Boston fans hated the Yankees back then, just as they do now, but it was as much of a rivalry as the current Notre Dame-Army football rivalry. When one rival always wins, it’s hardly worth the effort it takes to pay attention.

In the five seasons from 1938-42, the rivalry heated up to something approaching room temperature as the Red Sox finished second to the Yankees four times. But that was deceiving, as Boston finished those four years anywhere from nine to 17 games behind the Yankees.

In 1946, with Ted Williams back from World War II, the Red Sox finally won the American League pennant for the first time in 38 years, but even then, it wasn’t the Yankees, who finished third, they beat, but Detroit. Only in 1949, 30 years after Ruth went to New York to build a stadium and a dynasty, did the two teams finally fight the kind of season-long battle with which we’ve become familiar.

Playing a 155-game schedule because of an official tie, the Sox swept the Yankees in games 148-150 to take a one-game lead with four to play. But Boston lost three of its final four, including the final two games of the season to the Yankees, to finish one game out.

That Yankees team won five straight World Series, which remains the record, and Boston sank back into the primeval ooze, never finishing higher than third for the next 17 seasons. By the time they got back to the World Series in 1967, where they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven — Bob Gibson pitched three complete-game victories, including Games 1 and 7 — the Yankees had fallen into a steep decline from which they would not emerge until 1976, one year after Boston returned briefly to the top of the American League, only to lose another seven-game epic to Cincinnati.

The year Baby Boomers remember is 1978, when the Yankees, who in 1977 had won their first World Series since 1962, were 14 games back more than halfway through the season and Boston was cruising to the pennant. But George Steinbrenner, back in the days when he changed managers as often as he changed the oil in the limo, fired Billy Martin, hired Bob Lemon, and sat back and watched the Yankees reel in Boston.

They ended the season tied, and all that needs to be said about the one-game playoff that settled things is “Bucky Bleeping Dent.”

In 2003, Dent was joined by Aaron “Bleeping” Boone, who ended another seven-game playoff set-too between the two teams with a Yankees win.

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The Red Sox, as every Boston child old enough to play pat-a-cake has been taught by doting parents, broke the Curse of the Bambino — and the hearts of Yankee fans — in 2004, when the “Idiots” came back from a 0-3 hole in the ALCS to beat the hated Yankees and sweep the Cardinals to bring the championship back to Fenway after an 86-year absence.

That ramped everything up yet another level, and we’re the beneficiaries. When the season began, we circled these games and the series in New York next month. We thought — and hoped — the two teams would be neck-and-neck by the time we got here, and they haven’t let us down.

So clear off your schedules and lay in an extra supply of whatever fuel you need to get through the games. It’s Red Sox and Yankees. It’s what we’ve been waiting all year to see. It’s the best show in sports.

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