It Gets Old. No, It Doesn't.

The greatest rivalry in professional sports resumes this evening as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox play their first series of 2007. Due to a viral outbreak of injury among their starters, the Yankees during the three-game series will feature just one established pitcher, Andy Pettitte, along with two rookies. The Red Sox will feature their top three guys: Schilling, Beckett, and, for the first time against New York, the Japanese phenom Daisuke Matsuzaka.

The fans go bananas for these Yankees-Red Sox series, each of which has the quality of a postseason meeting, even in April, but not so the players--as former Yankee Gary Sheffield told me in an interview that's the basis of a profile appearing in the June GQ.

[With the unbalanced schedule,] you faced the Red Sox 19 times. The feeling I got when I was with the Yankees is that sometimes playing that many times and that big of a game against Boston, sometimes it gets old. People get so excited and emotions run so high, but it's a 162-game season. You want those big games spread out, because it's so emotional. You know, you don't want to be feeling like it's the World Series every single day-- all the requests for tickets, all the people flying in for those games--and then all of a sudden you go play a team, you know, a less-caliber team, and then it's kind of a letdown. Sometimes it gets to be a headache...

Sheffield took pains to be clear here: "It's about the requests, not the game itself; it's about all the other activities. Once the games begin," he says, "it's on again."

My safe prediction: Boston takes two of three. Though if the Red Sox were hitting--they're batting in the .240s, their worst start to a season in more than a decade--I'd go all out and predict a sweep.