Perhaps it’s because the Red Sox are so mediocre this year. Perhaps it’s because we’re still in July 4 mode. And perhaps it’s because there’s no illusion by any intelligent Red Sox fan that there’s going to be any kind of a pennant race with the Yankees.Whatever, the buzz just isn’t there. The Yankees are in two for four games ? including a day-night doubleheader Saturday ? and there’s very little clamor to go along with it.What’s the matter here? The Sox-Yankees rivarly is supposed to be one of sports America’s oldest and fiercest, but here we are, July, one of the prime months of the season, and it’s as if the Milwaukee Brewers are in town for a four-gamer.So maybe it’s time to put this whole rivalry in the perspective of the city’s other hammer-and-tong athletic drama fests.Do the Sox and Yankees make up the fiercest sports rivalry ni Boston? I’d say by all accounts, yes, it does. There’s just too much history to think otherwise. Start with the Red Sox selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees and seeing the franchises take off in opposite directions for over a quarter of a century therefter, and add the decade of the 2000s and you have something truly historic.But for my money, No. 2 is a lot closer to No. 1 than you may think. And it has everything to do with when I was growing up in the 1960s. By then, the Yankees were terrible and the Sox were three or four years removed from the impossible dream. In fact, almost every season, from the end of the fifties to 1976, either the Red Sox or the Yankees – awnd a couple of times both – finished under .500.So to me, even to this day, the rivalry that makes my blood boil the most is Bruins-Canadiens. Every time the Bruins were in a position to do anything, and the Canadiens stood in the way ? the Canadiens never got out of the way. There was 1969, 1971, 1977, 1978 and 1979 (too many men on the ice).Last year, when the Bruins won the Stanley Cup, the thing that made it sweetest was the fact that they beat Montreal along the way. When the Bruins won in 1970 and 1972, they didn’t play Montreal in the playoffs. But that year in between, 1971, Ken Dryden, a rookie, stopped them cold.But for the sake of history, B’s-Habs are a solid No. 2.The next two belong to the Celtics, and they’re between the Lakers and 76ers, in that order.The Lakers should be obvious. But the Sixers had Wilt Chamberlain in the mid-sixties, before he got traded to the Lakers, and that’s when the Bill Russell-Chamberlain rivalry really got going. It peaked again briefly in the early 80s when Julius Erving was on the Sixers.The Patriots and Jets get in there at No. 5, but until Bill Parcells jumped ship and initiated the “border wars,” the Jets were just another perpetually bad team. The Pats had bigger rivalries with the Bills and Dolphins.Now, though, there’s no denying Pats-Jets have become one of the NFL’s more celebrated rivalries (they’ll be playing in Jersey on Thanksgiving night this year). So I guess we have to include it here.Right now, though, we’re about to experience a rivalry in name only. Sadly, nobody cares about the Sox and Yankees this year.Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].