Rivalry worth a few Schillings

Watch "The Jerry Springer Show" sometime, and you can see some low-class losers brawl. Watch the Yankees and the Red Sox fight over available players, and you can see the exact opposite: what it's like to see upper-class superpowers tussle.\nI will very much look forward to watching the Red Sox and Yankees play in 2004. I'm more ambivalent about "Springer."\nThe latest hot-stove salvos in the rivalry occurred last weekend when the Red Sox acquired five-time All-Star pitcher Curt Schilling in a trade with the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Yankees signed seven-time All-Star free agent outfielder Gary Sheffield away from the Atlanta Braves. Schilling, 37, got a two-year, $25.5 million contract extension from the Red Sox as a condition to the deal. Sheffield, 35, will get $36-$38 million over three years from the Yankees to play right field.\nSure, in ways, the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is fraudulent. For one thing, if one team or the other decided not to spend the gross national product of Honduras on their team payroll, it would be a lot more lopsided. For another, how could there be a rivalry if one team has won 26 world championships and the other none since 1918?\nBut it isn't lopsided. And the rivalry has gotten so good it doesn't need the East Coast hype machine that supports it. \nThe Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is a prime argument why things like salary caps and luxury taxes are awful and pointless. Of course, it took two teams that couldn't care less about baseball's luxury tax system agreed to during the August 2002 collective bargaining agreement negotiations to show that it's pointless.\nNow, every move seems like an attempt to counter the other with both teams appearing headed for 100-win seasons. It's amazing how actual competition makes teams better. What a concept.\nWho is going to have the bigger impact? I will always take the hitter over the starting pitcher because the hitter plays every day, and the starting pitcher plays only once every five days. \nHaving said that, those put off by Schilling's 8-9 record for Arizona in 2003 need to look more closely. Schilling was fifth in the league in earned-run average at 2.95, and he was fifth in the league in strikeouts with 194 even though he was limited to 168 innings due to injury. Couple him with Pedro Martinez, still second in the American League in strikeouts and first in ERA, and the Red Sox have two guys who average more than four strikeouts per walk allowed -- with Schilling, it's actually closer to six to one. That is a top two that will not beat itself and be capable of dominating an opponent on any given day.\nThe No. 3 starter on the Red Sox is Derek Lowe, who is only 38-15 over the last two seasons. That is much better than hoping that Tim Wakefield's knuckleball is floating in all the right places, or that John Burkett's bone chips are floating in all the right places.\nIf Schilling's oft-overpowering high fastball is faster than a speeding bullet, then Sheffield is the guy who can catch it with his teeth. The rules of the game say that Sheffield must use a bat, and he does well with that too, hitting .330 with 39 homers and 132 RBIs in 2003 with the Braves. He will hit his 400th homer with the Yankees after stealing his 200th base last year in Atlanta. He also has a keen batting eye.\nPlay word association with Sheffield though, and the two words that come to mind are "bat speed." He even showed in the playoffs that he can hit Kerry Wood's breakneck high fastball for a base hit. Raising the bat high above his head and snapping it back and forth, he's fearsome because he's fearless.\nPut him in a lineup with Derek Jeter, Jason Giambi, Bernie Williams, Hideki Matsui, Alfonso Soriano, Nick Johnson and Jorge Posada, the guy who would have gotten my Most Valuable Player vote, and a great lineup just got scarier and perhaps more importantly, Josh Beckett-proof.\nThe Yankees' history of success and the Red Sox' history of heartbreak only add to the rivalry. The Red Sox only want it more badly. The Yankees, or should I say, George Steinbrenner, realize that they never want to build the team that loses to the Red Sox. It hasn't been that way with the Cubs-Cardinals rivalry, for instance, because the Cubs never seemed bothered by it and because the teams' fans really don't hate each other.\nWith Yankees-Red Sox, the competition has become oddly pure. Springer wouldn't understand.