The Yankees and Red Sox will renew their acquaintance for one more 3 game series in 2010, in the regular season’s penultimate set of games. As usual, playoff implications should once again be on the line when the two teams take the field at Yankee Stadium on September 24, 25 and 26. The Yankees currently lead the AL East, facing intense competition from both the Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays currently trail the Yanks by just one game, with the Red Sox sitting in 3^rd place, well within striking distance. The three AL East leaders are put in a unique situation by the lack of parity found throughout the rest of the American League. Were any of the three to relocate the Central or Western divisions, they would either find themselves as division leaders or mired in merely a two team race, with the Texas Rangers standing as the sole team in the AL with a comparable record.The Rays have posed formidable competition in recent seasons, but prior to 2008 Tampa Bay had never experienced a winning season in their 10 seasons of franchise history. The Red Sox and Yankees on the other hand, provide the most talked about, watched, written about and intensely scrutinized rivalry in all of Major League Baseball, if not professional sports. The two teams first met on April 26^th, 1901, back when the Yankees franchise was based in Baltimore (they would relocate to New York in 1903 and adopt the Yankees as their official moniker in 1913). The Yankees have an edge in the cumulative series, with a record of 1,124 Wins, 938 Losses and 14 ties against the Red Sox, winning at a .545 clip. The teams have met three times in postseason play, with the Yankees taking 11 of 19 games. However most recently, in 2004, to the delight of Red Sox nation, Boston emerged victorious in one of the most memorable series to date. Down 3 games to 0 in the ALCS, the Red Sox rattled off 4 straight wins to advance to the World Series, where they would later dispose of the Cardinals in just 4 games.