MLB Productions and the Shout Factory have come out with a new DVD, Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Ultimate Rivalry, which chronicles the ongoing battle between two of baseball's most storied franchises.

"Certainly, the Red Sox and Yankees rivalry over the past five or six years has generated a lot of publicity," said Dave Check of MLB Productions, who served as the executive producer on the project. "Stories about this rivalry have been shown in a lot of outlets and we had to differentiate our product."

So to make the DVD unique, Check and his staff came up with an idea that would appeal to fans of both teams. There are two different versions of the story; one narrated by Yankees manager Joe Torre and the other narrated by Red Sox manager Terry Francona.

"One of the more exciting aspects of the production process was to narrate these shows with the managers and to see their perspective of what they were watching for the first time," said Check. "We did Francona first, and we did Torre about two weeks later and they were both equally enjoyable experiences."

"That was fun, piece of cake," Francona said. "It only took about an hour. It was right across the street from Fenway, there's a little recording place right there."

The DVD covers the entire history of the rivalry that really took off in 1920 when pitcher/outfielder Babe Ruth was sold by the Red Sox to the Yankees. Ruth would move to the outfield and rewrite the record books as one of the greatest sluggers of all time, propelling the Yankees into the greatest team dynasty in baseball history. "The Ultimate Rivalry" moves to the 1940s, when New York's Joe DiMaggio and Boston's Ted Williams battled for hitting supremacy as their teams would challenge each other for the American League pennant -- with the Yankees prevailing almost every time. The story continues through the late 1970s, when the feud intensified again, and goes into great detail over the past six years where a new generation of players has made the rivalry even stronger.

"This DVD really focuses on the rivalry of what has captivated us the most in the past five or six years and you can argue is right in the middle of a golden era," said Check. "I don't know if the rivalry has been this good since the late '70s or even the 1940s. One thing that is great is we were able to include the end of the 2005 season where the Red Sox and Yankees were playing each other at the end of the season -- a schedule-maker's delight -- and there was a possibility that one team was going to get knocked out of postseason contention. And it turns out that both teams made it, but didn't get past the first round and they may have gotten exhausted from playing each other."

The highlight of the DVD really is the unprecedented access MLB Productions had in the 2003 and 2004 American League Championship Series between the two teams that both went to seven games. From the fracas on the field in Boston in 2003, through Aaron Boone's pennant-winning home run and on to the most improbable comeback in postseason history in 2004 by the Red Sox, the DVD shows every important moment from a perspective that few ever get to see first hand.

Torre said he did commentary on several games, including ALCS from 2003 and 2004.

"Some of them were fun to watch," Torre said. "You see the Boonie home run and it was great, but we lost the World Series. It's like watching Bobby Thomson's home run [in 1951]; [the Giants] lost the World Series. I just talked about the rivalry; before we were there, leading up to when they came back on us [in the 2004 ALCS]."

"For us to say that the rivalry is just confined to the regular season and the postseason would be inaccurate," said Check. "We know during the hot stove time of the year these teams are trying to one-up each other and we get into that in this DVD. The A-Rod sweepstakes of 2004 was a big part of it, where Randy Johnson was going to go because he was the great equalizer for Curt Schilling going to Boston. These teams are constantly trying to one up each other and I don't think either general manager would deny that."

Check believes the story between these two rivals will appeal to not just to fans in New York and New England, but to all baseball fans who like to see the game played at the highest level of intensity.

"If you're a baseball fan in general, irrespective if you're a Red Sox or Yankee fan, you can't ignore the level of intensity, the quality of these games or the fact that anytime these two combatants meet, it's not short on drama. And that is the essence of baseball."

This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.