THIS SUNDAY, the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees will open the Major League Baseball season as they renew hostilities at New York’s hallowed Yankee Stadium. When the two teams last met, the occasion was marked by the Red Sox celebrating on the Yankees’ home field after winning the American League pennant and becoming the first team in baseball history to win a series after trailing three games to none. It was either the greatest comeback in sports history or the biggest choke; the labels are equally satisfying.

Here in Red Sox Nation, we don’t like the Yankees. In actuality, we loathe them. We despise them. When Red Sox team president Larry Lucchino labeled the Gothamites “the Evil Empire” three years ago, we considered it a statement of the obvious; the comparison was particularly apt given George Steinbrenner’s unmistakable similarities to Darth Vader. So passionate is the hatred for the Yankees that when several hundred thousand Bostonians gathered to celebrate the Patriots Super Bowl triumph in 2002, a spontaneous chant of “Yankees Suck” erupted.