The drums of war sound again

by SC on May 16, 2008 7:59 AM EDT

In the long, glorious, storied, mythical history of Major League Baseball, many rivalries have managed to stand the test of time. Yankees-Red Sox, as much as most of us are sick to death of the "end of the world" nature of their current feud, is a great sports rivalry. Cubs-White Sox was a better rivalry before they played every year, but if you go to Chicago, you will quickly note the differences between the fanbases, and how legitimate it all is. Dodgers-Giants started in New York and moved to California without losing a step.

While Earl Weaver will tell you that there should be bad blood between all clubs, it would be a great lie to say we care as much about a game against the Indians as we do a game against the Red Sox, barring some circumstances that make the Indians game very important. If you hate a team, you don't have to be personal about the fanbases, but it's healthy to argue with them. Yankees and Red Sox fans, in large part, don't really get with these rules.

The Red Sox and Yankees are our rivals, but that's more about us trying to fight the power atop the AL East division. We used to be right in the thick of things, but as much as one should love and respect the history of one's team, the days of Brooks, Frank, Cakes, Boog, and even Cal and Eddie are long, long gone. These are the days of Guthrie and Millar, a loose, enjoyable team that plays the best it can with not much in the way of recognizable talent, at least to an outsider.

When interleague play started, our interleague rival was mandated to be the Philadelphia Phillies, who fell harshly in the 1983 World Series to the Birds. This made perfect sense. The teams were close geographically, had some history, and were long-standing, well-known franchises.

But then came the Washington Nationals.

When the Expos moved to D.C. from Montreal, we knew it would mean a forced "cross-town" rivalry that couldn't ever really hold a candle to Cubs-White Sox, Mets-Yankees, Giants-A's or even Dodgers-Angels. Who were the Nationals, and why should we care?

They played in a dump. The team itself was a dump and a joke, an MLB-controlled quasi-team that no doubt played hard, but barely even existed in their last few years in Montreal. In their first few in Washington, little has really changed.

The Nats are not a team I can hate, because I don't care about them. I don't care about this rivalry. And I know I'm not in market, but those in market I've talked with have pretty similar feelings, for the most part.

It's neat that the Nationals exist in D.C. and we have a yearly two-series interleague rivalry (if anything about interleague play can still be considered neat, that is), but past that, what's the difference between us playing these guys or playing the Phillies, or the Reds, or the Braves? Not much.

The first-ever regular season O's-Nats contest came on May 19, 2006, at RFK Stadium, the newcomers getting home field the first time out. Ed Rogers was the O's leadoff man that day, and the O's managed to grind out a chipping away 5-1 victory. Kris Benson pitched a complete game for the win. Corey Patterson had three hits.

The Nats won the next two games in the series, games which saw Brandon Fahey lead off for the Birds. Later in the season, the O's took two of three from Washington, evening the all-time series at 3-3.

Last year, the Birds won the first two at RFK, and dropped the third, then were swept out at Camden Yards in the middle of a nine-game losing streak in June. All-time record coming into this year's battle: Washington 7, Baltimore 5.

We get another six chances. Best case scenario is we leave 2008 ahead 11-7 against the former Expos, but worst case is we fall behind 13-5. I doubt either will happen. The O's are busting their humps to remain competitive against all odds, while the Nationals are pretty much exactly what everyone thought they'd be in their first season at glorious Whatever It'll Be Called By 2010 Park.

Gear up! Fight for pride! Whatever, guys. Play ball.

The one neat thing is going to be the commentary. MASN is going to brave the waters for the potential cluster-you-know-what with four-man broadcast booths. This weekend, Gary Thorne and Jim Palmer will be joined by Bob Carpenter and Don Sutton, which will hopefully result in a fistfight. When the O's go over to D.C., it'll be Carpenter, Sutton, Jim Hunter and Buck Martinez. Nats fans, we apologize in advance for Hunter and Buck.

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one thing...

their farm teams play against each other (bowie v. harrisburg; frederick v. potomac…don’t know if norfolk lpays columbus, i doubt it matters). i think having the youngsters face off is good for making a rivalry b/c kids do stupid shit and stupid shit fosters grudges and grudges are the stuff of rivalries.

ronnie's a dillweed.

by j.q. higgins on May 16, 2008 9:00 AM EDT 0 recs

don't forget Delmarva vs Hagerstown

by getxstoked on May 16, 2008 3:20 PM EDT up 0 recs

Yes...

We DO apologize… at least we don’t stricken them with Dempsey.

Improving the ballclub: Not one of Peter Angelos' concerns.-SC Wed Jan 30, 2008

by dayzd toe on May 16, 2008 9:03 AM EDT 0 recs

yeah...

dempsey might domestically violate them.

ronnie's a dillweed.

by j.q. higgins on May 16, 2008 9:20 AM EDT up 0 recs

This rivalry's bullsh*t.

