It all started in December, I suppose. Just a couple months after enduring the most painful inning of baseball any of us had ever seen, likely before some of us were ready to move past the disappointment of the World Series loss, and even before some of us had come to terms with the subsequent “loss” of Juan Soto, we were asked to look forward to next year, like it or not.
It isn’t quite the same as Brooklyn Dodgers fans consoling each other with reminders to “wait ’til next year,” or Cubs fans of a bygone era hoping for a World Series before they die, but it can be difficult to turn the page when the chapter you’ve just read was so painful. There’s a temptation to put the book down for a while.
But then there was Max Fried and Clay Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt and Devin Williams. Sure, the generational talent of Soto was gone, but suddenly the roster looked younger and more athletic, the defense looked better, and the bullpen looked dominant.
And so we picked up the book and turned the page.
Like any good story, the 2025 season grabbed us right away. Aaron Judge set the world on fire, and even though everyone knew he couldn’t possibly keep it up, he would. Max Fried was better than we could’ve expected, and Carlos Rodon quietly became the pitcher the team had hoped he’d be when they signed him before the 2023 season. The Yankees raced out to a lead in the American League East, and all was good in the world.
But stories don’t necessarily hold our interest when they go in a straight line. There are detours and disappointments. The romance fizzles, the hero is thwarted, the enemies storm the gate. And so the Yankees fell into their now-annual June swoon, inventing new ways to lose each night and forcing even the most faithful among us to wonder how we ever could’ve been fooled. When Judge was suddenly feeling elbow pain, all of us — even the Yankee brass, apparently — feared the worst. If we’re to believe recent reports, the Yankees considered becoming sellers at the trade deadline as they considered a season without the best hitter in baseball.
But fear not, dear readers! The Yankees didn’t just return to the plot, they did so with a vengeance. Trent Grisham, Ben Rice, and Jazz Chisholm, Jr., all had the best seasons of their careers, Max Fried recovered from his midseason malaise, and even Devin Williams remembered how to get batters out.
And Judge.
I could write for pages upon pages about the greatness of Aaron Judge, but I’ll be brief here. We have been spoiled as Yankee fans, and not in the way that fans of other teams might think. The World Series wins have been nice, but the greater gift has been this. For the past thirty years — without interruption — we’ve enjoyed the fortune of watching one all-time great after another wearing Yankee pinstripes. From Derek Jeter to Mariano Rivera to Alex Rodriguez (whatever you might think of him) to Aaron Judge, we’ve always had a legend to root for. For most franchises, a player like Judge would stand alone in a team’s history, but in Yankees Universe, Judge is just the next in line. That isn’t to say we should take him for granted, it’s just a reminder that we are members of the most fortunate fanbase in sports.
But Yankee history is a double-edged sword. Unlike any other franchise in baseball, the only currency that matters here is the World Series ring, and as fans we’ve come to accept that. We cannot celebrate last season’s American League championship — and there is no evidence of it among the banners at Yankee Stadium — because any season that ends without a ring is a disappointment, as the previous captain so often reminded us.
And because of this myopia, we will only judge this book based on this final chapter. And as if there were an actual author behind the plot, the possibility of an epic ending lies before us. Imagine a postseason run in which the Yankees first beat their greatest rival in the wild card round, dispatch the equally evil Blue Jays in the division series, eliminate Cal Raleigh and the Seattle Mariners in the ALCS, and then avenge last year’s loss by beating the Dodgers in the World Series. As Aaron Boone is fond of saying, the pen is in their hands, and they get to write these final pages.
So where does that leave us? All we can do is read and find out what happens next. The final chapter begins tonight.
[Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]
