By TERRY NAU

Sports editor

The Tampa Bay Rays are the best story of this baseball summer, unless you happen to be a fan of the Boston Red Sox. To those folks, the Rays are a royal pain in the butt. Who among us would have guessed that Tampa Bay would hold a  51/2-game lead on the defending World Series champion Red Sox with four weeks left in the regular season? Nobody, that’s who.

In other baseball news, the New York Yankees’ playoff hopes died over the weekend. According to the obituary that will be released later today, the pinstripers became sick in April when two of their young starting pitchers spit out the bit and eventually landed in the minor leagues.
Injuries to Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui hurt the offense, which under-performed all season long, to the point where the team is on pace to score 180 less runs than in 2007.
The illness that began with the pitching staff in April eventually spread through the entire team. Among the sickest were second baseman Robinson Cano, who couldn’t even dive for baseballs as the season wore on, preferring to wave at them as they went by his glove. Aging shortstop Derek Jeter covered less ground than the statue of Mickey Mantle in Monument Park and lost some pop in his bat, too.
The Yankees’ problems were accentuated by a “soft” season from their best player, Alex Rodriguez, who seemed distracted by off-field issues and played without the passion that exemplified his 2007 campaign.
Red Sox fans will be dancing on the Yankees’ grave during the final series of the season at Fenway Park from Sept. 25-28. However, they must also still root for their hated rivals, who have six games remaining with Tampa Bay, including three this week.
That’s the big irony, of course. The Red Sox need help to catch Tampa Bay. They can’t do it all by themselves.
The Rays, who seem to have played their whole season at home (52-19 thus far), play 17 of their final 25 games on the road, where they are 32-32 this season. Manager Joe Maddon’s club has received help from a host of unlikely places this season, beginning with a pitching staff and bullpen that went from the outhouse to the penthouse overnight.
Of local interest is the surprising comeback of Tampa Bay’s Rocco Baldelli, the Woonsocket native whose career seemed in doubt back in May. Baldelli spent the first four months of the season battling back from a mysterious illness, and now he is contributing virtually every day to the Rays’ success. This is the type of feel-good story that wins pennant races.
Baseball season is also alive and well in Pawtucket, where the local minor league franchise awaits a best-of-five playoff series with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre beginning Wednesday night at McCoy Stadium. It is ironic that the best baseball series of the summer at McCoy will not be witnessed by sellout crowds but that’s what happens after Labor Day and kids go back to school.
The estimated 5,000 fans who do come to the local park on Wednesday and Thursday will be treated to some interesting pitching matchups between the top farm clubs of the Red Sox and Yankees. If PawSox manager Ron Johnson sticks to his regular pitching rotation, 14-game winner Charlie Zink will hurl the opener. Scranton’s likely pitcher is lefthander Chase Wright, who is 2-1 with a 2.41 earned run average since coming up from Class AA Trenton.
The PawSox need to win the opener because Scranton should send red-hot Ian Kennedy – one of the pitchers who spit the bit last April in New York – to the mound on Thursday. Kennedy has been stuck in that “AAAA” twilight zone between the minors and majors this season. He’s very good in the International League (pitching to a 2.35 ERA) and awful in the big leagues (8.17 ERA). Kennedy struck out 11 batters in 6.2 shutout innings in his last start against Rochester on Friday night.
The Little Yankees have two other quality hurlers – 14-game winner Kei Igawa, and struggling righthander Phil Hughes, the other April failure for the Big Yankees.
Pawtucket’s rotation is harder to figure. Devern Hansack (6-10, 4.01) is in line to pitch Thursday. Edgar Martinez is also available. Pawtucket also got righthander Michael Bowden back from Boston on Sunday. He pitched five innings on Saturday against Chicago while collecting his first big league win. Bowden is 0-3 in Pawtucket but has pitched to a 3.35 ERA.
So if you’re a hard-core baseball fan who can’t afford the time and money it takes to spend a night in Boston watching the Red Sox, don’t forget that two quality playoff games are on tap this week in Pawtucket. And maybe, if the PawSox can oust the Yankees, we’ll have two more playoff games to watch next week.