I don’t care about their team, they don’t play in our division, there have never been any meaningful games between them, and it’s not as if they’re across town. I’d have to drive over an hour to reach their stadium if I felt like putting myself through two traffic clusters in one day.

They obviously feel differently, as evidenced by their mascots showing up at the Inner Harbor yesterday to “invade” our… tourist destination? Whatever, Screech. Way to hit the locals where it hurts – in their tourist trap. If the gotcha prank is that lame, what hope is there for the “rivalry”?

From the Land of Pleasant Living...

by OEutaw on May 16, 2008 9:35 AM EDT 0 recs

The closest thing to nastiness I've seen out of this "rivalry"

Is early on in RFK when people (O’s fans and confused Nats fans) yelled “O” during the National Anthem. I still do it, to be obnoxious (of course), but they’ve mostly figured it out. I’ve been to RFK a few times, since i live in College Park and thus have easier mass transit access to DC. Haven’t been to the new park yet.

Also, I was at that first game. I remember it because I was trash-talking Corey Patterson and then he had a great game. That’s when I decided to trash talk him all the time, in hopes of having some reverse-juju on him. Didn’t work, he still sucked.

Also, re: Cubs-White Sox – everyone knows the Cubs’ real rival is the Cardinals. The two most popular midwest teams. As far as interleague goes Cubs-White Sox is nice, but its not the main attraction.

by pipkin on May 16, 2008 9:49 AM EDT 0 recs

The Nats are my favorite NL team

Trouble is, I don’t really care about the NL.

I did get yelled at once for yelling “O” in RFK, though. But I wasn’t trying to be a prick. I just did it because thats what you do during the anthem…

"Whether your name is Gehrig or Ripken, DiMaggio or Robinson, or that of some youngster who picks up his bat or puts on his glove, you are challenged by the game of baseball to do your very best day in and day out. That's all I've ever tried to do."

by spike2131 on May 16, 2008 10:38 AM EDT 0 recs

Rivalries

The Colts-Redskins thing was a big deal. When I was a kid in suburban Baltimore in the 1980’s it was made clear to me by local adults that it didn’t matter how good the Redskins were, people from Baltimore didn’t root for them.

Many of those same old-timers told me that there was never a rival between the Orioles and the Senators because the Senators sucked and no one showed up to watch their games. I read an interesting article in the Sun that was written for the 50th anniversary of the Browns moving to Baltimore. It said the owners of the Senators (was it still the Griffith family at that point?) were excited because they thought a sucky team moving to the area would create a regional rivalry of lousy baseball that would generate more fan interest than the Yankees or Indians coming to town to beat the shit out of them. Apparently they regretted their support immediately as the Orioles became yet another team that came to town to beat the shit out of them.

When I was a little kid in suburban Chicago in the early 80’s there was a pretty big rivalry between the Brewers and the White Sox, who were both good at the time and would attract out-of-state fans to each others games. I think it was an extension of the Bears-Packers rivalry, which is a real rivalry of substance and history unlike the (in my opinion) mostly ESPN-generated Yankees-Red Sox thing. My Grandmother lived in Milwaukee and I remember going to three games in a 1982 series between the two of them where there were lots of fistfights and general drunkness. Guys would start shit in the stands and then arrange to meet in the men’s room where security would be less likely to intervene, which made going to the bathroom menacing for me as a 12 year-old. Until I experienced the upper deck of Yankee Stadium during a blowout, it was the ugliest mass behavior I’d seen at a sporting event. My only visits to old Comiskey Park were for Brewers-White Sox games and it was more of the same. My friend who lives in Chicago and is from Milwaukee told me that it just isn’t the same with Brewers-Cubs games. The Cubs “fans” are passive and don’t understand that Illinois-Wisconsin sporting events are supposed to end with teeth on the floor.

By the way, I assume pipkin meant that the Cubs and Cardinals are the most popular midwest baseball teams. Neither is the most popular sporting team in that part of the country. The Packers much more popular than either and the Bears are more popular than the Cubs during a typical season.

by yurizanow on May 16, 2008 10:38 AM EDT 0 recs

er, yes

Baseball teams.

Everyone cares about football more nowadays, except maybe New Englanders before 2001 (had to get that jab in there) or, like, Canadians. And people from Southern California.

by pipkin on May 16, 2008 12:21 PM EDT up 0 recs

wasn't no ESPN for Bucky Dent

Yankees-Red Sox is quite real, though it is quite the one-sided rivalry all things considered.

