As my fellow CL Sports guy Pat Donovan tweeted last night, “For the love of baseball, could any 2 games be any more different than last night's and tonight's?”

Indeed, the back-to-back outings were as different as Florida Gator fans and personal hygiene. Monday night’s game saw the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees each pick up four hits in 11 innings, with only one run scored in the game and the walk-off homer being the only extra-base hit of the evening. Tuesday evening’s slugfest saw each team with seven runs through six innings and the Yankees with 11 hits while the Rays had seven by that time.

This game got ugly for Tampa Bay fans really quickly. After allowing three hits through the first two frames, starter Matt Garza allowed four runs in the top of the third. He allowed a leadoff walk to Derek Jeter, followed by a double to Curtis Granderson. Mark Texeira’s sacrifice fly to center field scored Jeter; after Granderson moved to third on a passed ball (that saw home plate umpire take the pitch clean on the arm – WIN!), Alex Rodriguez singled to drive him home. Rodriguez then scored on Robinson Cano's home run, making it 4-0 Yankees.

New York put two more on the board in the top of the fifth inning and it looked like this one might be over early. Rodriguez hit a one-out homer, after which Cano walked. Austin Kearns picked up a two-out base hit, knocking Garza out of the game in favor of newly added lefty Jake McGee. The new kid didn’t have the most inspiring start to his major league career, issuing two consecutive walks, the first to Colin Curtis to load the bases and the second to Francisco Cervelli to force home a run. Maybe McGee just wanted a bigger challenge: he closed the inning by striking out Jeter.

This article appears in Dec 30, 2010 – Jan 5, 2011.