For decades, the rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees was regarded as the best and most intense in baseball, if not in all of sports. In 2007, former MLB commissioner Bud Selig described it as an unparalleled rivalry: "It's the greatest rivalry in sports. You can talk about the Dodgers and Giants, the Cardinals and Cubs, the Packers and Bears, Ohio State-Michigan, but there's nothing like the Red Sox and Yankees.
It has history, intensity, proximity and goes all the way back to Babe Ruth. There are all the brawls over the years." Britannica catalogs the 10 greatest rivalries in sports history and includes Red Sox vs.
Yankees, ranking it above Lakers vs. Celtics and Joe Frazier vs. Muhammad Ali.
In recent years, however, the prominence and intensity of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry have receded. Yankees pitcher Nestor Cortes commented in 2023 on the decline of the rivalry. Nestor Cortes had this to say about the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry pic.
twitter.com/2WgBNvAkFo Since nature abhors a vacuum, it should come as no surprise that the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry has been supplanted. The rivalry between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres has replaced it as the most captivating and compelling in baseball.
Often referred to as the "I-5 rivalry," because the home stadiums of the two teams are separated by just a 120-mile drive along Interstate 5 in southern California, the competitiveness and allure of Dodgers-Padres games have exceeded that of all other baseball.