Watch: Rays sweep Yankees with help from crazy bounce off speaker
If you’re a Yankees fan, what’s worse than losing a game off a freak bounce and dropping into a tie with the hated rival Boston Red Sox atop the American League?
How about losing All-Star catcher Gary Sanchez to injury in the process?
The Tampa Bay Rays completed a three-game weekend sweep of New York on Sunday, winning a 7-6 shootout at Tropicana Field after the ground rules involving the domed stadium turned what might have been a home run at Yankee Stadium into an out in Florida.
Clint Frazier hit the ball high into the air in the ninth inning, but the ball hit a speaker hanging from an overhead catwalk. Because the ground rules at Tropicana Field say that any ball that strikes any part of the dome apparatus is a live ball that’s still in play, it turned into an out when Tampa’s Adeiny Hechevarria caught the ball on its way back to earth after having its momentum arrested like a criminal crossing paths with a policeman.
Who knew you could have too much launch angle? 🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/rVAR8YimLJ
— Cut4 (@Cut4) June 24, 2018
And, because fate is cruel, that out led to extra innings, where Sanchez hurt his right groin/hip abductor muscle while trying to beat the throw on a double play ball in the 10th inning, an inning that would not have been played had Frazier’s towering shot gone over the fence unimpeded as it would have in just about any other stadium.
It’s just one more reason why the worst stadium in baseball needs to be torn down and replaced. A catwalk affecting the results of a major league game and changing the course of a team’s season thanks to an injury that literally would not have happened if it weren’t for a bounce off the architecture? That isn’t even worthy of the minor leagues.
Sanchez will undergo an MRI Monday to determine the extent of the damage, but manager Bret Boone put it bluntly, saying “it’s probably going to be a DL situation.”
Sanchez, for his part, was sanguine about the twist of fate.
“What can I say?” Sanchez said through a translator. “That’s the way baseball is sometimes. Now I’m just hoping it’s not a long time.”
Adding a bit of insult to literal injury, the Yankees wasted a great game from Giancarlo Stanton, who hit two doubles and a home run while going 5-for-5 in the ballgame.
This is the first three-game losing streak the Yankees have suffered in 75 games this season. They had been the only team in baseball to still hold that distinction before this weekend.
In fact, this was the first time since 1954 that the team had made it to June 25 without such a slump.
Boone, speaking to the misfortune of a weekend in baseball purgatory, said, “Just a frustration weekend, but you just turn the page from it.”
The Rays, otherwise mediocre at 37-40 this season, have now won four straight overall against the Bronx Bombers, a 4-5 record that is better than what most of MLB has managed against the best Yankees team to be assembled since their last golden age in the late 1990s.
The Yanks are 46-20 against the rest of the league.
The game itself ended on the first pitch of the bottom of the 12th on a walk-off home run by rookie Jake Bauers, who lead off the inning and took pitcher Chasen Shreve yard to close the ballgame.
“It’s a crazy feeling,” Bauers said.
Not as crazy as the caprices of fate and chaos butterflies that will have Sanchez’s groin in an MRI machine when he should be getting ready for the team’s next game.
But as Sanchez said, “That’s the way baseball is sometimes.”
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