A recording of Game 5 of the 2025 World Series still sits on my DVR, but not because there’s any danger I’ll ever forget it. The truest words that Yankee manager Aaron Boone has ever spoken came in the aftermath of that game when he emerged bleary eyed from the clubhouse to face the media and answer questions about one of the most shocking defeats in the long postseason history of the greatest franchise in sports.

“As I said to the guys, obviously it stings now. This will sting forever.”

I said something similar to my wife the next day as I was trying to put my life back together. “As long as I live, I will never get over that game last night.”

I could say that confidently because twenty-four years later I still haven’t gotten over Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, and I still wear the scars of the last four games of the 2004 ALCS. Keep in mind, my connection to this organization is measured only by the dozens of Yankee caps I’ve worn over the past 47 years, the seven World Series titles I’ve celebrated, and the thousands of games I’ve watched. This team is a part of me, so obviously losses like these are more than just disappointments.

But I’m at least self-aware enough to know that I don’t really know. I can’t possibly know what it feels like to begin working with a purpose in January, report to spring training in February, ride busses across Florida in March, endure the trials and tribulations of a six-month regular season, and then fight through two playoff rounds in October only to have the journey end in the most inexplicably painful way imaginable.

What I do know is that there are coffee mugs and mouse pads and t-shirts with the FOX chyron from that fateful top of the 5th inning, souvenirs that celebrate one team’s devastating collapse rather than the other’s improbable comeback. I know that I’ve catalogued the comments and asides I’ve gotten from Dodger fan friends and family here in Southern California, each remark innocent in its delivery but cutting nonetheless.

But I can’t know how many times Aaron Judge has thought about that dropped fly ball or how he will feel when he inevitably gets a sarcastic standing ovation before his first at bat at Dodger Stadium on Friday night. I can’t know how often Nestor Cortés has replayed the pitch he threw to Freddie Freeman, or whether or not Gerrit Cole had flashbacks during PFPs in spring training.

Will those demons get in the way during these three games, or will they drive the team to success over the weekend and through the rest of the season? Paul O’Neill frequently reminds us that the white hot brilliance of 1998 might never have happened had it not been for the October disappointment of the year before, so maybe we’ll see something similar this year. Maybe.

But I don’t think we’ll get an answer to that this weekend. Instead we’ll get constant comparisons of Judge and Shohei Ohtani, frequent reminders of last October and some of the more distant Octobers, and breathless predictions of another matchup in this year’s World Series. And we’ll probably get some good baseball.

And me? At some point I’m sure I’ll check my DVR and navigate to the folder titled “L.A. Dodgers @ New York Yankees.” I’ll watch the first inning as Judge hits a rocket into the right field stands and the crowd explodes with relief, I’ll watch Jazz Chisholm follow with a home run of his own, I’ll scan ahead to Stanton’s bomb in the third, and I’ll remember how it all felt. But then I’ll watch the fifth inning, and I’ll wonder what might have been.

[Image Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.]

You bet your ass they do. This game? This series? It’s about a lot more than the meeting of two first places teams with eyes towards the World Series. This is the Yankees and the Mets and a three-game series in the Bronx that promises to be sizzling all weekend.

Say what you will about Shohei Ohtani and his World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers, but they won’t play a single regular season series with the voltage of these three games in New York. Trust me. I live roughly half way between Dodger Stadium and Angels Stadium, and I don’t even notice when the Dodgers and Angels hook up. Dodgers vs. Giants only really matters in San Francisco, and while the Dodgers-Padres rivalry is blossoming, it’ll be another decade or so before people pay attention outside of the 619 area code.

But these three games in Gotham? They’re gonna be different.

Oh, and look at me burying the lede. There’s this guy named Juan Soto who plays for the Mets. If there’s one thing we can count on tonight, it’s that he’ll be booed mercilessly. The Bleacher Creatures had best hurry their way through the Roll Call in the top of the first, because once Soto climbs into the batter’s box, every pair of eyes in the Stadium will be trained on #22, and every set of lungs will be erupting in anger.

