The Zoo has moved north approximately 200 miles.
No longer are the Yankees beset by dysfunction as they were back in the day when the back page represented a 365-day-a-year playground for George, Billy, Reggie and Thurman.
Now it’s the Red Sox, from ownership through the clubhouse, who have come to define melodrama. The Red Sox who, since the start of last September, have been a grating reality show filled with crybabies, malcontents, and worst of all, massive underachievers.
The Good Ship Yankee, meanwhile, sails on the Sea of Tranquility.
The Red Sox have become the champions of pointing fingers and hiding behind anonymity, this Boston operation that a few years ago was on a direct course to challenge the Yankees as baseball’s biggest brand.
From the banquet menu of chicken and beer in the clubhouse that was revealed following last September’s epic collapse to the attempted post-season character assassination of deposed manager Terry Francona to the carnival that can be Bobby Valentine unto himself to ownership’s acknowledgment late last month of the players’ attempt to stage a coup, it’s been as unseemly as it gets.
It’s as if accountability and class have been Banned in Boston.
Here’s the thing about the Red Sox, who were three games under .500 and 12 1/2 games behind the division-leading Yankees going into last night’s opener of a three-game series at the Stadium: No one wants to own what they’ve become.
And that starts with the ownership group fronted by John Henry that includes CEO Larry Lucchino, who Thursday made reference to the “cynical and jaded media” being partially to blame for the team’s stunning fall from grace.
“Partly the media’s fault? I have to disagree with that. It’s entirely the media’s fault, it’s always the media’s fault,” said Valentine a couple of hours before last night’s first pitch, his tongue stuck deep into his cheek.
“No,” he then said, turning serious. “The media has nothing to do with the season.”
Last Aug. 31, the Sox defeated the Yankees 9-5 at Fenway to gain a 1 1/2- game lead in the AL East. From the following night, when Mariano Rivera got Adrian Gonzalez looking with the bases loaded to preserve a 4-2 victory, until last night, the Yankees went 86-60 while Boston had gone 65-81.
There hasn’t been such a gap between the teams since Whitey Ford was Chairman of the Board pitching to Yogi Berra in The Bronx while Don Buddin and Frank Malzone made up the left side of the Sox infield.
The dramatic difference between the clubs goes beyond the standings and the won-loss record. It relates to the issue of temperament, specifically to the absence of melodrama that surrounds the team wearing the button-down pinstripes.
“I haven’t personally said, ‘I’m going to avoid drama,’ ” manager Joe Girardi said before the game. “I just be myself.”
Other than last season’s L’Affaire Posada in which Jorge Posada pulled himself from the lineup an hour before the May 14 game against the Red Sox when the proud designated hitter was scheduled to bat ninth in the order, the Yankees’ dirty laundry has remained out of plain sight.
“The first year, I had to build relationships,” said Girardi, who replaced Joe Torre before the 2008 season. “It’s something you have to work at. It’s not easy.”
The Yankees missed the playoffs in 2008 for the first time since 1995. The transfer of power from the beloved Torre to the drill-sergeant mentality that marked Girardi’s approach was not entirely seamless. There was an adjustment period.
But no one player and no group of players went over Girardi’s head to complain to CEO Hal Steinbrenner about the manager. Steinbrenner did not convene a meeting that would give legitimacy to a mutinous movement.
Back in the day, there were George, Billy, Thurman and Reggie. But the Yankees won. The flags that flew from the Stadium were AL pennants and World Series banners.
Now, the flags flying from Fenway are the Red Sox’ dirty laundry.