Madison Square Garden was quiet and dark on Monday. There were no suites to clean, no ice to maintain and smooth, no concession stands to prepare, no organ to tune. Next door, at the Theater, a Bryson Tiller concert was planned. Mélanie Martinez will be next in the large room, Wednesday and Thursday. Billy Joel will be there on Saturday.
The Rangers weren’t here on Monday, and so they won’t be here next Monday, when the Stanley Cup Final would have started if the first game had been in New York instead of Sunrise, Florida. will not be there. The university roommates won’t return until October. The Panthers made sure of that Saturday night, beating the Rangers 2-1 in Game 6, ending the most enjoyable hockey season at the Garden in years.
Soon came a recalculation of New York’s recent championship miseries, which have now become a regular part of our seasonal aftermath. Josh Dubow of the Associated Press was kind enough to point out that with the elimination of the Rangers, the eight teams with New York’s name – Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets, Knicks, Nets, Rangers, Islanders – now have reached the combined score of 100. seasons without winning a championship.
Peter Botte of the New York Post was then smart enough to look at the situation in an equally bleak and depressing way and come up with the number 287 – the total of all of these teams’ current championship droughts (for the record: Jets 55; Knicks 51 ). ; Nets 47; Islands 41; Mets 37; Yankees 14;
(And since I’m a loyal citizen of New Jersey, I’ll helpfully point out that if you throw the Devils on those piles, the two numbers rise to 112 and 308, respectively.)
Well, what’s pretty clear now is that New York needs what it’s always needed. He needs the Yankees to continue to act and play like the Yankees. He needs these Yankees to stop this madness so we can move on with our lives. The Yankees have to paraphrase a longtime Yankees fan named Paul Simon.
A city turns its lonely eyes on you, Yankees.
(Woo, woo, woo.)
“I know we have something special in this room, there’s no doubt about it,” Yankees manager Aaron Boon said after the Yankees closed out a 7-2 West Coast lead with a 7-game win. -5 against the Giants. Sunday at Oracle Park in San Francisco.
“Where that takes us, we’ll see.” We have a long way to go and they all understand that. But the focus on the team, on winning and what we can do today to win a game and on the goal – I keep saying that word all year. It just feels like the purpose with which they play the game, and for each other, you can feel that here every day. It’s fun to be a part of.
It became fun and downright addictive to watch. It’s barely June and we’re already 100% entitled to compare the brief partnership of Juan Soto and Aaron Judge to some of the iconic 1-2 punches in team history – to Bernie Williams/Derek Jeter and Thurman Munson/Reggie Jackson, who many of us have seen. But yes: even to Mickey Mantle/Roger Maris, to Joe DiMaggio/Yogi Berra, to – sacrilege alert – Babe Ruth/Lou Gehrig, which are compositions about which most of us can only speculate.
They have been so good so far.
And yes, Boone is right: it is dangerous to go too far on your skis during the first week of June. No team has been more adept at teaching us this lesson in recent years than the Yankees. The 2022 team was 61-23 on July 8; he finished 39-40. Last year, the club was 36-25 on June 4, when Judge injured his foot in Los Angeles. They finished 46-55.
History is littered with teams that peaked too soon. But that’s not the case with the Yankees. Gerrit Cole will return soon. Luis Gil was a revelation. Jasson Dominguez is waiting in the wings. And sometimes, with good teams, you can just spot good karma from a NASA photo taken from space.
“It was fun to be a part of,” Judge said of Sunday’s game, even though he could have talked about every game since March 28.
It’s the Yankees’ turn, maybe their time. It’s already arrived. Without the Yankees, there would have been similar droughts in New York between 1940 and 1956, between 1956 and 1968. Each time, the city (without a faction of Dodgers/Giants/Mets fans) turned its lonely eyes toward the Yankees .
By October, assuming the Mets don’t get a heart transplant, those streaks will be 101 and 288 and the city will be doing the same thing again. It’s time.
New York Post
