Who’s the Evil Empire now?

That question has become relevant in these last weeks of the regular season because the Boston Red Sox are running away from the New York Yankees in the American League East and making the six games remaining between the teams irrelevant. In the last several weeks the rabid rivals simply haven’t played in the same ball park.

As the Red Sox have separated themselves from the Yankees, opening a 10 ½-game lead, largest of the season, the teams haven’t seemed to be close competitors. I suppose that’s what prompted a reader to ask who the Evil Empire is today.

The question alludes to the name attached to the Yankees 15 years ago when they …

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As the days of the season dwindle down to a precious few, the Yankees are unlikely to catch the Red Sox in their season-long quest for the American League East title even though the teams play each other six more times. The Yankees, on the other hand, are unlikely to squander their position as one of the wild-card teams in the A.L. playoffs.

The Mariners had an outside chance to pave the Yankees’ way out of the playoffs altogether because they had a three-game series with the Yankees this past weekend. But the Yankees won the first two games, preventing a Seattle sweep and lengthening the distance between to 11 games with 21 to play.

Thus, I don’t think it’s premature to say the Yankees have won their bet. The wild card isn’t ideal; it guarantees only …

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In earlier times it was simple. Representatives of Major League Baseball and the Players Association would negotiate for weeks, more likely months, in an effort to reach accord on terms of a new basic agreement. Unable to agree on those terms, they would call time outs. The first eight negotiations were interrupted by work stoppages – five strikes and three lockouts.

After a 234-day strike, prompted by the owners’ foolish demand for a payroll cap, more commonly but erroneously known as a salary cap, Commissioner Bud Selig saw the light and decided peace was better and more lucrative than war. Selig adopted a mantra of peace, not war, and the owners followed his lead through the end of his tenure in January 2015.

Since the day the players returned to work in 1995, courtesy of an injunction issued by Judge (now Supreme Court Justice) Sonia Sotomayor, the owners and the players have existed peacefully. That’s a span of 23 years, and when the current agreement expires Dec. 1, 2021, it will be a quarter century plus a year since …

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