Taking a swing at Boston

IT was that awful week again in October, the season of dread. Even worse than the prospect of another Northeast winter -- 20 inches of snow and black ice on sidewalks -- fall brings the inevitability of another ugly series between the Yankees and the Red Sox. Every year the rivalry grows more intense, more insane. While it’s not gender specific, because there are plenty of women deep into the dementia, it happens that my friend and I married into opposing dynasties and the mutant genes, the ones that turn nice men gnarly, have emerged in our sons.

So midweek -- mid-inevitable bloodbath -- I called 1-800-Ugly Rivalry Anonymous to commiserate with my friend of 15 years. For now let’s just call her Elizabeth of Boston. She happens to be another national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Our husbands happen to work for the same newspaper, the “other” Times. We both happen to have sons who play baseball. Elizabeth’s Sam is somewhat older than my Ben and large enough to have passed down a series of navy blue blazers. Ben, who hates to get dressed up, has come to associate these miserable occasions with Sox-fan Sam, whose name tag is always itching at the neck. Under other circumstances, our boys might be friends. But their team allegiances nixed that possibility long ago. When Sox-fan Sam went to the All-Star game a few years ago, my little Yankee fan complained bitterly. “How come that kid gets to go?” Frankly, Ben’s usually decent soul seems to wander away about this time every year.

This week, like members of all support groups during a crisis, Elizabeth and I got in touch, through e-mail, to groan about the American League championship series. Then after Mike Mussina came dangerously close to throwing a perfect game (whatever that is), Elizabeth and I had to get on the phone -- and down to business unloading this season’s woes. This was before the appalling shellacking the BoSox took Saturday night.

Geraldine of NY: By the second inning of the first game, Ben was on the phone with his best friend in Washington inviting him to the World Series.

Elizabeth of Boston: Boy, that Yankee confidence starts young.

GoNY: That’s the problem, Elizabeth. When you’re 11 years old and you’ve grown up in New York knowing nothing but a winning team, it becomes the natural order of events. It breeds not only expectations but entitlement. How’s Sam doing?

EoB: I had to go to bed early the other night to get away from everything. The screaming, the ranting. Husband and son sat in front of different television sets, both yelling. I didn’t know either one of them knew such horrible language.

GoNY: Every rule in our house gets broken this time of year. We have a no-TV-during-the-week rule and a bedtime rule, but Wednesday night both TVs were on and Ben stayed up until almost midnight watching the game, checking his fantasy football league on the computer while his dad checked the debate. I went to bed furious and the first thing I heard from my darling husband the next morning was, “Did you hear? Mariano Rivera won the debate.”

EoB: It’s sick.

GoNY: It’s a disease -- and all the worse in a grown man. My husband gave Ben money last weekend to buy me a raunchy anti-Boston T-shirt because I grew up in New England. When I got mad I was scolded, “Weren’t you ever a kid?” Yes. I was a kid. Once. But my father never encouraged me to wear nasty T-shirts.

EoB: Speaking of T-shirts, once I had Sam with me out in Los Angeles; he was so small he was still sitting in the front of the grocery cart, this time wearing a Red Sox T-shirt and Red Sox hat. The guy behind us in line looked at him and said, “Lady, your kid is doomed to a lifetime of disappointment.”

GoNY: Yeah but Boston fans know how to dish it out. We were driving last year on the Massachusetts Turnpike during the playoffs and Ben was yelling, “Yankees rule!” out the window as we approached the toll booth. A car with Massachusetts plates pulled up alongside us and the driver calmly said to my husband, “Your son is mentally ill.”

EoB: The whole thing is so pervasive it’s invaded Sam’s schoolwork. In English this year he had to write a contemporary myth. Naturally, he chose “The Curse of the Bambino.” Even the teacher is a Sox maniac: She gave him an A!

GoNY: I think everything encourages the pathology -- the papers are pouring on the kerosene. Thursday morning the Daily News ran pictures of Pedro Martinez on his knees with a headline, “Spanked! Yankees Still Pedro’s Daddy.” All this business with Pedro and “Who’s your daddy?” I don’t even get it. Do you?

EoB: Oh, it’s probably some sadomasochistic/homoerotic guy thing. My husband says it’s a way to suggest that Boston pitchers are so inferior that they don’t even know their parentage.

GoNY: Boy, this must be tough for you, E. Doesn’t your husband’s lineage go back to, like, the Mayflower? Is that before or after the Curse of the Bambino?

EoB: Uh, nooo, Geraldine. But it is before the Yankees built a stadium with a right field corner so short -- I believe 295 feet precisely -- that every time Babe Ruth twitched he hit a home run into the right field stands.

GoNY: My, my, my, I didn’t know you knew so much about my team.

EoB: Your team?!?!!!?

GoNY: Well, even an onlooker like me can’t help but notice Boston’s pathetic record.

EoB: At least in our little town we haven’t bought 26 championships.

GoNY: What’s this “we,” Kemo Sabe? And you know, your team does have the second-largest payroll in baseball. One hundred and twenty-five million bucks, last I heard. Who’s your daddy?

EoB: We shouldn’t be getting into this ... I know! Maybe next year we should go on a cruise together. No television, no baseball, just lots of books and quiet.

GoNY: Sounds great. But where do we leave from, Boston or New York?