Real Rivals Light Fuse for Dynamite

Ten minutes into an allotted 15-minute interview with former Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk in 1993, and things were not going very well.

The crusty New Hampshire native wouldn’t open up. He wouldn’t give much more than one-word or one-sentence answers to any questions.

The interviewer tried a different approach, one right out of left field.

“I grew up in a little town called East Lyme, Conn., about halfway between New York and Boston,” he told Fisk, “and when I was in junior high school, we’d get into fistfights arguing over who was better, you or [former New York Yankee catcher] Thurman Munson.”

A twinkle came to Fisk’s eye. His whole body perked up. It was as if someone had pumped a 10-cappuccino IV through his veins and released his vocal chords from captivity.

“That rivalry was so intense it makes me cringe,” Fisk said of the Red Sox and Yankees in the late 1970s. “I get nauseous sometimes thinking about going to that park [Yankee Stadium] with the demands that faced you.”

The rest of the interview was a breeze.

That’s what one of sport’s greatest rivalries, which will be elevated to a postseason stage for the first time when New York meets Boston in Game 1 of the American League championship series tonight in Yankee Stadium, can do to people.

It makes curmudgeonly catchers open up to reporters. It makes outfielders such as Reggie Jackson, Mickey Rivers and Dwight Evans wear batting helmets on defense in the opposing park, so as not to be injured by the batteries, fishing weights and smoke bombs that have rained down on them from the bleachers.

Along the Mason-Dixon line for Red Sox and Yankee fans, in southeastern Connecticut towns such as East Lyme, Waterford, New London and Groton, it makes brothers with allegiances to different teams bicker and fight even more than they usually do.

It has turned neighborhoods into war zones and made stadium operators and sports bar owners in both cities beef up security when the teams meet, in anticipation of fights between fans. From the tip of Maine, down through New England and into New York, it makes the heart beat a little faster.

“There’s no speech I could make that could get our players more excited than knowing they’re going to Fenway Park and the Red Sox are coming here,” Yankee Manager Joe Torre said. “It’s been a rivalry before them, before me . . . this is going to be something special.

“It’s two highly energized East Coast cities going against each other, two cities that love their sports and love to win. It’s dynamite, it really is.”

The rivalry dates to 1920, when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in a deal that altered the course of baseball history, turning New York into perennial World Series favorites and Boston into a perennial runner-up.

The Red Sox have not won a World Series since that sale--their last championship was in 1918--and many have blamed the Curse of the Bambino for the team’s misfortune.

The rivalry had a few other high-water marks:

* The Red Sox had a one-game lead with two games remaining in the 1949 season but lost the final two games and the pennant in Yankee Stadium.

* The incredibly lopsided 1972 trade that sent left-hander Sparky Lyle from Boston to New York, where he developed into one of baseball’s top relievers, and first baseman Danny Cater from New York to Boston, where his career fizzled.

* The classic brawl of 1976, when Lou Piniella slid into Fisk at the plate and fists started flying, an ugly melee that included Yankee third baseman Graig Nettle’s body slam of Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee, who suffered a separated shoulder.

“It’s kind of eerie if you think about it, the Sox and Yanks meeting for the first time in the postseason,” Yankee pitcher David Cone said of the matchup, made possible by the addition of the wild card in 1995.

“It’s the opportunity the Sox have been waiting for since Babe Ruth. You have to be blind not to see the passion of the rivalry between the two sides.”

Never was that passion more prevalent than 1978, when the Red Sox built a 14-game lead in the American League East in early August, only to suffer one of baseball’s greatest collapses.

The Yankees, four games out on Sept. 7, went to Fenway Park and swept a four-game series by the combined score of 42-9, a drubbing that was known as the Boston Massacre.

The teams finished tied for first place and played a memorable one-game playoff in Fenway, where slap-hitting Yankee shortstop Bucky Dent stunned the Red Sox with a three-run homer over the Green Monster in left to key New York’s 5-4, come-from-behind victory.

“I spent seven years in Boston and loved every minute of it except for 1 1/2 minutes,” Yankee bench coach Don Zimmer, the Red Sox manager in 1978, said, alluding to Dent’s shot. “There’s still a rivalry between the two teams, but it’s not like it was in the 1970s.

“There was a hatred among the players then. Fisk didn’t like Munson, and Munson didn’t like Fisk, and none of the Yankees liked Bill Lee. You don’t get that feeling anymore.”

Perhaps that could change during this series. Like those Fisk-Munson debates in the 1970s, there are surely endless arguments throughout the Northeast about who is the better shortstop, Boston’s Nomar Garciaparra or New York’s Derek Jeter.

Game 3 of the series will feature a delicious pitching matchup in Fenway between Yankee right-hander Roger Clemens, the former Red Sox ace who infuriated fans all over New England when he fled Boston after the 1996 season, against Red Sox right-hander Pedro Martinez, the heir to Clemens’ Fenway throne and the best pitcher in baseball.

“I’ve read the books and watched the shows, I know what this rivalry is all about,” said Kent Mercker, Game 1 starter for the Red Sox tonight. “It’s going to be exciting.”

Especially for the fans. Some Boston-area writers have likened this series to Armageddon. One predicted it would be apocalyptic. If the Red Sox and Yankees are baseball’s version of the Spartans and Trojans, then their fans are the Hatfields and the McCoys.

“You have two towns whose fans hate each other,” Yankee designated hitter Chili Davis said. “It should be fun.”

AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES

NEW YORK

Orlando Hernandez

(17-9, 4.12 ERA)

vs. BOSTON

Kent Mercker

(2-0, 3.51 ERA)

Game 1

Tonight at New York, 5:15, Channel 11