This isn’t a showdown. It’s a fiesta.
Baseball’s two best teams, which also happen to be the game’s greatest rivals, will kick off a three-game series Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium, and let’s face it: Life is so good among this Northeast Corridor route that the stakes do not reside particularly high for the Yankees or Red Sox at the moment.
Thanks to their respective runs of excellence, the Yankees (24-10) could sweep the Sawx (25-9), or vice versa, and the victim would remain the American League’s second-best club. And since the Yankees already shaved a 7 ½-game AL East deficit to one game in 14 days (it has been stuck at one since Thursday), evidence exists that neither team will likely fall and fail to get up from whatever transpires.