The Yankee haters around the country will shake their heads at entitled Yankee fans who expect every great player to want to play in pinstripes, but that’s not the problem. I could never begrudge a player’s decision to sign with the highest bidder (and unlike so many fans I don’t blame Hal Steinbrenner for drawing a financial line just a few million dollars south of the moon), but I still haven’t forgiven Soto for the manner in which he left.

The last time we saw him on our side of the field, the Dodgers were only midway through their first case of champagne and Soto was announcing that he was a free agent available to any of the thirty teams in baseball. He dutifully read from Scott Boras’s script, ignorant of the salt he was pouring into millions of open wounds. And so I’m sure he’ll be booed like few other opposing players ever have in Yankee Stadium. (Oh, and I think we can also bank “We’ve Got Grisham!” chants echoing through the park at some point, which would be nice.)

Will any of this bother Soto? Probably not. He seems to have pulled out of his early season funk, and the moment will be right, so I expect him to respond with a big series and at least two or three home runs. The question will be whether or not Yankee pitchers can limit the rest of the potent Mets lineup, and whether or not the other New York team can manage a Yankee offense that’s looking more and more like the best in baseball.

And just so I don’t finish this piece without mentioning it, Aaron Judge is pretty, pretty, pretty good.

All of this together makes for the most anticipated regular season series since the hey day of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry in the early aughts. And I can’t wait.

Let’s go, Yank-ees!

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

I loved how Trent Grisham bowed his head and turned to the side when he led off last night’s game with a home run. Good styling.

Many more homers followed. The kid Ben Rice looks so boyish—he must be walking on air, a highly perishable state for sure, but still.

I have to say, the Cone-Girardi-Kay is the smartest and more enjoyable Yankee announcer pairing. .

More tonight.

Git ’em, boys.

Let’s Go Yankees!

Picture by Bags

Aaron Judge is unlike anything we’ve seen before. In recent years people have begun to describe unique athletes like Judge as unicorns, a practice that’s become so common that now we’ve got an actual herd of unicorns galloping across the sports landscape. But in the baseball world, there’s Aaron Judge, and then there’s everyone else. (Okay, okay. Shohei Ohtani is probably the ultimate unicorn, an alien unicorn, but let me know the next time he puts on a glove.)

In Judge’s rookie season of 2017 he hit 52 home runs on his way to winning the Rookie of the Year and a questionable second-place finish in the MVP voting. He hit .284 that season, and he followed that with batting averages of .278, .272, .257, and .287 while hitting 27, 27, 9, and 39 home runs. That debut season seemed like a bit of an anomaly, but the waters he had settled into seemed just fine. He was the type of middle-of-the-lineup presence that a team could build around for years to come. Every team in baseball would be happy to have a player who could hit thirty to forty home runs while batting .275, even if it came along with a boatload of strikeouts.

And then 2022 happened. The American League record 62 home runs leap off the page, but Judge led the league in almost every batting statistic that matters, coming just five percentage points away from a batting title that would’ve earned not just the Triple Crown, but the ultra rare Triple Triple Crown (leading the league in runs, home runs, RBI, batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, walks, and total bases). It was an otherworldly season.

And then 2024 happened. Judge hit only 58 home runs, but he was arguably even better at the plate than he had been two years earlier, producing possibly the greatest single season of any right-handed batter in history, and he won his second unanimous MVP award.

This year, just for fun, he’s hitting .415 though 25 games. Hitting over .400 for any twenty-five game stretch is pretty impressive, but to do so while also leading the league in essentially everything else is absolutely ridiculous.

As Yankee fans we were blessed to watch Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer of all time, for nineteen years. It’s quite possible that fifteen years from now we’ll realize that we just finished watching the greatest right fielder of all-time also. So pay attention. You’ll want to tell your grandchildren all about it.

[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.]

Yanks in Pittsburgh this weekend. Started with a “W.” How bout another?

Never mind the drizzle: Let’s Go Yankees!

