The baseball season is two weeks old, and the Red Sox have played practically one-third of their games against the New York Yankees.

Let’s face it: having the Sox play the Yankees this early, this often, is brutal.

It takes time for a baseball team to find its rhythm. A baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s what makes the game special. You don’t get pumped up to charge into a baseball game in April. It’s a month to roll into the nightly grind. A time for pitchers to build up arm strength and hitters to get their timing down.

Instead, the Red Sox season got started with all the subtlety of a runaway freight train. Boston in New York on a Sunday night before the nation. Two more at The Stadium. A rematch on Monday in Boston, after a ceremony that had New Englanders crying from Providence to Presque Isle.

This rivalry, more than 100 years old, has reached a new level over the past two years. The two teams have played one another 58 times, and the Red Sox lead that stretch of games 27-25. It just doesn’t get much closer.

In his wonderful new book, Emperors and Idiots, Mike Vaccaro said these teams have given fans “more terrific baseball than most baseball fans get to see in two decades” since the start of 2003. He’s right. Each team is the ultimate litmus test for the other. When Sox fans gauge the mettle of their team, they do it by comparing the Boston nine to the team in New York. This year, more than ever, New Yorkers are checking their team’s progress against Boston’s.

In the past two seasons, we’ve seen the two front offices battle over players. We’ve seen all-out brawls on the field. We’ve seen 14 unforgettable playoff games, with walk-off daggers and staggering comebacks.

And now, we’ve seen the intensity boil over again. On Thursday night, a fan made contact with Yankees right fielder Gary Sheffield, who immediately shoved the fan back (while still holding the ball.) It was an ugly moment, just a few feet away from where Jeff Nelson and Karim Garcia were involved in a regrettable altercation with a Fenway groundskeeper during the 2003 ALCS.

Sheffield said he thought he was “punched in the mouth,” but replays didn’t back that up. The outfielder was poised and ready to throw a punch, but held back. The fan was ejected, but no charges were filed.

That’s an awful lot of intensity for the ninth game of the season.

The Sox and Yankees have played six games, with each team winning three. They have moved on to fatten up on the rest of the A.L., and will next see each other on Memorial Day weekend. By then, we’ll have a better feel for where each team is.

It doesn’t take a baseball genius to figure out exactly where that will be. They will be jockeying for playoff spots, battling for first place in the division. They will be boxing each other out for mid-season acquisitions. They will be keeping an eye on each other, making sure one team doesn’t get too much better than the other.

Mostly, they will be at each other’s throats, which is exactly what fans want. And, by Memorial Day, we might just be ready for another chapter in this ongoing blood feud.

Lewiston native Tom Caron is a studio host for Boston Red Sox telecasts on NESN.