MEMORANDUM
TO: My wise, handsome editors
FROM: Larry D.
RE: Red Sox-Yankees

This series is turning less into a rivalry and more like a social gathering. (Getty Images)

So in the wake of this sustained stretch of near-adequate performance, I ask you politely and with every iota of humility I can muster: Please, please, please don't make me cover the Red Sox-Yankees series this weekend.

Anything but that. Send me out west to check in on the two sets of NL West slap fights. Send me to Cincinnati to observe the common-sense battle royale between Manny Acta (lots of it) vs. Dusty Baker ("it's the ninth inning, we're down by two and there's a man on first base -- Adam Dunn, prepare to bunt"). Send me to Zimbabwe to see how that whole freedom-of-the-press thing is working out for everybody.

Just don't make me spend another 18 interminable hours in the service of this most fantastically overplayed of baseball rivalries. I beg you.

There's no shortage of non-baseball events to cover. For instance, I could do great work at the Olympic swimming trials in Omaha, because I'm a connoisseur of hot amateur action. There's a NASCAR race in Daytona and, wouldn't you know, I took auto shop in high school. My pale wardrobe and even paler legs make me a natural fit for Wimbledon.

How about the WNBA, perhaps Sunday's clash between the L.A. Showgirls and the Phoenix Cacti? I'm not sure if you've heard, but L.A. has a player who can dunk if her opponents allow her unimpeded access down the court and a mischievous sprite places a small trampoline near the hoop. Our readers want -- nay, they need -- to hear about such feats of athletic majesty, even at the expense of our baseball coverage. By contrast, they're as cooked on Yankees-Red Sox as I am, because these games have been shoved in their snouts ever since the rivalry reheated in the 1999 ALCS.

Part of my own Yankees-Red Sox fatigue has to do with the fact that I have had the great fortune to witness something like 500 of their battles since my baseball fandom commenced. I have enjoyed a great majority of them, even considering that -- ahem -- my particular rooting interests have not been accommodated in recent seasons.

That admission aside, I can't stomach the ugly-ass baseball that the Yankees and Red Sox play against one another nowadays. Their games plod along like a meditative foreign film, with the grace of a mosquito and the charm of a bowling shoe.

Simply put, the quality of competition isn't what it was three or four seasons ago (congratulations, commissioner Selig, on finally achieving the dreaded NFL-ish parity, at least in non-interleague games). Unlike the 2003 and 2004 models, both teams have obvious flaws. The 2008 Red Sox get bored with inferior opponents and sag on the road, while the 2008 Yankees can't catch the ball and take week-long vacations from hitting. Since the start of 2003, the Yankees lead the series (playoffs included) 58 to 55, though the Red Sox have outscored them 643 to 598.

What this means: When the Yankees and Red Sox play, it is not so much a main-event-caliber attraction as one in which two overly familiar foes slug each other stupid. Wars of attrition are less fun in baseball than in actual warfare.

It doesn't help that the outright hatred that once characterized the rivalry -- Carlton Fisk and Graig Nettles going after each other's jugulars, etc. -- is a thing of the past. Today's well-heeled participants clearly regard Yankees-Red Sox games as something other than a death battle. Flash back a series or two ago, when David Ortiz and Derek Jeter giggled away at second base during a Yankees pitching change. I'm guessing the conversation was light on threats of disfigurement and heavy on making plans for a postgame drink at Tenjune. Heck, the Boston players can't even be bothered to slander A-Rod anymore.

So the only ill-will that's left exists between the fans, many of whom hadn't yet familiarized themselves with the intricacies of three-strikes-and-you're-out when the Yankees-Sox rivalry was at its 2003-2004 pinnacle. The Yankees got the head start on accumulating idiot fans, most of whom boarded the bandwagon in mid-October 1996, but the Red Sox have made up considerable ground since September 2004. Nowadays, the pink-replica-cap brigades dominate the stands during Yankees-Red Sox clashes, both in the Bronx and in Boston. You find fewer people keeping score or talking baseball than texting and taking photos.

Even their arguments are boring. Yankee fans weave nostalgic yarns about their dominance in years past (a.k.a. "the 20th Century"); Red Sox fans counter by quietly, confidently noting, "There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow." Actually, no -- they just yell "2004!" with the vigor of an agitated lab monkey.

Maybe the games wouldn't be quite so unwatchable if they proceeded a bit more briskly. Of the five Yanks-Red Sox contests so far in 2008, one passed the four-hour mark (4:08) and another approached it (3:55). Without extending into extra innings. The quickest of the games climaxed in a mere 2:49, or roughly 50 minutes longer than Tuesday night's gladiatorial tilt between the Rockies and the Padres.

The New York and Boston hitters dawdle, call time, fidget with their batting gloves and their body armor. The men on the mound take a solid 45 seconds between each pitch, the hi-def cameras capturing their every well-exfoliated pore. Then the Yankee Stadium high command adds 13 excruciating minutes to the proceedings with its seventh-inning-stretch freedomfest, which proves night-in, night-out on how Mariano Rivera isn't cowed by the terrorists. It's all too much.

Listen, I love baseball. I love watching it, listening to it, playing it (badly), talking about it, writing about it, and thinking about it, even in the shower. But I no longer love Yankees-Red Sox baseball, not in its current diminished state. I'll check in on the games out of habit, but I won't live and die with them like I used to. Life's too short.

So take pity on me, sweet editors, and punish some other wayward writer with Yankees-Red Sox duty. I call upon your senses of mercy and justice, and you are very merciful and just men. Handsome, too. Have I mentioned that?