Three games into it and it's already starting between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.

Three games into a new season and the manager of the Sox, Terry Francona, and the heart of the Yankees, Derek Jeter, both end up in the hospital.

Three games into it and Yankees' closer and future Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera has not only blown two save opportunities against the Sox but has been ignominiously booed off his home field at Yankee Stadium for it.

Three games into it and the Sox have already faced their first "must win'' situation, at least according to Boston's often breathless media, which is a reminder of what the Sox former manager, Grady Little, once lamented was the real curse of playing baseball in Boston.

"In baseball you play 162 games,'' Little said. "In Boston, they play 162 seasons.''

That is how it's always been in Boston and not even winning the World Series last fall to snap an 86-year drought, and doing it at the expense of the hated Yankees, has seemed to change things all that much except in one important area.

It's really a rivalry now.

You can have hatred, which exists in buckets between New York and Boston, easily enough but you can't have a rivalry if one side always wins.

Ali-Frazier was a rivalry because they split their first two fights.

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Robinson-LaMotta was not a rivalry because Sugar Ray won five out of their six meetings.

The New York Knicks used to think they had a rivalry with the Boston Celtics but it was only in their minds because they never beat a great Celtic team, of which there have been many more than great Knick teams.

Celtics-Lakers was a different story.

That's what it is between the Sox and Yankees now too. It's a different story.

Now it's Yankee fans so on edge they boo perhaps the greatest closer in history because he blows two straight 3-2 leads to the Red Sox, even though Jeter drilled a walkoff home run in the first game to give New York the win any way. That's the kind of reaction they used to reserve for Fenway Park's denizens.

"I think it's inexcusable if the boos were from Yankee fans because they wouldn't be crawling all over themselves to get into the ballpark if it weren't for him,'' Yankee manager Joe Torre said Wednesday after Rivera was charged with five runs in the ninth inning as a 3-2 lead dissolved into a 7-3 defeat.

They booed Rivera even though Alex Rodriguez booted a routine double play ball that allowed most of Rivera's troubles to happen. Booed the guy most responsible, in the eyes of many, for the last few Yankee pennants.

Booed him because he's now blown his last four save opportunities against the Sox, dating back to last year's American League Championship Series, when he and the Yankees authored the biggest collapse in playoff history when they blew a 3-0 lead and were swept into oblivion in four straight shocking defeats by the crimson hose.

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