#Yankees, Rays trade barbs as rivalry intensifies: ‘A little childish’

Who needs a Yankees-Red Sox rivalry — currently deader than the VCR — when you have a burgeoning Yankees-Rays rivalry?

Even if Sunday saw a turndown of Saturday’s heat that saw the ejection of Yankees manager Aaron Boone and his hitting coach Marcus Thames, tranquility hardly reigned. Instead, chirping, a staredown and post-game trash talk ran a thread through the Yankees’ 4-3 loss to the Rays at Tropicana Field that gave Tampa Bay the series victory, three games out of four.

“It’s pretty frustrating to have them think that you’re not able to chirp and say anything back to them. They’ve been doing it the whole time and for us to not be able to do it back, it’s a little childish,” Rays second baseman Brandon Lowe said after the game. “You’ve got to wear it. If it’s going to happen, just wear it.”

Lowe hit the game-tying, seventh-inning, solo homer off Yankees starting pitcher James Paxton that prompted Boone to lift Paxton. As Paxton walked off the mound toward the visitors’ dugout on the third-base side, he stared daggers across the way at his opponents.

“I didn’t hear anything specific. I just heard some jawing back and forth,” Paxton said. “Whatever. It’s competition. The guys are fired up. It is what it is.”

“Intense series, quiet stadiums, there’s back and forth all the time,” an uncharacteristically terse Boone said.

“They’ve been chirping the whole weekend and we chirped at them once and they got upset about it,” Lowe said. “That was really the whole thing of it was, they’ve kind of been loud about everything and we did it back and they didn’t like it.”

In the nightcap of Saturday’s doubleheader, Boone got the heave-ho from home-plate umpire Vic Carapazza as he defended Thames, who in turn was defending his hitters after the Rays threw up and in three times to Yankees batters. After the game, Aaron Judge said that the tension was “more just about the history,” referring to 2018 and 2019 incidents involving Rays pitcher Andrew Kittredge (who pitched on Saturday, too) and former Yankees Austin Romine and CC Sabathia, among others.

“The Sabathia stuff, all that stuff, that happened last year. You’d think they would’ve moved past it as we have,” Lowe said. ”I think it’s really just the competitive nature between us two teams. … The both of us are going to be fighting for that top spot in the AL East and those competitive juices start flowing and people have some emotions.”

When asked about the Yankees’ complaints from Saturday before the game, Rays manager Kevin Cash said, “The only thing we’re mindful of is, we’re trying to compete and go out and win. I think it’s best to leave it at that. Everything that we’re doing, we’re trying to get a really good lineup out. I can respect their thoughts and I think it’s just, we’ve got to continue playing games and finding ways to win.”

— with Howie Kussoy