With no tomato cans in sight, July looms as a long, hard slog.

Historians will note that the legendary 2019 Yankees - the storm-born breakers of wheels, defenders of the realm and fathers of flagons - somehow pissed away their opening series to the adorable dumpster fire known as Baltimore. If not for an unrelenting conga line of tomato cans - Tigers, Royals, Giants, White Sox, Angels - injected into the buttocks of the team's April schedule, who knows how we would have survived the opening wave of gonadal tweaks, a veritable terrorist attack by the juju gods.

But now, July looms as the balancing act. 

It starts tonight with the Mets. While they certainly qualify as 18-ounce cans of Del Monte's Petite & Peeled, the Subway Series is never easy. The stresses far outweigh those of regular games, with player-defining moments always unfolding.  

Then comes the following:

Four in Tampa. (Make or break time for Rays.)

The All-Star break.
Three at home against Toronto. (Hateful team with emerging talent and Marcus Stroman on display.)
Four at home v. Rays. (Last gasp for Tampa?)
Three at home against Rockies. (Second in NL West)

Three in Minnesota. (Runaway kings of AL Central.)

Four at Fenway.
Three at home against Arizona (.500.) 

In short, the weakest team we'll face should be the Mets, who will be crashing into viaducts, trying to reclaim their miserable lost season. Eight games against Tampa, and four at Fenway. The Yankees caught a break when the London trip was classified as two Boston home games. But the gauntlet remains, yet to be run. 

This we know: The Yankees will hit a dry spell. They always do. Boston will make a run. They always do. Our 10-game cushion has put a twitch onto the smug face of every Redsock fan, staring into the cold reality that this is not their year. But the season is only half over. July will not only bring tough teams, but it leads to the trade deadline, where Brian Cashman will seek another "power arm," the empty Holy Grail search that has haunted his career.

In the modern era of horror movies, we've grown accustomed to the fake ending, where Freddy or Jason, or whomever, has seemingly been vanquished, and the credits look imminent. Then he suddenly re-appears for one last throat-slashing burst of red. The London sweep may have been our false-ending. The monster is not dead. We have 80 games left, and - for now anyway - no petite & peeled in sight.