So did anything happen of note in Yankeeland during the off season? Let’s see…

First there was Juan Soto. I think I knew it was coming while I was sitting on the couch shortly after the Yankees’ self-destruction in the final game of the World Series. As the Dodgers were celebrating on the Yankee Stadium infield, I told my wife (a passive Dodger fan who grew up in a Dodger household thirty minutes from Dodger Stadium) that I would never get over that loss. Twenty minutes later manager Aaron Boone would share that he’d told the team, “This stings, and it will always sting.” Twenty minutes after that — and after we had heard from one devastated Yankee after another — Juan Soto looked into the cameras and, presumably with suffering teammates standing within earshot, announced that he was a free agent available to all thirty teams.

The timing of an announcement that only told us what everyone already knew was worse than salt in the fresh wound. We know that baseball is a business, but it was telling that Soto couldn’t even respect the moment. It was akin to standing up at your grandmother’s funeral and asking when the will would be read. So even though I was disappointed when he signed with the Mets a few weeks later, I was neither surprised by his decision nor bothered that the Yankees had allowed themselves to be outbid. Is it petty that I can’t wait to hear the boos the first time he returns to the Stadium? Perhaps.

But then there was Max Fried, Cody Bellinger, and Paul Goldschmidt. It was a free agent haul reminiscent of 2008 when C.C. Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, and A.J. Burnett arrived in the Bronx, and when reliever Devon Williams was added via trade, optimism was high. The Yankees suddenly had one of the best starting staffs in baseball, a dominant bullpen, a much improved defense, and perhaps a more balanced offense. They were the overwhelming favorites in the American League, and even though the Dodgers were playing with Monopoly money and creating a team that appears significantly better than their 2024 version, I still felt great about the Yankees’ chances at improving on last season’s result.

But then.

Gerrit Cole was scratched from a spring training start because he wasn’t feeling right, and I was mildly concerned. The team announced that he was flying north for tests, and I was more than a little nervous. After they got those test results back and that announced Cole was seeking other opinions, I knew the worst was coming. When everyone finally admitted that Cole would need Tommy John surgery and miss the 2025 season, the news came just a week or so after we heard that last year’s Rook of the Year, Luís Gil, would miss at least three months with an arm injury of his own, and just a week or so before we’d learn that Giancarlo Stanton, inexplicably, had tennis elbow in both elbows and would also begin the year on the injured list.

It was a lot.

The Yankees take the field in just a few hours, and even with all of the injuries, I’m still looking forward to the season. We’ll get to watch Aaron Judge again, we’ll finally get to see a full season of Jasson Domínguez, the star we’ve been wishing on for seven years now, and we’ll get to watch the continued development of Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells. We’ll get to watch baseball. Oh, and like it or not, there will be beards.

Let’s go, Yankees!

[Image Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons]

Cole. Done for the season.

Yow.

The greatness of Rickey Henderson was undeniable, even if it took baseball people longer than you’d think to recognize that Rickey could do more than just run. The Man of Steal burst on the scene with the Oakland Athletics not just by stealing more bases than anyone had before him, but by stealing more bases than anyone had thought possible. He bent reality in the way that only the greatest players can, but because people are the way they are, his early achievements were viewed from a deficit perspective.

Critics complained that he was selfish, that stolen bases in the ninth inning with his team down by four only tarnished the record, or they claimed that he was incomplete player, never mind the fact that at just 23 years old when he stole a preposterous 130 bases in that 1982 season, Rickey also scored 119 runs and led the league with 116 walks. The year before he had won a Gold Glove.

His greatest years, however, were still ahead of him. After being traded to the Yankees prior to the 1985 season, he thrived on the biggest stage in the game, becoming the only player in our lifetime to score more runs (146) than games played (143) while stealing 80 bases and slashing .314/.419/.516 only to lose the MVP to teammate Don Mattingly. Rickey would eventually get his MVP five years later after his return to Oakland when he stole 65 bases while hitting 28 home runs with a staggering 1.016 OPS.

How good was he? Without question, he was the greatest leadoff hitter of all-time. Bill James, the godfather of statistical analysis, once said that Rickey was so good that if you could split him into two players, you’d still have two Hall of Famers. (Here’s a discussion about that.)  To that point, if we disregard his slugging numbers and his 3,055 career hits and focus on the true through-line of his career, the stolen base, the numbers are mind boggling.

