Bill Nowlin and Jim Prime. Blood Feud. Cambridge MA: Rounder, 2005. Print.

Blood Feud is one of several books on the 2004 Boston Red Sox. This one focused on the American League Championship Series (ALCS), the first time in major league baseball history that a team won four straight games in a postseason series after losing the first three. Depending on your perspective, it was either a great comeback or a great choke.

What distinguishes Blood Feud is that it goes through the whole history of the New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox feud starting in 1903 with the New York Highlanders and Boston Americans. At times it can be dry, but its details emphasize to fans of both teams what it was like, especially for Red Sox fans after 1918.

The authors call it a feud. This was not a rivalry. A rivalry is like Harvard-Yale which most years either team has a chance of winning. Before the 1999 ALCS which featured the two teams, Yogi Berra told Derek Jeter, “Don’t worry about them. They’ve been trying to beat us for 80 years.” (159) According to ESPN, Berra repeated this to Bernie Williams before game seven in 2004.

While most of the book is some what dispassionate details of the challenges faced by Boston against New York, the authors attempt to characterize the Red Sox vs. Yankees as good vs. evil. It is true that fans of most other baseball teams hate the Yankees because of their domination. The authors make a case, though, that the Yankees embody the seven deadly sins. Then, of course, they raise the existential question: Why does evil always seem to triumph? We observe this in life many times. So we observe it in baseball.

There are some interesting details amid the collection of thousands of factoids.

One of the cheapest shots ever made by the Yankees was made by their 1930s owner Col. Jacob Ruppert. The Yankees still had lien on Fenway Park—part of the 1919 sale of Babe Ruth to New York was that the Yankees would lend Red Sox owner Harry Frazee $300,000 as a mortgage on the ball park. After the Sox swept the Yankees in a series, Ruppert was so angry that he called the note in full. This was after Tom Yawkey had taken over the Boston team, so he had no difficulty writing the check.

(Blood Feud does not date this episode, but Yawkey had taken over the Sox in 1933 and Ruppert died before the 1939 season. It sounds a little freaky today that the Yankees were part owners of Fenway Park for nearly twenty years, but the book points out that the Boston Globe was owned by the New York Times at the time it was published. Fortunately, in 2013 John Henry, part owner of the Red Sox, purchased the Globe.)

There are 65 pages of time line items from 1895 (Ruth’s birth) to 2004 and helpful sidebars. While some of these are dry, they do contain some curious items. In ten years from 1940 until 1950 (including time off for World War II) Ted Williams never had two games in a row where he failed to get on base whether by walk or hit. He has the record for Consecutive Games on Base Safely, 84 in 1949, ten more than DiMaggio’s 74 when he had his record 56 straight games with a hit. In fact, in 1949 Williams reached based in all but five games the whole season.

One sidebar summarizes all fourteen of the Red Sox’s extra-inning postseason games as of 2004 (9-4-1, ties were common before night lights). Another has excerpts from the baseball and umpire rule books describing interference by baserunners and its sanctions to help us see that, as the Fox Sports broadcasters said, the umpires “got it right” concerning A-Rod’s glove slap in game six of the ALCS.

The authors’ conclusion is not unlike that of the Book of Job in the Bible. God is aware of the evil, but evil is there to test the faithful, and sooner or later (with emphasis on the later), to paraphrase a DVD from 2004, faith is rewarded.

Two features of Blood Feud are an introduction by former Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee and an afterword by former Red Sox infielder Johnny Pesky. They have two very different perspectives on the Yankees.

Lee really sounds like he hates them. Lefthander Lee’s nickname was Spaceman, and he always wore his emotions on his sleeve. Once Yankee Graig Nettles injured Lee’s shoulder in a brawl. That took him out for six weeks. Lee also played in the seventies when both franchises had teams that made it to the World Series (they both were good) and when free agency was relatively new.

Pesky, on the other hand, while acknowledging the frustration, expresses admiration for most of the Yankees. “We never saw the Yankees as enemies. It was just mutual respect, never a feud.” (281) He notes that in later times these was some animosity, especially between catchers Carlton Fisk and Thurman Munson (the seventies). Still, he admits, “You get tired of coming in second.” (282). And that is what Blood Feud is largely about. But it concludes with 2004 and because of the frustration the victory is so much sweeter.
As Emily Dickinson put it:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed…

P.S. A personal postscript. Pesky here speaks very highly of Yogi Berra, and from all accounts he is a man of character in spite of his New York prejudices. I saw him play twice. He was in the 1961 All Star Game in Boston which I saw. Back then, you could get tickets the day of the game, even for an All Star Game.

I also saw game seven of the 1960 World Series. My father and I had a seat in the left field bleachers. When Mazeroski hit his home run in the bottom of the ninth, I lost the ball in the white afternoon sky so I kept my eye Berra, who was playing in left field that game. When I saw him turn around and raise his head without moving, I knew the ball had gone over the scoreboard for the winning homer!

The evil empire did not always win.