Published on 06/29/2005

The Boston Red Sox are engaged in one of the most hard-fought, bitter, caustic rivalries in major league baseball. This rivalry features beanballs, bench-clearing brawls, players calling out the other team in the press, managers resorting to underhanded tactics, and general ill will on both sides. A bench clearing brawl jumpstarted the rivalry several years ago, and it has only escalated. Since the 2000 season, brawls and beanballs have made the Devil Rays versus the Red Sox the most heated rivalry in baseball today.
Oh wait, you thought I was going to say the Yankees didn’t you?

Sure, the Yankees and Red Sox have the history factor and the postseason drama, but moment for moment, the Red Sox and the Devil Rays have the greatest rivalry going in baseball today, hell they’ve got the best rivalry in sports.

Before even getting into what makes this rivalry so great let me point out one very important fact to everybody. Yankees/Red Sox, Duke/UNC, and Michigan/Ohio State all seem like better rivalries because they have postseason implications, yada yada yada. Let me tell you, there is nothing more entertaining and fun to watch than a team with absolutely no chance at the postseason (Tampa Bay), engage a team that probably will make the playoffs (Boston), in the type of behavior that you wouldn’t see on a little league field, let alone in the major leagues.

How did all this happen? Well, the animosity between these teams is anything but brand new. Everything started out fine of course; Tampa came into the league in 1998 as an expansion team, and for a few years Boston beat up on them without incident. Things changed in 2000 however, and they have continued escalating since. It all started when that pillar of manhood and dignity Pedro Martinez decided to throw one up and in to Tampa Bay outfielder Gerald Williams. In case you aren’t much of a baseball fan or you’ve just been living in seclusion since the 1970’s, please note that pitchers don’t bat in the American League. Understandably, Williams became incensed that Martinez would throw at him knowing that he wouldn’t possibly face retribution in kind. If you don’t think Pedro considered that when deciding to plunk Williams, consider this: in 33 starts with Boston last season Martinez hit 16 batters, about 1 every 2 starts. This season with the Mets in the pitcher-batting National League, Pedro has only hit 1 batter through his first 10 starts. That’s 1 hit batsmen through 71 innings pitched, and had that ratio applied to last season he would only have hit 3 batters all season, not 16.

So, now that Williams was duly perturbed at Pedro’s audacity to hit him without being subjected to reprisal, he responded as many of us would…he charged the mound. That was only the beginning of this feud, and the questionable punishments handed down by Major League Baseball following the bench-clearing brawl (8 Devil Rays suspended, 0 Red Sox), ensured that it would continue.

Following the Pedro-Williams fracas, tempers cooled for a few seasons…at least on the surface. Batters were still hit and hostility festered behind the scenes. Those feelings exploded again late in the 2004 season when Tampa Bay rookie Scott Kazmir drilled two Red Sox during the fourth inning of a September 27th game in response to Bronson Arroyo hitting two Devil Rays in the prior inning. Benches emptied in that game as well, setting the stage for this season’s fireworks which cemented this rivalry as the most exciting and entertaining around today.

During a lopsided 11-3 Boston win on April 24th, things began to get dicey in the seventh inning. Tampa reliever Lance Carter threw a pitch behind Manny Ramirez who proceeded to homer on the next pitch. Now if you were Lance Carter and a guy you had just tried to intimidate went ahead and put a ball into the next zip code on the following pitch, you’d be a little steamed wouldn’t you? So the logical next step is to, that’s right, throw a pitch over the head of the next batter David Ortiz. But David Ortiz isn’t known as Big Papi because he’s timid, so his response wasn’t merely to step back in the box ready to hit. Like the Incredible Hulk, the veins in Ortiz’s neck began to bulge as he attempted to escape from the grasp of catcher Toby Hall and turn Carter into a corpse. Fortunately for the reputation of this rivalry, cooler heads didn’t prevail as benches erupted, and three players as well as Tampa manager Lou Piniella were ejected.

