Rivals! In baseball, they can come from anywhere. Typically, it’s supposed to be the teams that are in the same division. But you never know when some foreign entity is going to stop by, stir up a hornets nest over a weekend series, and have you circling the date you visit their park in three months. Also, sometimes a rival can just be, like, a dumb-ass squirrel, or something.
But in MLB, there’s obviously no more yammered-on about match-up than the Yankees and Red Sox, and this year, their overplayed, overblown contests are more inflated with self-importance than ever.