The Gary Sanchez era in the Bronx is over. And with him a lovely third baseman named Gio.

Baseball is back. Let’s have feelings.

[Photo Credit: Arturo Pardavila III via Wikimedia Commons]

Looks like there will be a season after all.

Go figure.

Deep into Here I Are: Anatomy of a Marriage, an Audible Original released last week, Alex Belth describes his wedding to co-writer Emily J. Shapiro. It was a private ceremony on a Caribbean island, the type of wedding you see in the closing scene of a romantic comedy that makes you wonder why you bothered with the stress of a hundred and fifty guests and three entrées and a petulant flower girl. The smart ones elope to paradise.

But buried in the beauty of that moment lies a metaphor that’s likely unintentional. Alex spins a charming tale – Alex and Emily are both charming throughout – about how nervous he was walking from the beach to the end of the pier where the ceremony would take place, worrying with every step that the heirloom ring meant for Emily’s finger might slip from his hand and fall through a gap between the planks of the wooden pier, never to be seen again.

When we think about walking a plank, images of pirates and circling sharks come to mind, or perhaps a ship’s captain falling victim to mutiny. I don’t mean to compare a marriage to such a morbid scene, and neither would Alex or Em, but there is something in that moment to which any of us who have walked down the aisle – or a pier – can relate. 

While the captured pirate might take those final steps under threat of a drawn sword, the happy couple is equally powerless, driven by their beating hearts and intertwined souls. But here’s the irony: no matter how deep the love, no matter how committed the mind, each couple walks this plank and takes this leap knowing that the future is uncertain. And like the pirate, they must ask themselves a simple question: dare we look beyond the end of the plank?

In this beautifully produced memoir, Emily and Alex take us on an intimate tour of their marriage, shying away from nothing, illuminating everything, looking fearlessly over the edge. It’s a project more than two years in the making, stemming from a seed planted long ago in an article Alex wrote describing his role as husband and caretaker to Emily as she struggled first with panic attacks and Crohn’s disease and later debilitating vision issues.

The two of them have expanded that original article into a two-and-a-half-hour expedition, beginning with their cautious courtship, continuing through the early days of their relationship, and extending into a marriage that has not just survived but thrived. 

Structured in a series of alternating interviews, the piece feels less like a book than an afternoon with friends. As Emily describes her numerous hospital visits or Alex admits to childhood issues that have lingered into adulthood, something remarkable happens. The two of them draw the listener in, laying out their intertwined stories and memories with such vulnerability and confidence that the exercise feels less like the dissection of a marriage and more like a coffee klatch. You picture yourself sitting at their dining room table, and when the narrative switches from Alex’s discussion of his father’s drinking problems to Emily’s explanation of why she didn’t want to have children, you imagine that Alex has simply left the room for a moment, perhaps to fetch some cookies from the kitchen.

Without question, the personalities are the strength of the production. I should admit that I’ve known Alex for almost twenty years, but Emily is the star of the show, and probably of the marriage. (Sorry, Alex.) Her matter of fact explanation of her various maladies and her frank discussion of what she’s lost along the way are somehow completely devoid of self-pity; we see her not as a victim of her body’s betrayal but as a survivor always ready for the next fight. Listeners will wish they could undo what’s been done, but not once will they pity Emily J. Shapiro.

Alex and Emily clearly recorded this with hopes of providing inspiration, and they’ve succeeded. As specific and extreme as parts of their journey may be, it is somehow relatable and universal. Any listener who has been married will recognize themselves at some point, perhaps as Alex talks about releasing his need to find solutions to his wife’s struggles or when Emily’s voice softens as she describes her husband’s gentle nature. Listeners who have traveled some of the darker roads described will no doubt find solace and comfort, but even those who have not will feel uplifted.

Here I Are soars because it’s about so much more than medical mysteries and marriage therapy. It’s a love story, something every one of us will recognize. It couldn’t be more familiar. All of us have done what Alex and Emily do here. When one couple meets another, it doesn’t take long before we begin unspooling stories. We stare into each other’s eyes and tell about first dates and near misses, of coincidence and happenstance. We draw sustenance from the sharing of these origin stories, but we don’t usually go deeper than is comfortable. We don’t usually look over the edge.

