Who has won more games in the historic Red Sox vs. Yankees rivalry?

The New York Yankees have won significantly more games than the Boston Red Sox in their historic rivalry, which is one of the most storied and passionate in all of American professional sports. Over the course of more than a century of competition dating back to the early 1900s, the Yankees hold a substantial advantage in head-to-head matchups. Through the many decades of regular season play, New York has won roughly 55 to 57 percent of the games played between the two clubs, giving them a clear historical edge in terms of raw win totals. The dominance of the Yankees in this rivalry was particularly pronounced during the early and middle portions of the twentieth century. Much of this advantage traces back to one of the most infamous transactions in sports history, when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees after the 1919 season. Ruth had helped Boston win multiple World Series titles, but after his departure he became the cornerstone of a Yankees dynasty that would go on to win numerous championships. Boston, meanwhile, went 86 years without winning a World Series, a drought that fans and sportswriters came to call the Curse of the Bambino. During this long stretch, the Yankees won championship after championship while the Red Sox frequently fell short, often in heartbreaking fashion. Some of the most dramatic moments in the rivalry came in high-stakes postseason situations, and these moments tended to favor New York for much of the twentieth century. The 1978 American League East tiebreaker game, won by the Yankees on Bucky Dent's improbable home run, is one example that still stings for Red Sox fans. The 2003 American League Championship Series, in which Aaron Boone hit a walk-off home run in the eleventh inning of Game 7 to send the Yankees to the World Series, was another crushing defeat for Boston. These moments reinforced the perception that the Yankees had a psychological and competitive edge over their rivals when it mattered most. However, the modern era has seen the Red Sox close the gap considerably and even shift the balance of power at times. Boston's 2004 ALCS comeback from three games down against the Yankees, which remains the only such comeback in baseball postseason history, was a watershed moment that effectively ended the Curse of the Bambino narrative. The Red Sox went on to win the World Series that year and have since added additional championships in 2007, 2013, and 2018, giving them four titles in the twenty-first century compared to the Yankees' one during that same span. This recent success has made the rivalry feel more balanced than it was for most of its history. So while the Yankees still hold the overall historical advantage in games won between the two teams, the gap has narrowed, and the rivalry remains intensely competitive. Both franchises are among the most successful in baseball history, and their games consistently draw enormous attention from fans and media alike. The combination of historical weight, passionate fan bases, geographic proximity between Boston and New York, and the frequency with which both teams contend for division titles ensures that this rivalry will continue to be one of the defining features of Major League Baseball for years to come.