After Boston Marathon bombing, Yankees and Red Sox call a truce

Monday afternoon Patton Oswalt posted an uplifting missive on his Facebook page after the Boston Marathon bombing. Despite the horror, he said, we can take comfort in the fact that far more people on Earth want to do good than harm. “The good outnumber you,” he wrote. The page has been liked over 300,000 times and seemed to warm the heart of the entire Internet.

But, seriously, even that message kind of pales in comparison to the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox laying down their rivalry and calling a truce for the first time since 1918.

If you’ve ever been to a Yankees-Red Sox game, you know how bitter the acrimony is. Though the “curse of the Bambino” (set when Babe Ruth left the Sox for New York) was technically broken in 2004 when the Sox won their first World Series since 1918, the bitterness has lingered on. Especially if you’ve ever been a Boston fan at a game in New York or vice versa, you know well the unsettling feeling of being behind enemy lines. I was once with my brother when he was wearing a Boston hat in Yankees Stadium, and it felt like swimming in a shark tank.

But the Yankees took the high road on Tuesday, not only tweeting messages of support but displaying their team insignia alongside the Sox outside Yankees Stadium with the message “United We Stand.” Even further, the Yanks said they’d tip a hat to the Sox by playing the Fenway Park favorite, Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” in the 3rd inning at Yankees Stadium Tuesday:

Sure, it’s just baseball. But nearly a century of animosity and god knows how many fistfights along the way, all laid down after the Boston disaster. It’s tragic that it takes events like this to bury the hatchet, but it proves Patton Oswalt’s point: After tragedies, we can at least take comfort in the fact that the good among us outnumber the bad. Good on you, Yanks.

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- Death and Taxes Mag