• His 1,406 career stolen bases is just one steal shy of being a full 50% better than Lou Brock’s second place total of 938. For perspective on that, the top four active stolen base leaders (Starling Marte, José Altuve, Trea Turner, and José Ramírez) have a total of 1,480 steals.
• During the twelve-year stretch from 1980-1991, Henderson led baseball in steals eleven times.
• Seven years after the end of that run, in 1998, Rickey again led baseball with 66 stolen bases for the San Diego Padres at the age of 39.

The statistics eventually become mind-numbing, but the true measure of any legend lies in the mythology that grows up around them. Did Rickey really frame his first million dollar check rather than cash it? (Yes, but still got the money.) Did he really tell Jon Olerud that he had once had a teammate who also wore his helmet in the field, forgetting that the former teammate was actually Jon Olerud? (No, but it’s a good story.)

Everyone in Rickey’s orbit had a good story to tell, even me. I collected baseball cards growing up, and when the hobby exploded in the 1980s, I began going to card shows, not just to grow my collection but to collect autographs. Rickey Henderson was a guest at a card convention in the spring of 1986 during his second year with the Yankees, so I drove down to the freeway so I could pay ten or twenty dollars for the autograph of one my favorite players.

Most of the players who appeared at events like this simply churned out one signature after another, earning their appearance fee by mindlessly repeating autographs on balls, bats, and photos for an hour or two. They were often bored or disinterested, sometimes surly and dismissive. Rickey was none of these things. He had far too much energy to be trapped in a folding chair behind a plastic table, and his eyes darted around the room, taking in everything, but connecting with no one.

When I finally made my way to the front of the line, Rickey’s eyes stopped on mine. We were in Orange County in the mid ’80s. If the world outside that hotel was predominantly white, that said nothing about the demographics of the hall we were in that afternoon. It’s likely that Rickey and I were the only two Black people in the room, and Rickey’s darting eyes were keenly aware of that. He took one look at me, extended his hand and said — and I will never forget this — “What’s happenin, soul brother?”

I was sixteen years old, filled with the typical insecurities of adolescence, but because I had spent my life growing up in places like Naperville, Illinois, and Irvine, California, I had never been comfortable in my own skin simply because that skin wasn’t the same color as the kids at school or the people in my neighborhoods. I was different, and it would be years before that discomfort would go away.

Rickey could never have known any of this, but he saw me. I didn’t quite know what to make of it in that moment, but it’s something that’s stayed with me in the three decades since. When I heard the news that Rickey had passed, appropriately dying the same year his Oakland A’s did, I eventually thought about the afternoon in Oakland when two friends and I sat in the right field bleachers and watched Rickey grab his 939th stolen base, but my first reaction was to think back to that day at the card show when a legend reached out and connected with me.

Well, the Yanks were sloppy all season and it came back to bite them in agonizing, burn-in-your-brain-forever misery last night.

Surely, this was a Yankee series created by the fantasies of all true Yankee-haters. But our Bombers found cruel and unusual ways to lose this thing. You could call them chokers, but they’ve been sloppy like this all year. They weren’t in Game 6 or Game 7—their mistakes cost them them that chance. We’re left with 4 loses that could have all gone the other way, particularly Game 1 and Game 5.

Yup, nothing but pain and disgust for us Yankee fans.

Dag.

Congrats the Dodgers.

Could be the last game of the year, period. But at least the Yanks have lived to see another day, even if it is tonight.

I couldn’t believe Volpe’s base running gaffe last night. I bellowed and moaned and threw myself off the couch in despair. And then he goes and hits that homer, turns a single into a (lucky) double, steals third, and then beats a throw home on a grounder to second. I’d say a good way to make up for that mistake. Happy for the kid.

Hoping for more good things tonight.

Never mind oblivion:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

And the hits just kept coming in Game Three. More mistakes, all born of desperation, all too painful to recount here.

Now the Yanks are down 3-0 in this series of sadness.

Nothing to lose now. Go git ’em, boys.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Well, that sucked. Did it suck as much as Game 1? No, but it sucked all the same.

They’ve been down 2-0 before. Tonight in the Bronx will have us root-root-rooting for the home team.

