As if Boston weren’t in enough baseball turmoil, now it turns out that the Red Sox are the Evil Empire.

Or so says the New Yorker:

THE RED SOX ARE THE U.S.S.R.

One of the greatest rivalries in professional sports history was surely that between the Red Sox and Yankees from 2003 to 2011. They were the best teams in baseball many of those years. They participated in two of the greatest playoff series of all time. They brawled. They fought over free agents. The Yankees were generally slightly better, but the Red Sox still triumphed in two World Series. They were like the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. But, now, as then, we have a winner.

And on it goes, comparing the Red Sox in 2012 to the Soviet Union in 1989. “They tried to keep up financially, and intellectually, with their rival for many years. Glasnost has passed; the end is here.”

Under this theory, “[Carl] Crawford is like Kazakhstan, expensive but troubled; [Josh] Beckett is Georgia, valuable but liable to start a war; Nick Punto, the throw-in utility infielder is Moldova; [Adrian] Gonzalez, the valuable breadbasket, is the Ukraine. And John Lackey, the grumpy pitcher who stays behind, is now Chechnya.”

Which of course makes Bobby Valentine Boris Yeltsin, “the disruptive, late arrival.”

Just one more role to fill: Who plays Ronald Reagan?

[Five second interval goes here.]

That’s right! Brian Cashman, “the the man who kept spending and spending, driving the Red Sox into delirium and then oblivion.

So how do you like your Evil Empire now, Red Sox Nation?