After the joyous people of Boston have finished their busy off-season spent dousing fires, recovering from plagues, warding off locusts and frogs, and sending the four horsemen on their way with Dunkin' Donuts coffee and coffee-cake muffins, they should sit down and listen to the bad news.

The Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is dead.

Dozens of books have been written about this storied rivalry. The "Curse," if you choose to believe in such things, was invoked to indefinitely hold down the Red Sox for the crime of trading Babe Ruth to their hated rivals. Bucky Dent and Aaron Boone had profanities permanently added as middle names. Even the definition of the word "rivalry" was debated, with Yankees fans claiming that a 26-0 (over the prior 86 years) edge in championships denotes domination more than competition.

For 86 long years, this rivalry was the best in any sport. Virtually every Yankees-Sox game in that period meant something. Even before the teams could meet in the postseason, the battles for the American League pennant were brutal. Recent postseason battles only ratcheted up the dial, including Aaron Boone's stake through the heart of Red Sox Nation in the 2003 ALCS, and the subsequent historic Boston rally (and equally historic Yankees choke job) in last year's ALCS.

Defeating the Yankees in that series though, did not officially kill the rivalry, as "The Curse" still lived on. But once that final World Series ball landed safely in Doug Mientkiewicz's glove (and later, in his wife's purse), the curse was dead and the rivalry went into the ground with it.

Heck, I wanted it to make me soft.

The mean, bitter, hard edge with which I've always approached the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is not only irrational but quite unattractive. How many times can you hear your embarrassed wife announce to your fellow guests at a wedding, "Actually, he's not kidding," before you start hoping you can change?

For years I've wondered — in that eternal Yin-Yang spiral — was my love of the Red Sox as great as my hatred of the Yankees. Over time, the distinction dissolved. Loving the Red Sox was hating the Yankees. Winning meant beating the Yankees. There was no other path.

When the Red Sox won the World Series, I figured everything had changed. Baseball could be a pastime for us again. Sitting on the porch, sipping lemonade, listening to the radio. It didn't have to be rewinding every pitch on the Tivo to see if the ump blew it and reading the game threads on the Sox message boards and calling your buddies 10 times a game.

We could return to reality, take it down, oh, about a thousand notches, you know, to like a Cubs-Cardinals kind of intensity. I was looking forward to a world where everyone in my life wouldn't know my precise mood from April through October based on that day's box score.

But then, after the Empire signed Randy Johnson, I caught myself rooting for some slight subluxation of a vertebrae in his fragile back — not crippling, just limiting — and I knew some things would never change.