What better way to start a new baseball season than the post-curse Boston Red Sox visiting Yankee Stadium on Sunday night, April 3. The edgiest rivalry in sports has a different feel to it now, so why wait to see how it plays out with the Red Sox in the role of defending world champions for the first time in 86 years?

The only thing missing will be Curt Schilling. But he will be back in the Red Sox’s rotation soon enough, and two teams that have been separated by the thinnest of margins in head-to-head competition in recent years will go at it again in the American League East, where they have finished 1-2 for the last seven years.

That won’t change this season, as the Yankees’ payroll has crossed the $200-million threshold, while the Red Sox are a distant second but solidly ahead of everybody else in the game. But the two teams that walked off the field after a dramatic ALCS Game 7 last October have been altered significantly. So let’s take a closer look at how they match up heading into 2005:

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