Madison Square Garden was quiet and dark on Monday. No suites needed cleaning, no ice to be trimmed or smoothed, no concession stands to be set up, no organ to be tuned. Bryson Tiller was scheduled to perform in the theater next door. Melanie Martinez was up next in the Great Hall on Wednesday and Thursday. Billy Joel was scheduled to perform on Saturday.
The Rangers weren’t there on Monday, and they won’t be there next Monday. If Game 1 had been played in New York instead of Sunrise, Fla., the Stanley Cup Final would have started on Monday. The Knicks aren’t there. The university’s co-tenants won’t return until October. The Panthers won’t have it on Saturday night, beating the Rangers 2-1 in Game 6 to cap off the most entertaining hockey season around the Garden in years.
There was an immediate recalculation of New York’s recent championship disasters, which have now become a regular postseason tradition, as Josh Dubow of the Associated Press pointed out that the Rangers’ loss meant that the eight teams named after New York City (Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets, Knicks, Nets, Rangers and Islanders) had gone a combined 100 seasons without a championship.
Peter Bott of the New York Post wisely looked at the situation in a similarly dark and depressing light and came up with the number 287, which is the current total of these teams without a championship (record-keeping: Jets 55, Knicks 51, Nets 47, Isles 41, Mets 37, Rangers 30, Yankees 14, Giants 12).
(And, as a loyal New Jersey citizen, I’ll point out that if you add the Devils to that pile, both figures balloon to 112 and 308, respectively.)
And what’s pretty clear right now is that New York needs what it has always needed: the Yankees to keep acting and playing like Yankees. The Yankees to end this madness so we can move on with the rest of our lives. The Yankees, in the words of longtime Yankees fan Paul Simon, need Yankees.
The city has its lonely eyes on you Yankees.
(Woo, woo, woo.)
“I know there’s something special in that room, no question about it,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said after the team capped a 7-2 West Coast winning streak with a come-from-behind 7-5 victory over the Giants on Sunday at Oracle Park in San Francisco.
“We’ll see where it takes us. We have a long way to go and they know that, but we’re single-mindedly focused on the team and winning and what we can do today to win games. I’ve been saying that all year. You can feel that here every day, what they come into the game for and for each other. It’s fun to be a part of that.”
It’s fun to watch and really addictive. It’s only June, but you’re already 100% allowed to compare Juan Soto and Aaron Judge’s brief pairing to some of the iconic one-two punches in team history: Bernie Williams and Derek Jeter, Thurman Munson and Reg Jackson. Many of us have seen it all. But you could even compare them to Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra, and (blasphemy alert) Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Those comparisons are ones most of us can only guess at.
So far, they have been very good.
And Boone is certainly right. Letting a slump in the first week of June be too dangerous. No team in recent years has taught you this lesson better than the Yankees. The 2022 team was 61-23 on July 8 and finished 39-40. Last year’s team was 36-25 on June 4, when Judge hurt his leg in Los Angeles, and finished 46-55.
Plenty of teams in history have peaked too early, but it doesn’t feel that way with the Yankees. Gerrit Cole is almost back. Luis Gil is phenomenal. Jasson Dominguez is on the way. And sometimes, with a good team, you can find good karma in NASA photos taken from space.
“It was fun to be a part of,” Judge said of Sunday’s match, but he could have also been talking about every match since March 28.
Now it’s the Yankees’ turn, or maybe it’s their turn. It’s happened before. Without the Yankees, New York would have had similar droughts from 1940 to 1956 and 1956 to 1968. Each time, the city (except for factions of Dodgers, Giants and Mets fans) looked forlornly at the Yankees.
By October, assuming the Mets don’t get heart transplants, their winning streak will be 101 and 288, and the city will do it all again. Now is the time.