Camden Chat
Bad Left Hook

by SC on May 16, 2008 12:25 PM EDT up 0 recs

All Right, You Asked For It

First off, I don’t like to admit it either, but the Yankees have no real rivals.

For there to be a rivalry there has to be competition and the Yankees have no real competition. On a basic level the Yankees have 26 World Series titles. The next best teams are the Cardinals with 10 and the A’s with 9 putting them well in the Yankees’ rear view window. The Yankees have won more games than any other professional sports team. They have more Hall of Fame players than any other baseball team. They have more Hall of Fame managers than any other baseball team. They have more Hall of Fame general managers than any other baseball team. You can see where I’m going with this. The Yankees are the top dogs and no one else is even close.

With that in mind, there have been teams that have either been good at the same time as the Yankees or have played the Yankees regularly in the World Series. Those teams would include the New York Giants, the Dodgers, and the Cardinals, but you really can’t say they were teams ever threatened the dominance of the Yankees. The Yankees-Red Sox thing really only goes back to the 1970’s and that Bucky Dent game. A lot of fans try to make it seem like its some ancient feud that has something to do with Babe Ruth, but the Red Sox didn’t even try to compete for almost 20 years after they sold off Ruth. Except for a few seasons in the 1940’s they never even finished in sniffing distance of the Yankees until the 1970’s and certainly weren’t a threat during the Yankee golden era the 1930’s to 1960’s. Zknower and I were talking about how despite Bucky Dent the Orioles were far more of a rival of the Yankees in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s than the Red Sox. When I first moved to New York I noticed a lot more black and orange “Baltimore Blows” shirts than “Red Sox Suck” shirts. That really started to change around the time the Red Sox got Pedro Martinez and ESPN, which assumes everybody in America lives in either the New York or Boston area, started shoving the “rivalry” down everyone’s throats.

If you want to see a real professional sports rivalry look at the Bears and the Packers. Those two teams have been around forever, been good forever (both of them have been successful for as long as the Yankees), have fans that are in close proximity to one another. They have a comparable number of overall wins, championships, and Hall of Famers and have competed for championships multiple times during their histories. Hell, there are better actual rivalries throughout the NFL and don’t even get a Canadian started on that whole Canadiens/Maple Leafs thing and I won’t even pretend that Yankees-Red Sox means anything compared to literally dozens of rivalries in college athletics.

That said, I do admit that ESPN did a good job and there is a rivalry now whether I think it’s phony or not, but lets not pretend this is one for the ages.

by yurizanow on May 16, 2008 5:20 PM EDT up 0 recs

man

You don’t need great competition for it to be a rivalry. There are plenty of factors that work into making a rivalry. Yankees-Red Sox is an oversaturated load these days THANKS TO ESPN, but that rivalry is real. It’s not always been as heated and “important” as it is now (which is legitimate, even though ESPN has overdone it for everyone).

Believe me, dude, I’m familiar with Bears-Packers. I don’t know who it is telling you that the Bears have been good forever, though. They were good forever ago, yes.They stunk from 1966 until 1984, and have generally been bad since 1992 (all of four playoff appearances). And the Packers made the playoffs exactly once between 1973 and 1993. They were also crap 1942-59.

Bears-Packers is pretty overrated itself. Most rivalries are, though. They mostly matter to the fans of both teams, who can look at games like Yankees-Sox, Bears-Packers, etc., in a year when one or both teams suck and still those games matter to the fans and to the teams. It’ like O’s-Yankees the last decade.

Camden Chat
Bad Left Hook

by SC on May 16, 2008 8:07 PM EDT up 0 recs

I disagree

I think you do need competition to be rivals coupled with some acknowledgment of the rivalry by both parties. If you and I fight on a regular basis and you kick my ass every time, I can’t legitimately claim to be your rival, especially if you just think of me as the guy whose ass you periodically kick. There has to be a little back and forth and no one back and forths with the Yankees. If some measure of success isn’t a factor, then why can’t the Texas Rangers or the Detroit Tigers claim to be storied rivals with the Yanks? When the Yankees were winning in the late 1990’s, tickets to Red Sox games were no harder to get than any other. Now it’s war.

My ex-girlfriend’s dad was a big-time Yankee fan who went to a ton of games deal in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In his mind back then the Indians and White Sox were the closest thing the Yankees had to a rival in the American League and the Dodgers in general. He said back in the day the Red Sox being in town was notable mostly as an opportunity to see Ted Williams.

Both the Bears and Packers have had long stretches of futility, but the fact of the matter remains they have the most championships in the NFL and the most Hall of Famers. The Bears won their first championship (such as it was) in 1921 and the Packers in 1929. I’ve seen the Packers-Bears thing up close since I was a kid when both teams were lousy and I still think it’s as close to a college rivalry as there is in professional sports. That said, I think the NFL is filled with teams that have better rivalries than any in baseball (Raiders-Cheifs, Raiders-Broncos, Steelers-Browns, Cowboys-Redskins, etc).