Emily and Alex do. They tell us about their first date, but also their first breakup. They tell us about their wedding, but also why they don’t have children. They give us everything. They walk the plank, and they ask us to follow.

[Photo Credit: Caleb Kenna]

“They talk about Bernie being the bridge between old and new; but Gerald was there, too. Even though he was more of a natural ballplayer than Bernie, Bernie was the one who ended up being the better overall player and having the longer career.  But Gerald has a place in our hearts forever.”   – Alex Belth

He was the man who shepherded one of the greatest homegrown Yankees of all time, no small feat in our modern times.  Ironically, he was not around to share the glory of the Yankees’ most recent dynasty beyond its inception, and returned at the tail end after the winning was done.  Yet he was a fan favorite throughout, and no matter where he was playing, we always seemed to be waiting for him to come home.

Rest In Power, Old Friend. We’ll be talking more about you in a New York minute…

Baseball. Remember that?

Well, over at Esquire I compiled a list of 100 great baseball books. Give a look.

Lots of free agent signings in the mix before the anticipated lockout. Yanks quiet thus far.

This can’t make anyone around here particularly happy, I’m sure…

Yanks play the Sox in Boston tonight. Winner moves on, loser goes home.

Never mind the indigestion: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

…Of course the Yanks will play the Sox on Tuesday night, on the road.

Sure, the Yanks romped in Boston not so long ago. Be nice if they’ve got one more big win in them but I’m not feeling overly confident, you?

Regardless, a one-game playoff is better than nothing and we’ll take it, like it or not.

So, this cockamamie season comes down to the final day of the season: win and the Yanks are in. Lose, and oy veh.

Never mind the agita:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Three against the Jays, three against the Rays. Should be more than interesting.

Never mind the nonsense:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags

Yanks sweep in Boston. Stanton launching bombs? This has been some cockamamie season, and who knows what this week brings, but a sweep in Fenway? Yeah, it was pretty okay.

At this point, I don’t even like looking at the scoreboard. It got easier when the division slipped out of reach and I could just root for the Rays to beat everybody, but the rest is kind of muddy. Do I want the Red Sox to push the Blue Jays further back in the wildcard race, or do I want Boston to lose so the Yankees might be able to host the wildcard game? And what to make of the Oakland-Seattle series? Would it be better for one team to sweep the other, or would a split be better? It’s just too much.

Such is the nature of a pennant race, especially one augmented (or bastardized, depending on your point of view) with so many extra spots. I remember seasons when there was nothing more boring than September baseball, as the Yankees and I basked in the glory of a double-digit division lead and looked at the playoffs as a birth right rather than a pipe dream.

Ah, but times have changed. It’s natural to look at each one of these games as life and death, to curse our luck and load a dropped foul ball with the weight of an entire season, but we all know the truth. There is no greater measuring stick in all of sports than the 162-game Major League Baseball season. When each of those games has been tallied, you are, as another New York coach once famously said, what your record says you are. These Yankees won’t look back at a dropped popup, a six-run ninth inning, or any of various trips to the injured list. You can’t pinpoint anything in this haystack full of needles; the pinpoints are everywhere.

The irony of baseball’s playoff expansion is that while it may have created more excitement in some corners of the country, it’s diluted it in others. Out in California, many are making the argument that the Giants and the Dodgers are the two best teams in baseball. Were it not for the wildcard, this would be a playoff race for the ages, but both teams are already making postseason plans. (The Dodgers, sadly, having built one of the best starting rotations in recent memory, a stable of pitchers that will make them the favorites in any postseason series, face the possibility of elimination in a wildcard game without any of their superior depth coming into play. Will it be exciting? Certainly. Is it what baseball is meant to be? Absolutely not.) Oh, and because baseball refuses to fix inequitable brackets, the Giants’ (or Dodgers’) reward for having the best record in the National League will be what baseball feels should be the weakest playoff entry, the wildcard team. In this case that means the two best teams in the sport will face off in a first round five-game series. To quote another New York manager, “It’s not what you want.”

But the wildcard allows us to dream. As inept as the Yankees have looked recently and at various times throughout the season, they can still win the World Series, and that’s the downside of the wildcard. In theory, you could put the Baltimore Orioles into the playoffs and watch them win 12 of 20 October games and host a championship trophy in the end. If there is any sport that should not have expanded playoffs, it’s baseball, but here we are.

