New York Yankees

The Red Sox and Yankees rivalry is about to heat up. These two teams are probably the two best teams of the past 10 years, but which one has been better?

So lets get this going...

Overall regular season record: Over the past eight seasons, the Yankees' overall regular season record is 775-521. That includes three straight seasons of over 100 wins and seven seasons of over 90. This also includes six division championships.

CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira had two horrendous opening days, but are you honestly going to start freaking out about them? I hope not.

Their performances yesterday were nothing like what these players are used to doing. Sabathia walked five batters yesterday, and he averaged 2.1 walks per nine innings last season. Teixeira went 0-for-4 with five runners left on base, and Teixeira drove in 121 runs last season.

Bucky "f#@king" Dent was given a new middle name by Red Sox supporters after his 1978 home run in Fenway Park. It stuck with him for decades into the future.

Kyle Farnsworth earned that same middle name from Yankee fans as a result of his unreliable and putrid relief efforts.

Yesterday the Yankees trotted out their 140-million dollar ace to wow the lowly likes of the Baltimore Orioles. CC Sabathia, the reason the Brewers were in the playoffs last year, the work-horse who has thrown more innings in the past two years than anyone, Goliath himself, had one really bad day.

But it wasn't his fault.

It was windy, so the pitches weren't going where he wanted.

The crushing weight of being the Yankee's ace was way too tough—he's not used to it yet.

Once teammates, and now rivals in a different country, Hideki Matsui and Koji Uehara have a ton of similarities:

• Both are 34 years old and were born in Japan.
• Both players were first round picks of the Yomiuri Giants.
• Both players showed superb skills during their playing days in Japan.
• Both players were also friends off the field.

But now the biggest difference is that one is in pinstripes and the other is an Oriole.

Major League Baseball instituted a new rule allowing the umpires to watch instant replays of controversial home run calls last season. I’m wondering if that rule has carried over into 2009.

Last season, Alex Rodriguez hit a home run that looked like it was easily fair at the time, but the umpires took an extra five minutes to check it out.

The 2009 MLB baseball season just started, with the Atlanta Braves playing the defending champion Phillies as we speak.

On Monday, some games to watch include the AL East showdown between my Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays, Texas plays the new-look Indians, and of course, the match-up which includes a storied rivalry, the Dodgers against the Giants.

Many changes took place during the offseason. As you know, the Yankees transformed themselves into contenders overnight, acquiring big bat Mark Teixeira, southpaw C.C Sabathia, pitcher A.J. Burnett, and Nick Swisher.

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A fearless forecast? There’s no such thing; everyone fears injuries.

This forecast is based on teams' abilities to play old school baseball, which should be  new school baseball in these post-steroid days.