Sports in NYC is quite unbelievably connected to the Tampa trend of success .
For the past three springs/summers now, we have had to suffer through the Tampa Bay Lightning beating the Islanders and Rangers in the ECF of the Stanley Cup playoffs . It’s quite a pain in the ass to see the Lightning take victory out of the NYC hockey scene’s jaws of defeat,
Follow that up with ‘One Last Tom’ as Brady defeated the Jets on MetLife Turf in a Bucs uniform this time with just under a minute left in regulation.
So, after game six this past Saturday in which the Rangers were sent home in a brutal fashion by the Lightning, weren’t many of us thinking how can we get the edge on Tampa’s number ? It just so happened the Rays were coming into town this very week to face the Bronx Bombers!
Coming into 2022, the Yankees were 16-24 in this decade alone against this Rays team. That doesn’t include the heartbreak of the Rays axing the Yanks from the bubbled up playoffs in 2020. (http://mcubed.net/mlb/nyy/tb.shtml) So , no way the Yanks who we thought at the time barely picked up anyone this off-season could compete with the Rays this season, right? WRONG!
To finally dampen the upward trend of Tampa dominance, it did take the Yanks to be the big brother of this sports town and protect our city’s turf! It took a pivotal ground-ball DP in game one induced by supposed Yanks ace Gerrit Cole, it took home runs from Judge and Higgy in the middle game, as well as back to back saves by Clay Holmes. To cap it off, it took a walk-off by The Riz, Anthony Rizzo to complete the sweep of a gritty series that just happened to go the Yanks way!
While I’m very excited about this team coming back and taking down the Rays , finally, I would say to truly defuse the Tampa success rate against NYC, more series wins and making sure they don’t make the playoffs and /or a dominant postseason bettering Tampa should do the trick.
For now, we can enjoy at least one Tampa team being knocked down by this NYC sports town and watching the Yanks go 31 games OVER .500 on a hot summer night in 2022!
The Writings of Alex Garrett 