How Evil is the Empire?

When I first read about the signing of Kevin Youkilis to the New York Yankees, my first reaction was, well...nothing, really. I'm not sure if it's because I'm too focused on finals to care, or if I actually just don't care, or some other third thing, but seriously, I don't hate Youkilis for this. I didn't hate Ray Allen when he went to the Heat, either. Both of those moves made sense for the team and the player, and said player leaving his (formerly) dedicated team for a rival is something that I'm okay with for that person. And here's something I'm currently struggling with...exactly how much are the Yankees still our rivals? I sorta talked about this before, but not a great deal. Not that I'm going to delve too far into it here, either, but I just don't think the Yankees are as much our rival now as they have been in the past. I'll let the simple idea fester for a while, and instead focus on the Youkilis signing, with some parenthetical thoughts about Ray Allen's similar fate.

• Youkilis will get playing time with the Yankees, which have filled a void at third base, thanks to A-Rod's injury. He'll be in the middle of one of the best lineups in baseball, who led the AL in OPS this past season. (Similar case with Ray Allen, although the quality of Allen's playing time is the noteworthy part here - instead of being part of a Big Three and having the opponent's best defender on him, those best defenders gravitate towards LeBron and DWade, and Allen is left to be wide open for corner threes, something he'll hit when open. Recall what Shane Battier did to us in the postseason last year.)
• Keep in mind that the deal was only for one year, and $12 million. Not too far from his mid-30s, Youkilis is taking on the career trajectory of a journeyman, as someone who will play for three teams in two seasons. It seems like he's just looking for work now, some team that will sign him. If it's the Yankees, then it's the Yankees. Clearly, Youkilis doesn't have the blood of the Red Sox going through his veins. Which brings me to my final point.
• WE MADE HIM LEAVE! Sure, maybe the whole Youkilis/Valentine thing was the manager's fault, but I don't think Valentine said it just to stir the pot -- the notion had to come from somewhere. He wasn't hitting, he hadn't been hitting, and he had been starting to be an injury risk. As the manager, you don't call out your players publicly, but Youkilis was starting to become someone who was hurting the team, both on and off the field. The trade to the White Sox was all but inevitable. (Again, with Ray Allen, more or less the same thing happened. As things with Rondo heated, it was become more and more likely that Allen wasn't going to stay with the team.)

Maybe I'm just starting to see things for what they are in the world of sports, instead of being too emotionally invested in teams/players as I was in my younger days. Maybe I'm becoming overly skeptical and cynical of the Red Sox and Celtics organizations. Maybe I'm a huge idiot and I should be pissed off at Youkilis and Allen. But when it's all said and done, I completely understand what the teams and players were thinking when these moves happened. I'm not saying I support Youkilis and Allen, but I'm not about to get all over their cases for what they did.