Dave Roberts-Aaron Boone beef is a useless distraction from Dodgers' World Series run

The Dodgers-Yankees rivalry is 83 years old, dating back to the Dodgers' tenure in Brooklyn. They first met in the World Series in 1941 and have met 11 times since then, more than any other two teams in baseball.

So there is a long-standing rivalry here. It had its heyday in the 1940s and 50s especially, before the Dodgers left Brooklyn, but it sort of lost its bite when they switched coasts. It hasn't needed to flare up at all since 1981, the last time the two faced off in October.

Everyone knows that this is the biggest Fall Classic baseball's seen in a long time. It's guaranteed to be hard-fought all the way through as the Yankees look to break a 15-year-old World Series drought and the Dodgers look to silence anyone still calling their 2020 victory a Mickey Mouse win.

But managers Dave Roberts and Aaron Boone — who have a long history of being on rival teams dating back to their college days — are adding a highly unnecessary sprinkle of extra beef into the mix, and it's gained so much traction that national reporters are tweeting about its every beat, even though no one actually cares.

On Tuesday, Roberts said of his and Boone's relationship while they were playing college ball (Roberts at UCLA, Boone at USC), "We weren't friends. I didn't care too much for him, and I'm sure he didn't care too much for me."

Boone responded a few days later, saying, "You’re a Trojan for life; you’re a Bruin for four years."

An imaginary Dave Roberts, Aaron Boone feud is adding unnecessary noise to the Dodgers-Yankees World Series conversation

The media even roped Gerrit Cole, who also went to UCLA, into it, and relayed Boone's comment to him. Cole basically shrugged and said simply, "Aaron and I don't always agree on everything."

This is, to put it mildly, ridiculous. Can anyone who cares about UCLA and USC's baseball rivalry raise their hand? Anyone? Anyone? No? Okay.

Roberts and Boone have a far more heated and weighty rivalry behind them that they could've pointed to instead if they wanted this to make any sense. Boone was released by the Yankees during 2004 season after an ACL tear, but he's the guy that hit the Yankees' 11th inning walk off homer in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS to kill the Red Sox's dreams. Roberts was on the Red Sox's postseason roster in 2004 after being traded at the deadline, and his pinch-run stolen base in Game 4 of the ALCS that year is often credited about as the catalyst for Boston's impossible comeback that season.

This is probably — no, definitely — all in jest, but the fact that it's managed to catch fire so much that Bob Nightengale is tweeting quotes as if they're breaking news? It couldn't be more unnecessary.