For decades, the rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees was regarded as the best and most intense in baseball, if not in all of sports. In 2007, former MLB commissioner Bud Selig described it as an unparalleled rivalry:
“It’s the greatest rivalry in sports. You can talk about the Dodgers and Giants, the Cardinals and Cubs, the Packers and Bears, Ohio State-Michigan, but there’s nothing like the Red Sox and Yankees. It has history, intensity, proximity and goes all the way back to Babe Ruth. There are all the brawls over the years.”
Britannica catalogs the 10 greatest rivalries in sports history and includes Red Sox vs. Yankees, ranking it above Lakers vs. Celtics and Joe Frazier vs. Muhammad Ali.
In recent years, however, the prominence and intensity of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry have receded. Yankees pitcher Nestor Cortes commented in 2023 on the decline of the rivalry.
Since nature abhors a vacuum, it should come as no surprise that the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry has been supplanted. The rivalry between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres has replaced it as the most captivating and compelling in baseball.
Often referred to as the “I-5 rivalry,” because the home stadiums of the two teams are separated by just a 120-mile drive along Interstate 5 in southern California, the competitiveness and allure of Dodgers-Padres games have exceeded that of all other baseball rivalry games in recent years.
As noted above, Selig commented on the relevance of proximity to the significance of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium are separated by more than 200 miles. Hence, the home parks of the Dodgers and Padres are substantially closer to one another and are not separated by state borders.
Many other factors undergird the ascendance of this west coast rivalry.
The Dodgers recently secured a playoff spot this season, marking the 12th consecutive year they will appear in the postseason. Only two teams in history have longer streaks of postseason appearances — the Atlanta Braves with 14 and the New York Yankees with 13.
The Padres have also locked down a playoff berth this season, and they did so in dramatic fashion, defeating the Dodgers on Tuesday at Dodger Stadium, ending the game with a triple play when Shohei Ohtani was on deck. The next night, Ohtani drove in two runs, leading Los Angeles to a hard-fought, 4-3, win over the Padres, reducing the Dodgers’ magic number for clinching the NL West to two.
The Padres and Dodgers have met seven times in the postseason, with the Dodgers holding a narrow 4-3 edge in these playoff matchups. In 2022, when the Dodgers won 111 games, defeating the Padres in 14 out of 19 games, they seemed destined for the World Series. However, San Diego knocked Los Angeles out of the playoffs in four games.
In recent competition, the Friars and the Boys in Blue have had more than their fair share of bench-clearing incidents, most recently on April 13, when Dodgers pitcher Gavin Stone, who carried a perfect game bid into the fifth inning, threw an inside pitch that nearly hit Jurickson Profar.
Long regarded as the Dodgers’ little brother, the Padres have proven their mettle in recent years, providing fuel to baseball’s new best rivalry.