Never mind the writing on the wall:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Game One was a kick to the crotch loss if there ever was one; much will be forgiven if they manage to swipe a win today and leave L.A. with a split.

Lots to be pissed about but today is a new day.

Never mind the moaning’:

Let’s Go Yank-eees!

Yanks-Dodgers.

Hell, yes.

Yanks arrive in Cleveland up 2-0.

Wonder how they’ll leave town?

Never mind the memory of those little bugs:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Alas, here we are again. The Yanks fighting for a pennant. Cleveland looking to get to the Whirled Serious and bring home their first title since 1948.

Never mind nuthin:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

I wouldn’t be a Yankee fan were it not for the Kansas City Royals.

In the summer of 1977 when I was almost eight years old, my family drove from Detroit to New York City for a vacation in the Big Apple. We saw dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History, walked in Central Park, and went to the top of the Empire State Building. All the stuff. But the highlight of the trip came on the day when my parents let me choose what to do. I was a huge baseball fan, so I asked them to take me to a baseball game.

The Yankees were playing the Royals that day. Catfish Hunter got the start, and Chris Chambliss hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the eighth to give the Yankees a 5-3 lead that turned into a win when Sparky Lyle finished things up in the ninth. I hadn’t yet forged any bonds with the Tigers, so the die was cast that afternoon. I’d be a Yankee fan for life.

This matchup with the Royals in the ALDS is bringing up all kinds of memories, and not just my own. The game-winning home run that I witnessed wasn’t the first time Chambliss had broken Kansas City hearts. Just the year before he had led off the bottom of the ninth with the game tied in the decisive fifth game of the American League Championship Series and struck one of the most memorable home runs in Yankee history, sending the Bronx into bedlam — actual bedlam — and sending the Yankees to the World Series.

That playoff loss was the first of three straight the Royals suffered at the hands of the Yankees, one of which famously left Kansas City shortstop Freddie Patek crying in the dugout.

But revenge for the Royals would eventually come when they served me the first heartbreak of my Yankee life. After dropping the first two games of the 1980 ALCS, the Yankees took a 2-1 lead into the bottom of the seventh at Yankee Stadium. Tommy John got the first two outs, but after he yielded a double to Willie Wilson, John was lifted for Rich Gossage, hopefully for a seven-out save. But Gossage give up a single to U.L. Washington and then this happened.

As if that weren’t enough, then we had the Pine Tar Game three years later. All of this contributed to what was, for a time, the greatest rivalry in baseball. You don’t think so? Ask George Brett. Still don’t think so? Watch this absolutely insane clip from Game 5 of the 1977 ALCS.

This week’s matchup with the Royals might not include all this drama, but then again it might. Buckle up, everyone, and Let’s Go, Yankees!

I really don’t care that the Orioles celebrated their playoff clinching in the Bronx, and I only marginally care that Gleyber Torres continues to remind me of perhaps my favorite Aaron Boone quote of all time. (Name that quote in the comments for extra credit.)

Here’s the one thing I truly care about — the Yankees will clinch tonight. Book it!

[Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons]

With just nineteen games left to play, the American League East, inexplicably, is still completely up for grabs as the Yankees and the Orioles are locked in the most polite game of musical chairs you’ve ever seen, with each team standing back and doing its best to usher the other into the lone chair remaining. There’s been some good news recently from the Yankees, with the return of Luís Gil and Clarke Schmidt from the injured list and the return to form of Gerrit Cole, but with each step forward comes a step back. Aaron Judge has been wearing a Kryptonite necklace for the past two weeks, Clay Holmes has finally lost his closer job, and Alex Verdugo is still playing left field instead of Jasson Domínguez.

So what will these next nineteen games bring? Pull up a chair, and let’s find out.

Whatever happens over the next five weeks and hopefully more, please take a minute to appreciate something we might never see again, or, more optimistically, something we’ll be watching for the next ten years. There’s been nothing in my lifetime quite like the combination of Juan Soto and Aaron Judge, two otherworldly talents hitting back to back in the order. I once wondered what it would’ve been like to watch Ruth and Gehrig every day, and now I know. It’s pretty, pretty, pretty good.

[Photo Credit: WikimediaCommons]