Things didn’t stop there of course as Bronson Arroyo, yes the same Arroyo who was prominently involved in the earlier 2004 incident, proceeded to drill outfielder Chris Singleton, emptying the benches again and leading to Arroyo and manager Terry Francona being ejected. After a brutal three game series that included seven hit batters, the insults flew over the airwaves as players and managers on both sides chimed in with their two cents about the other team’s personnel, but more on that in a moment.

Solely based on the history of the feud outlined above, here are the criteria that establish this rivalry as the best one going.

Dominance over one club by the other

Many would argue that the best rivalries are those between two evenly matched teams. If you fall into this category, allow me to enlighten you. If both teams exhibit fairly equal talent, and belong to the same economic tier (for example see the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry), it sucks some of the fun out of the rivalry. Of course the Yankees and Red Sox are rivals. They have been the two best teams in the American League for much of the past decade, often meet in the postseason, and compete for the same players in free agency during the offseason. Their rivalry is truly an example of the ‘haves’ vs. the ‘have-mores’. And now that the Red Sox have broken the curse and finally beaten the Yankees en route to a World Series title, much of the drama that has marked this feud has been taken away.

Now take a look at the Devil Rays. The Red Sox beat them nine times out of ten, sometimes in almost comical fashion. This series takes on the big-brother/little-brother mantle that makes for the best of rivalries. What fun is a rivalry if you don’t know who is going to win? Plenty you say…none at all I say. Just like when the Red Sox couldn’t find a way to beat the Yankees, the Devil Rays have no chance of significant gains on the Sox…at least not in this decade. So, what does a team do when they have no chance at beating the other club, but hate them with a passion? That’s right…..

Fights/Brawls/Brouhahas/Melees/Donnybrooks/(Your Synonym Here)

I’m all for seeing great baseball, but let’s face a fact that even Lou Piniella must accept at this point…you’re just not going to see it from the Devil Rays. I mean, their pitchers walk more than a senior citizen on a health kick. So, what do you do when you can’t get opposing hitters out? You hit them of course, which leads to the kind of bench-clearing brawls and fisticuffs that have made this rivalry truly great. Are you kidding me, I’ve seen relievers come out of the bullpens and start throwing right hooks. Next time these two clubs get together I think Don King and Mills Lane should be involved.

All kidding aside though, I think we may have skipped a step. Something had to have come between the dominance by one team and the out and out brawls between the clubs. Something like Pedro Martinez hitting pretty much any Devil Ray who can hold a bat, and Curt Schilling claiming he overheard Tampa Bay players calling their manager an idiot. Something like…

A palpable hatred between the two clubs so thick that you could cut it with a knife
I know, its cliché, but this is what makes good rivalries great. Don’t you think the whole Magic Johnson/Larry Bird thing would have been so much better if they straight up hated each other, maybe threw a few elbows at each other once in a while instead of acting like they were brothers from different mothers?

Perhaps you were a bit confused by the earlier sentence about the statements made by Curt Schilling. Well, in the days after the April Sox-D’Rays brawl, Schill revealed several comments that he claims were made to him by Tampa Bay players after the benches had cleared. Schilling alleged that the Tampa players had told him that the reason they lose so many games is because their ‘idiot manager’ (Piniella), still subscribed to the arcane baseball rule of ‘an eye for an eye’ when protecting his hitters from beanballs. Piniella fired back at Schilling, accusing him of not knowing anything about anything for the most part, and one can only hope that the war of words isn’t forgotten by the time the clubs meet again during the 3rd and 4th weeks in July. With Schilling possibly on the DL until then, maybe we’ll see some fresh fireworks between these two clubs to reinforce the status of this budding but potent rivalry.

Steve Schaefer is a Senior Editor at Atomic Sports Media.com. He can be reached at steve.schaefer@atomicsportsmedia.com.