As I said, I recognize that regardless of how it came about, Yankees-Red Sox is now officially the most storied rivalry in sports and I am required by law to be intensely interested it.

by yurizanow on May 16, 2008 9:42 PM EDT up 0 recs

man, I forgot about those "Baltimore Blows" shirts.

kids in HS used to wear them to school JUST to get at me (as I was the only O’s fan in a school of aprox. 1000). I HATED those shirts.

looking back, i miss them.

"Don't worry, the fans don't start booing until July." - Earl Weaver

by daveh873 on May 17, 2008 9:30 AM EDT up 0 recs

Rivalery

Give it time it will become one.

by hagers on May 16, 2008 2:08 PM EDT 0 recs

It's definitely a rivalry...

It may not be the most storied rivalry in the history of rivalries, but it’s a…. oh shit, who am I kidding? This may never be a rivalry.

Improving the ballclub: Not one of Peter Angelos' concerns.-SC Wed Jan 30, 2008

by dayzd toe on May 16, 2008 2:41 PM EDT 0 recs

The Nats

may as well be the Padres or the Astros to me. They’re NL, we play them only because MLB says we have to, and neither fan base cares about the other. Rivalry? The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy. And that’s what I have for the Nats.

"We're going to play all 27 outs. If you can beat us for all 27, then we'll tip our hats. But we're going to grind out every at-bat." - Brian Roberts

by duck on May 16, 2008 2:49 PM EDT up 0 recs

No, I hate the Nationals

I get annoyed as hell at their their fans who can’t enjoy to a game without whipping out their blackberry (my dad included). I hate the smug attitude and self-righteousness, Nats fans seem to have for those of us who had the “odd” idea to continue rooting for the same Baseball team we have rooted for our entire lives. How weird is that? As much pride as I have in being a native of the D.C. area, our sports fans can really, really suck.
This is a rivalry, maybe not for the people up in Baltimore who don’t have as much interaction with Nationals fans as I do, but its definitely a rivalry for me. This three game series means alot to me.

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind". Basically, it's made up of two separate words—"mank" and "ind". What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.
-Jack Handey

by jobe on May 17, 2008 2:22 AM EDT up 0 recs

More Sun fun...

Since interleague play began in 1997, the Orioles have posted the worst record among American League teams at 79-114.
“We haven’t really had a good record in a lot of things the last 10 years,” second baseman Brian Roberts said, “so I don’t think it really matters who you’re playing.”

Don’t you just love understatements.

Improving the ballclub: Not one of Peter Angelos' concerns.-SC Wed Jan 30, 2008

by dayzd toe on May 16, 2008 3:05 PM EDT 0 recs

So why haven’t the Orioles enjoyed the same riches? “That’s just weird,” first baseman Kevin Millar said. “It’s just like the Kansas City Royals thing with us. People say, ‘You’ve won 12 in a row,’ or whatever, and I’m like, ‘Bro, it’s baseball.’ But we’ve got to change that this year.

Totally gnarly, dude!!! Hang ten bro’.

Improving the ballclub: Not one of Peter Angelos' concerns.-SC Wed Jan 30, 2008

by dayzd toe on May 16, 2008 3:08 PM EDT up 0 recs

Nobody in the organization is championing the cause to do away with interleague games. Their past issues with it don’t cloud the bigger picture.
“My view is it hasn’t run its course,” MacPhail said. “The fans enjoy it and that should be enough.“

Please tell me he doesn’t really believe that the fans enjoy it.

Improving the ballclub: Not one of Peter Angelos' concerns.-SC Wed Jan 30, 2008

by dayzd toe on May 16, 2008 3:10 PM EDT up 0 recs

I know right?

I remember Thorne and Palmer talking about interleague earlier this season and both agreed that they could sense that fans just don’t care about it anymore. The novelty has worn off.

Camden Chat
Bad Left Hook

by SC on May 16, 2008 7:56 PM EDT up 0 recs

I don't get interleague rivalries at all

I think we have a bigger rivalry with the ~~Devil~~ Rays than with the gNats. The ‘battle for the AL East cellar’ rivalry. Or something.

by CoachOfEarl on May 16, 2008 3:41 PM EDT 0 recs

except

The Rays are good now. They have the best run differential in the division.

I doubt it’ll last, but it’s still scary. They’re gonna be good the next few years at least. And if they keep signing long/cheap contracts, it could be for a while.

by pipkin on May 16, 2008 5:56 PM EDT up 0 recs