Bronx, N.Y., June 17, 2019; Yankees 3, Tampa 0 — Bristling with one of the best pitching staffs in the game, the Tampa Rays came to town Monday for the first of three against the Yankees, a team whose mound members have struggled of late. Just up a half game in the AL East, the Bronx boys needed someone to step up. Veteran righthander Masahiro Tanaka not only came through, he did so in back-in-the-day fashion.

Tanaka had all of his pitches going from the outset, not only retiring the first nine Rays on 35 pitches; he got 14 swings and misses from the baffled visitors. Leading off the fourth, DH Austin Meadows brought the buzzing crowd down to earth with a leadoff single, but not to worry. It was the first of only two safeties Tampa would get. Once Meadows reached again in the sixth on a one-out walk, Gary Sanchez teamed up with Masahiro on a strike-em-out, throw-em-out double play to end the last frame in which the visitors would have a baserunner.

Meanwhile, although young Yonny Chirinos pitched well, and matched his counterpart through two, the Yankees broke his spell in their usual fashion, following a one-out Cameron Maybin single in the third with a two-out DJ LeMahieu bomb to dead center for a 2-0 lead. While the run support was pivotal, fans won’t be talking offense over their Tuesday morning coffee. Tanaka wasn’t just good, he was extraordinary. Kudos, however, to Maybin, who had the only multi-hit game (3-for-3!), and who provided the last run with a line homer to left in the fifth. The Yankees failed to score three times with two men on, but Masahiro never skipped a beat.

The team and fanbase is a bit abuzz with latest developments, as two of the team’s “biggest” stars are soon to return from injuries. The starting staff has stumbled a few times, and the baseball world anticipates a Yankee trade for an additional starter any day. Still the team’s latest move was for hitting, bringing in the current AL home run leader to DH with much of their power about to return. Clint Frazier, the team’s best-hitting outfielder of late, was sent to AAA to make room for Edwin Encarnacion. Unpredictable times. Encarnacion, by the way, did not reach safely this night in his Yankee debut, going 0-for-4 with a strike out, but it’s worth pointing out that his first at bat in pinstripes stretched young Chirinos to 10 pitches before he went down.

After whiffing four early, Tanaka used many of his ground-ball outs to take control of his pitch count. His aggressiveness returned late, as he struck out six more. And the 10- and 6-pitch seventh and eighth, respectively, brought about the most unbelievable feature of his outing. He came out to pitch the top of the ninth!

The numbers are superb. Seventy-six of his 111 tosses went for strikes, 25 of them swings and misses. He threw 23 of 29 first pitches for strikes, and all 10 strike out victims went down swinging. The Rays managed to hit all of four fly balls, just one after the fifth inning. And the six-pitch eighth inning resulted in the unthinkable: a Yankee pitcher going for a complete game. It felt like he was going for a no-hitter (I’ve seen three, believe me), and we all knew Aaron Boone would be out to the mound in a flash if anyone reached. Nine pitches netted punch outs 9 and 10, and when Tommy Pham’s slow roller toward third resulted in a LeMahieu peg into Luke Voit’s glove, the crowd celebrated, and the Yankees did too.

With this being the first of seven games against the [current] second-place Rays, it was impossible not to focus on the AL East race, with the All Star break bearing down upon us. Thankfully, dire weather forecasts dominating the news feed much of the day notwithstanding, not one drop dared to fall on Tanaka’s masterpiece. It was actually a fairly pleasant, if humid, evening, in a year when rain seems destined to play a part in the Yankees’ fortunes. But come Tuesday morning, this victory finds the Yankees up by 1.5 games in the division, with the improving Red Sox 5.5 games back.

Perhaps we can look to the world of art for something that will let us get past the drama, and the madcap weirdness of an Injured List-dominated season (so far), and just appreciate what Masahiro Tanaka accomplished this Monday night. As the Yankees inched ahead just a bit more, they did so on a day where New York was the scene of something crazy, but pleasing to see, decades ago. In New York on June 17, 1937, a Marx Brothers’ flick opened, one that involved entities coming in first place, and others failing to do so. It was,

A Day at the Races

BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!