Mookie Betts Gives Decisive Answer As to Best Rivalry He’s Been a Part of

To the 2018 AL MVP, the debate between Red Sox–Yankees and Dodgers-Padres is no contest.

Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts has seen some of baseball's most compelling feuds up close and personal over the course of his 10-year career.

He spent six years with the Red Sox, which coincided with the rise of the Yankees' current generation of stars. His second season in Los Angeles, 2021, featured some of the franchise's most compelling games against the Giants in history. Now, he and Los Angeles regularly tussle with the loaded Padres.

To Betts, however, the choice as to which rivalry is best is clear.

“New York-Boston is a lot more hostile (than Los Angeles-San Diego),” Betts said in an interview on ESPN during the Dodgers’ Sunday night duel with San Diego.

Indeed, Boston and New York have been playing since 1901—nearly seven decades before the Padres’ 1969 founding. Los Angeles and the Padres’ rivalry has only heated up in recent years; only four times in the three-division era have both teams made the playoffs in the same season.

Perhaps this explains Betts’s preference for the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry best: he has 57 RBIs against New York, and just 23 against San Diego in about half as many plate appearances.