Bet you can’t get enough of this.

Actually, Major League Baseball is banking on you not being able to get enough of these rivalries. That’s why divisional rivals like Boston and New York play one another a staggering 19 times a season.

With the Sox and Yanks, even that isn’t enough. Last year, they had to play seven more times in the ALCS. And that wasn’t enough, because they had to play a couple of extra innings in Game 7 before Aaron “Bleeping” Boone could join Bucky “Bleeping” Dent and Mookie “Bleeping” Wilson in the annals of Red Sox disappointment.

So today, the Red Sox and Yankees will play each other again, the 19th meeting of the season. If you add the post-season to the mix, it’s the 45th time they’ve played one another since Opening Day 2003.

How tight has this rivalry been of late? Including the playoffs, the Sox took the field last night with a 21-22 record against their rivals in the past 18 months. Go back another year, and the record is still 30-32.

These teams have played each other so often that Pedro Martinez has now thrown 189 innings against the Yankees in his career. That’s an entire season’s worth of work against one team. Maybe that’s why he’s a .500 career pitcher against New York – there are no surprises left in his arsenal.

Can the rivalry sustain itself? What if Lewiston played Edward Little every Saturday? Would the fourth game of the season be as exciting as the season finale? As the season opener? At some point, you need to take a breath and find a little perspective.

But the teams won’t let us. If Jason Varitek isn’t smashing Alex Rodriguez in the mouth with his catcher’s mitt, Don Zimmer is charging across the field in a failed open-field tackle on Pedro Martinez. Or the Sox are stunning Mariano Rivera with a ninth-inning win at the Stadium. Or the Yankees are answering back with a 9-0 lead after two innings the next day.

Seems this rivalry is as hot as ever, and that’s really saying something for two teams that had some pretty intense dugout-clearing brawls in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It has been stoked by the two front offices (let’s not forget that it was Red Sox President/CEO Larry Lucchino who first called the Yankees “the Evil Empire.”)

The intensity of Sox/Yankees conflict got turned up a notch when the Wild Card was introduced in 1995. Now, all those great regular-season games between Boston and New York were just the warm-up act (and, yes, that 163rd game in 1978 was a regular-season game.) The Sox and Yankees have now met twice in post-season play, culminating in last year’s epoch seven-game ALCS.

Is there any doubt the Sox and Yankees will meet again after today? It almost seems as thought it’s preordained. Each team expects to win it all – and it almost seems like a World Series championship for either would be cheapened if it didn’t come after an ALCS victory against the rival.

So kick back and enjoy the game this afternoon. You can do it guilt-free, since the Pats are on a bye week. Curt Schilling will be cranked up as he pitches his final Fenway game before the playoffs.

Just try to temper your excitement. Regardless of what happens today, the business between these two teams is far from over.

Lewiston native Tom Caron covers the Red Sox for NESN.