Somehow we’re approaching 20 years since the Red Sox/Yankees’ most gruesome chapter reached 212 degrees Fahrenheit. The Red Sox and Yankees still share a division, and the games they play — like the four at Yankee Stadium this weekend — are still entertaining elements of the summer.

They’ve even played in the playoffs since those epic encounters in 2003 and 2004, and while they tried to generate some old-style mutual disdain—remember Aaron Judge whistling “New York, New York” as he left Fenway Park after Game 2 of the ALDS?—even that wasn’t the same. Not really, not quite.

No. The Sox/Yanks era of 2003-04 set a bar that had never been reached before, despite all the malevolence of Fisk/Munson, despite all the wonderful memories of the 1978 championship chase, despite all the lyrical memories of the summer of 1949, despite all the fear that paralyzed certain elements of Red Sox Nation whenever the name “Frazee” was uttered.

These 2003-04 teams were the Frazier and Ali of baseball, so called because both teams scored a knockout. Despite the great history of Boston-New York baseball, it was never really a rivalry because for over 80 years only one side ever won. The rivalry between the Yankees and the Sox was like the rivalry between a hammer and a nail.

It was a grandiose “feud”.

It was an excellent “argument”.

However, this didn’t develop into a real rivalry until 2003 and 2004, when the schedules were still heavily focused on games against teams from their own division. In those two seasons, the Yankees and Sox met 38 times. The Sox won 20 of those games, the Yankees 18. Both years they met in the ALCS and both times went all the way: Yankees 7, Red Sox 7.

“I’m a sports fan,” Aaron Boone said Thursday afternoon, hours before the No. 1 Yankees began a thrilling series against the wild-card hopefuls Red Sox. “I get those moments in sports where you know where you were and you remember it and you have a story to go with it. Hearing the stories of people over the years, no matter what side of the record they were on, who have a personal, memorable story to go with it, that was great.”

Boone was, of course, referring specifically to the moment that will forever He created that He He hit a home run on one of the late Tim Wakefield’s knuckleballs to help the Yankees win the 2003 ALCS championship with a 6-5 victory in Game 7.

That evening, October 16, 2003, as he was doused with champagne and greeted by his teammates, Boone had excitedly said, “I want to know this: What are all these people doing in my dream?”

Boone said he doesn’t often talk about his best single swing as a baseball player, “only when people ask me about it or talk to me about it or tell a story about it. That’s been the cool thing about all these years, getting to know different people.”

What makes this Sox/Yanks chapter so unique and almost unprecedented is that it was easy to believe we were living through a once-in-a-lifetime experience that October. It couldn’t be topped. How could you top the drama of the Yankees recovering from a 4-1 deficit with five outs to go against Pedro Martinez, one of the two or three best pitchers of this generation?

Red Sox fans, like kids today, said, “Hold my beer.” And then they pulled off the greatest comeback – or the greatest collapse, depending on whether you live in New England or New York – in the history of professional sports. And when that happened, as impossible as it seemed, we said at the time, “From Course that’s what happened.”

And so it happened: Angry Yankees officials, impatient with Red Sox fans refusing to leave the stadium after Game 7 in 2004, approached George Steinbrenner. And Steinbrenner, who despised the Red Sox more than any other human being, shook his head.

“Let them stay as long as they want,” he said. “They deserve it.”

Yes. It’s different now. It’s still nice for Yankees fans when they beat the Red Sox, and vice versa. It’s just not that way anymore… essential as they once were. Maybe one day. It’s worth being for. Really.