And so dream, I will. If the Yankees can finish up business against Texas and then win six or seven of their last nine against Boston, Toronto, and Tampa Bay, there will be at least one more game. At this point that’s all I want. One more game.

If there’s been one constant in the Yankee Universe over the past 100 years, it has been postseason baseball. There have been a few droughts — 1965 to 1975, 1982 to 1994 — but no franchise in the history of sports has enjoyed such consistent excellence. The Pinstripes have only missed the playoffs four times in the last 26 years, and while the 2009 World Series triumph might seem like a distant memory, we’ve been spoiled.

And so when things were at their darkest back in June and the Yankees were looking up at several teams in the standings, it wasn’t just October baseball that seemed unlikely. It didn’t feel like the Yankees would be playing meaningful games in September. We acted like spoiled children do everywhere. We screamed. We cried. We lashed out. We assured our non-Yankee-fan friends that all was lost, that this was the worst and most confounding Yankee team we’d ever seen. (They were confounding.) We wanted general manager Brian Cashman to sell at the deadline even though the roster had virtually no sellable pieces. We were insufferable.

But then the calendar rolled over into July, and the Yankees were much better. When August arrived they were even better than that, and in the first week of September the team now sits firmly in control of its own destiny. With the offense looking healthier each day (Gleyber Torres was activated on Friday) and the Baltimore Sacrificial Lambs coming to town for a three-game weekend series, all signs are pointing towards October baseball. Again.

Now if the Rays could only lose once or twice…

When I woke up on Tuesday morning it occurred to me that the first game of the double header between the Yankees and the Red Sox would be arguably the most important game of the Yankees’ season.

Sure, the Yankees’ recent resurgence had paired nicely with Boston’s regression to the mean, trimming several games off of a lead that had seemed insurmountable when the Bombers limped out of Boston last month, but this one game seemed crucial to New York’s hopes. It isn’t just that the Yankees had lost their first seven games to the Red Sox this season and 10 of 13, it’s that they were embarrassingly bad in many of those losses. So even though the Yanks had gone 15-5 since that Fenway series while the Sox were 8-20, a loss on Tuesday afternoon would have erased all of that and sent a powerful message to players in both dugouts. Same old Yankees, same old Red Sox.

And so when Boston loaded the bases with none out in the top of the softball-seventh, the Yankees’ 5-3 lead looked about as solid as a Times Square umbrella. Not only were the Yankees going to lose, they were going to lose in 2021 fashion, promising you victory before ripping your heart out and holding it aloft, beating but still dying.

But Jonathan Loaisiga, the most consistent member of the battered bullpen, cleaned up his own mess, retiring Travis Shaw on a line drive and striking out Kiké Hernández and Hunter Refroe to close things out, the last strike coming on a 100-mph heater that overmatched Renfroe and tipped the balance of power in the game’s most storied rivalry. Last month the jeering chants from the Fenway faithful carried an eerie ring of truth, but Loaisiga’s primal scream from the mound following that final strikeout sounded an awful lot like 1978.

The night cap was much less dramatic — solo homers by Luke Voit and Giancarlo Stanton gave the Yankees all they needed for a 2-0 win behind the historically precocious Luí Gil — and even the ending was uneventful. Chad Green’s three-up-three-down save was delightfully boring.

Yes, the Tampa Bay Rays are still five games clear of the Yankees, and yes, there are still 42 games left to play, but I no longer look at those 42 games with dread.

The last time the Yankees played a double header was on the Fourth of July. After they opened with a horrific loss to the Mets, I honestly hoped that Aaron Boone would be fired in between games. Only a young George Steinbrenner would’ve been bold enough for something like that, and it turned out to be a good thing that his son Hal is not as rash. No matter what happens with the Rays or the White Sox or the Astros, Boone is almost assuredly the American League Manager of the Year. There were times this season (last week even) when the players on the injured list could form a better team than the one on the field, but Boone has somehow not only kept his group afloat through one devastating loss after another, he’s had them playing their best baseball after most observers had written them off.

An entire starting rotation and a closer on the injured list? No problem. We’ll call up a kid from AAA (Luís Gil) and watch him become the first pitcher in more than a century to start his career with fifteen or more innings pitched over three scoreless starts. Not a lot of home run power? No problem. We’ll just become a running team. Since the All Star break, no team in baseball has stolen more bases than the Yankees.

