 game deficit to win four in a row and go to the World Series.
It almost didn't matter if they won the World Series (which they went on to do); they beat the damn Yankees and finally vindicated the day the Red Sox gave Babe Ruth to the Yankees who went on to help the Yankees create their dominant baseball dynasty.
The Frommers give an extensive timeline of events in the rivalry, but it is the chapters on the 2003 playoffs (when Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez threw 70-year-old Yankee coach Don Zimmer to the ground during a bench-clearing team brawl), the 1978 teams (with amazing players like Jim Rice, Carl Yazstremski, Luis Tiant, and Fred Lynn for Boston against Reggie Jackson, Mickey Rivers, Ron Guidry and Catfish Hunter leading the powerful Yankees), and the 1973 teams (where a home plate collision between catchers Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk ignited a memorable fight) that are the strongest.
Those chapters bring memories rushing back for those of us who watched the games, and the Frommers put us in the middle of the action with all the players weighing in.
The end of the book features memories from players and fans, like Rudy Guiliani, Mario Cuomo, Roger Clemens, and Ari Fleischer, which I found interesting.
Red Sox Vs. Yankees is a must-have sports book, not only for fans of those teams, but for all baseball fans.
rating 4 of 5
I think I'll have to get this for my husband and my brother. They are both huge baseball fans, even if their favorite teams are neither Boston nor New York.
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