Nothing better than a Rays-Yankees rivalry

It was Game 7 of the season series so far between the Rays and the Yankees on Sunday afternoon. It felt like a Game 7, period. This is the best rivalry in baseball right now. Now, it was again at Yankee Stadium, with the Rays ahead, 8-7, two outs in the bottom of the ninth and Aaron Judge at the plate.

They had played six games over the past two weekends, the first three at The Trop, three in the books so far at the Stadium. The Rays had won three. The Yankees had won three. Now it was Judge against the Rays' closer, Jason Adam, with a chance to take a big swing and make them all keep playing.

Judge put a big swing on the ball. He does that, you may have heard. And when the ball was in the air, Adam thought it was about to be 8-all, and so did the Stadium and so did Judge himself -- even though he was hitting into a wind measured at 10 mph; even though the ball was on its way to left-center, a part of the outfield at the Stadium that seems to have as much runway as LaGuardia Airport.

"I thought that was like 30 rows deep,” said Adam, who’d put his head down and his hands on knees after Judge hit the ball.

“I hit it good, but off the bat, I hit it too high, especially you know how deep it is out there," Judge said.

Judge hit it 399 feet. He needed a few more. Jose Siri got the ball in front of the wall. The Rays got the game. It was a crazy good ending to what had been seven crazy good games.

The Yankees are still eight games behind the Rays in the American League East, still in fourth place, with the Orioles and Blue Jays between them and first. And yet: What we saw over seven games was that Rays vs. Yankees remains a rock fight.

Everybody knows the rivalry history between the Yankees and the Red Sox, Cubs and Cardinals, Dodgers and the Giants and, more recently, the budding one between the Dodgers and Padres. We all know the Mets and Braves have gone toe to toe since the days when Mets fans were chanting “Larrrrry” at Chipper Jones in the old days.

But over the past several years, there’s been nothing better than these games between the Rays and Yankees. There’s little love lost between the teams, lots of bad blood, always (on Sunday, Isaac Paredes became the seventh Ray to be hit by Yankees pitchers in these seven games). There’s a $200 million disparity in payrolls, which adds more sauce to the whole dish, as the Rays refuse to back down against the team that’s won more -- and spent more -- than any team in history.

Now we get the first seven between them this season, games that only seemed to have everything:

Last Sunday at The Trop, the Rays were down, 6-0, to the Yankees after the top of the fifth against Gerrit Cole, the Yankees’ ace. But the Rays came all the way back to win the rubber game of the series, 8-7. Then the Yankees very much returned the favor, enthusiastically returned it, on Saturday at the Stadium, where they came back from 6-0 down -- also after the top of the fifth, did it against Rays ace Shane McClanahan -- and finally won 9-8 on a day when Judge hit two home runs.

Even in that one, the Rays had the potential tying run on base in the ninth, and Brandon Lowe -- one of seven Rays with seven or more home runs this season -- at the plate before Lowe flied out to end it against Wandy Peralta.

The Rays got a grand slam from Yandy Díaz (who left Sunday’s game with groin tightness) on Saturday and lost. They got another grand slam on Sunday from Taylor Walls to put them ahead, 8-4. The Yankees came back, of course. Both of them keep coming back at each other. Anthony Volpe, the Yankees’ kid shortstop, had hit a two-run homer in the eighth to finally cut the Rays' lead to 8-7, and that is why Tampa Bay was hanging on and trying to get out of town with a split with Judge coming to the plate.

Then All Rise made the whole Stadium raise up again when they were sure he had hit one out before it turned out he hadn’t, by a couple of feet. Now fans of both teams can take a breath, because the Rays and Yankees don’t face each other again until the last night of July.

Two 8-7 games between them already. A 9-8 game on Saturday. Grand slams and great plays, including one from Harrison Bader on Sunday. Bader made a spectacular running-diving play in left-center with the bases loaded on a ball hit by Randy Arozarena, with Bader laying out a few yards from where Siri would catch Judge’s ball to end Sunday's game.

The Rays and Yankees gave us another game like that on Sunday, ending seven pretty amazing days in May between them. Other rivalries in baseball right now. None better than this one.