EagleTribune.com, North Andover, MA

BOSTON - Doug Mientkiewicz knows all about obsession.

He used to play for the Red Sox. Now he plays for the Yankees.

"I remember coming here as a Twin early in my career and just not understanding it at all," he said yesterday while rubbing pine tar on his bats in the visitor's clubhouse at Fenway Park. "Starting to be around it a little bit and now having played for both sides, it's a different phenomenon."

Call it different, funny, crazy, annoying - even illogical - but it's true. People around here are obsessed with the Yankees. They always have been, they always will be.

Even with fourth-place New York (23-30) bombing worse than "Georgia Rule," the fixation persists.

Red Sox utility man Alex Cora likens it to a rivalry he was once part of.

He played college baseball at the University of Miami. He got fired up for every UM-Florida State football game he attended. He cared more about the match-up and less about which team happened to be having a better season at the time.

"It didn't matter if one of the teams wasn't very good," he said before the Red Sox beat the Yankees, 11-6, to snap a two-game skid and improve to 37-17, "it was still a big game."

Passion occasionally produces surreal, hilarious situations.

Mientkiewicz cited the time in 2004 - only two days after he was traded to Boston - when three nuns gave him a vial of holy water. For good luck, they told him.

"I was shocked they knew who I was," Mientkiewicz said, "I was walking away going 'Did that really just happen to me? This is crazy.' That's when I said, 'You know what, we've got God on our side this year.'"

When the Red Sox were down 3-0 to the Yankees in the American League Championship Series that October, Mientkiewicz walked past a grown man weeping on the street.

"A lot of people live and die with what we do," he said. "That's nothing to slouch at."

A lot of people also take the obsession to strange new extremes.

Take Friday for example, when several fans wore masks meant to resemble the blonde woman Alex Rodriguez appeared with on the cover of The New York Post. Yesterday, a young man sitting a row behind the Red Sox dugout wore a white T-Shirt with the words "A-Rod wears lipstick" printed on it.

"You have to be impressed with their creativity," Boston reliever Javier Lopez said. "They don't just look at stats; they look at social life and everything else. Anything to get an edge, I guess."

When it comes to the Yankees, antagonism is paramount. Cooler heads rarely prevail.

"You see fights in the stands," Mientkiewicz said with a grin. "Hey man, I love this game, but I don't think I'd come to blows with somebody over it."

He and his Yankee teammates almost did just that Friday night. A series of bean balls - including Scott Proctor's high fastball that may have trimmed an inch or two off Kevin Youkilis' beard - provided a bit of drama missing from the rivalry this spring.

Before yesterday's game, Red Sox manager Terry Francona refused to bite when asked about Proctor's intent.

"It's dangerous to look into someone's thought processes," he shrugged.

A different kind of surreal moment - this one involving Mientkiewicz - occurred in the seventh inning yesterday. Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell, who was charging down the line trying to leg out a ground ball, unintentionally kneed the fully extended first baseman in the back of the head.

As Mientkiewicz, groggy but awake, was carted off the field, the fans cheered loudly (he was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital for precautionary tests). It didn't matter that he was a Yankee and the guy who held the World Series winning ball hostage from the Red Sox two years ago. For the first time in the series, the fans' obsession gave way to sympathy.

At that point, I couldn't help but think to something Mientkiewicz said before the game.

"Trust me," he said. "I've played other places where the passion isn't as high. I'd rather have it this way than the other way."