TAMPA — The Rivalry, like the man-eating plant in “Little Shop of Horrors,” requires regular servings of fresh meat to keep growing. Jacoby Ellsbury, by switching from the Red Sox to the Yankees, accordingly has elevated himself to entrée status.
On Friday, the mild-mannered center fielder found himself in the middle of one of those perennial verbal duels at 10 paces between Yankees president Randy Levine and his Boston counterpart, Larry Lucchino. First came Lucchino’s dig at the Yankees for overspending on free agents like Ellsbury. Then came Levine’s recall of the Red Sox’s nightmarish 2012 season, and we had ourselves a back-page story.
“I’ve been in The Rivalry for seven years now,” Ellsbury said Saturday at Steinbrenner Field. “It’s always intense. There’s always a big game. Fans are always excited. So it’s not going to be any different this year than it has in years past.”
Maybe not for him. For the rest of us, though? Ellsbury’s lucrative Northeast Corridor ride, and the events that precipitated it, will ensure we scrutinize the 30-year-old in multiple ways, all of them unprecedented. So it’s good for Ellsbury that he plans to ignore it.
“In this game, you can’t control what other people do,” he said. “You can only control how you prepare. How you go about this game. Helping this team win. I think that’s the best way to go about it, is control what you can control, and if you put the work in, hopefully you reap the rewards of that.”
The Yankees committed $153 million over seven years to Ellsbury. The Red Sox discussed nothing more than a five-year, $80 million package with Ellsbury. The Yankees discussed nothing more than a seven-year, $175 million deal with Robinson Cano, who jumped to Seattle for a 10-year, $240 million contract. And the Yankees, by securing a deal with Ellsbury, decreased the likelihood of retaining Brett Gardner beyond this season, as he’s an impending free agent.
That’s your road map to the 2014 Ellsbury storylines: Will Boston youngster Jackie Bradley Jr. reward the defending World Series champions for displaying their faith in him and letting Ellsbury slide over to the enemy? Or will this be a repeat of 2006, when Johnny Damon traded in his Red Sox for Bronx pinstripes and thoroughly outplayed his Beantown successor Coco Crisp?
Will Ellsbury stay healthy and vindicate the Yankees for valuating him and Cano so close to each other, when their track records didn’t support that math? Or will Cano put together a trademark, Most Valuable Player-caliber season as Ellsbury once again struggles to stay on the field?
Will Gardner, whose career Wins Above Replacement (19.3, as per Baseball-Reference.com) are closer to Ellsbury’s (21) than you might guess, wind up with several starts in center field due to an Ellsbury injury then depart following the season for a team that will start him in center? Or will Ellsbury, playing half of his games at Yankee Stadium and its inviting right-field porch, rediscover his power stroke from 2011 and render Gardner’s future irrelevant?
Comparisons, comparisons everywhere. But Ellsbury appealed to the Yankees in part because he has been hardened by his years of Rivalry service time. And he appears to be a guy who naturally doesn’t get caught up in the noise.
“He knows what it’s all about,” said new Yankees reliever Matt Thornton, who played as Ellsbury’s Red Sox teammate for a few months last season. “He knows how intense it is for the fans, and how big the games usually are. The playoff spot is going through one or the other. He gets it. He’s been through it. I think he won’t take the bait and get into that a little bit.”
“I think I’ve always been even-keeled,” Ellsbury said. “I played other sports. I think it’s my upbringing. Yeah, I definitely have that competitive fire, but at the same time, to succeed for an extended period, through 162 games, postseason, I think it’s beneficial to have that mentality. Control what you can control, but at the same time, prepare as best as you can.”
Think of the losses The Rivalry suffered this winter: Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Cano and A-Rod hater Ryan Dempster. In come Masahiro Tanaka, Brian McCann, Carlos Beltran and A.J. Pierzynski.
By changing sides, Ellsbury essentially chose to become a greater conversation topic between New York and Boston.
Because of the Yankees’ other actions, he’ll be mentioned plenty in non-Rivalry discussions, too.
We’ll be talking about him. His challenge will be to keep blocking us out, no matter how loud we get.