Yankees’ winning-season streak sparks debate about Red Sox past two decades
Yankees 30-year streak highlights Red Sox inconsistency
Would you rather watch your favorite team finish each season with a winning record for 30 years, or endure the ups and downs of a team that slingshots from worst to first and back again?
On the surface, the answer is obvious. But when the two teams in question are the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, it’s always more complex.
This week, the Yankees ensured that they’d finish the regular season with a winning record, making this their 30th consecutive winning season. That’s the third-longest record across the four major male sports leagues in North America.
Meanwhile, the Sox are at the bottom of the division they share. They’re on track for their second last-place finish in the five years since their historic 2018 championship run, when they won a franchise-record 108 regular-season games and their fourth trophy in fifteen years, the most by any MLB team in this millennium.
The three decades of Yankees winning seasons include nine Wild Card berths, 15 division titles, seven pennants, and five championships. Over the same span, the Sox have eight Wild Card berths, six division titles, four pennants, and four championships.
Despite eight losing seasons peppered throughout, the Sox have almost kept pace with the Yankees in terms of postseason success, which adds an interesting layer to the discussion. Because even though the Yankees finish above .500 each year, they haven’t been making it all the way to the end of October for over a decade of this 30-year run; their most recent pennant season was 2009.
In a way, isn’t that worse than the Sox yo-yo-ing every few years? People expect the Yankees to be great every year. That expectation accompanies always having one of the highest payrolls, and it’s the standard they set by winning 27 championships when no other MLB team has more than 11.
Since 2004, standards for the Sox are high, too, but it’s not the same and probably never will be. Maybe that’s because older fans remember the decades of repeated loss; they reversed The Curse in 2004, but the memories linger in an oddly comforting way. Heartache and frustration are unpleasant but familiar. The Fenway ghosts whisper, “We’ve been here before. This is how it goes. You’ll survive, you always do.”
If the span of winning seasons began at the turn of the Millenium rather than in the early 90s, most Sox and Yankees fans would agree: it’s been better to be in Boston (I researched this hypothesis by asking a few diehard Yankees fans). Since 2000, the Sox have four trophies in spite of five last-place finishes. And the Yankees, who were the powerhouse of the mid-late 90s, have only won one championship since Y2K.
Over the last two decades of stunning success – especially after 86 years of loss – it’s hard to complain. Being a Sox fan is like being married with no chance of divorce. For better or for worse. In sickness and in health. Til death do us part. (For richer or poorer obviously does not apply when the thing you love is a billionaire ballclub.) The bad times make the good times so much better; joy and heartache deepen one another. And the way that the Sox do things, often by bucking expectations in grand fashion, is what makes baseball so special. For the uber-successful Yankees, the World Series almost always seems possible, but Sox make what seems impossible possible.
Ultimately, this game of ‘Would You Rather?’ just reveals the immense privilege Sox and Yankees fans enjoy. The fact that the Yankees also hold the all-time record, with 39 consecutive winning seasons between 1926-64, makes this an indisputable ‘first-world problem.’ While New York and Boston fans sit around debating which way of winning they prefer, Cleveland fans haven’t seen a trophy since the Truman administration. Other MLB teams have never even reached the World Series, let alone won one.
In a few weeks, the Sox will finish their season in disgrace and the Yankees will return to the postseason once again. Next year, it may be different. Either way, we can’t really complain.