When things were darkest, I found myself wishing for a firing, but even then I knew that the sky was not falling because of any decisions Aaron Boone was making or not making. I wanted a change simply for the sake of change, simply to send a message, but instead Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner chose to send another message — “We believe in this team.” On Tuesday afternoon and Tuesday night, their faith was repaid.

When Aaron Judge was scratched from a lineup during the days before the trading deadline, Yankee Twitter immediately lit up with worries that the centerpiece of the team was being traded. Many voices wanted the Yankees to buy sellers at the deadline, not buyers. Less than a month later, those concerns are forgotten.

If the season ended today, the Yankees would be in the playoffs.

Yanks and the formidable Chicago White Sox play in the Field of Dreams tonight.

Oh, what nostalgia. Not for me. But, still. LOL.

Hope it provides some dumb fun.

Yanks on a little run here. Funski.

Never mind the sentiment:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

I like to imagine that somewhere out there are Yankee fans who were off the grid for a few months. They jumped on the internet the first chance they got, and lots of things were the same in Yankeetown.

The first thing they’d notice is that the team is still scuffling, teasing fans into thinking about a World Series one day, ripping their hearts out the next. They’d check on Aaron Judge and be relieved that he’s healthy and still one of the best players in the league. They’d see that Aroldis Chapman has a boatload of saves and has been lights out recently, no concerns there. (Don’t bother telling them; they’d never believe you.)

But then they’d look more closely, and nothing would make sense. Anthony Rizzo playing first base and carrying the Yankee offense? Joey Gallo in the outfield and providing another left-handed bat in the lineup? Rougned Odor at third instead of second? Jameson Taillon was American League Pitcher of the Month in July?

GIANCARLO STANTON WITH A GLOVE ON HIS HAND??? This is obviously the most preposterous development of the past season. After spending two years as a full-time DH, removing any lineup flexibility that would’ve allowed occasional half days for Judge or Gary Sánchez, Stanton is suddenly a versatile corner outfielder, looking adequate in left field one night and right field the next. (The irony of all this is that recently he’s been hitting like a utility infielder, continuing the Yankees’ season-long theme of “two steps forward, two steps back.” Nice for salsa dancing, not for baseball.)

If one those out-of-touch Yankee fans had sat down next to you on the couch for the series opener against the hapless Baltimore Orioles on Monday night, you’d likely have turned to your guest and said, “This is what I’m saying.”

The ballpark was buzzing, the Bleacher Creatures were in full throat, the lineup was delightfully staggered, and the worst team in the American League had generously tied a sacrificial lamb to the mound. You just knew that Rizzo or Gallo or both would launch bombs into the bleachers. You just knew that the momentum from the weekend’s South Beach sweep and the energy of the Bronx would push the Bombers to a big win. You just knew the season had turned.

Didn’t you?

But then Andrew Heaney, the newest Yankee starter, gave up four solo home runs. And then Jorge López and his 6.19 ERA carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning. And then Aaron Boone played the infield back with a runner on third in the eighth even though he was already down by five because probably even he knew how ridiculous the game had become.

It was one of those games, and if the outcome felt familiar it’s because the 2021 Yankees haven’t won a game in which they trailed by four runs or more at any point. Comeback Kids they aren’t.

Oh, and then Boone opened his postgame presser by casually mentioning that Gerrit Cole would miss his Tuesday start because he had tested positive for Covid. (Don’t worry; we’ve got Heaney.)

But. Still.

Somehow I’m still excited about this team. Somehow I’m still looking forward to seeing Corey Kluber and Luís Severino on the mound later this month. Somehow I’m still excited about a playoff run in September and big games in October.

Somehow I still believe. Do you?

What if — now hear me out — what if it’s possible?

It demands either optimism or delusion to think positively about a team that’s in fourth place in the division and fifth place in the wildcard race, but here we are. This modest stretch of success, taking two of three first from the Astros and then from the Red Sox, feels significant, but we’ll have to wait a bit until we know whether we’ve finally found the oasis or been taken in by a mirage.

But what if it’s real?

The lineup posted for Sunday night’s Red Sox game certainly didn’t give much reason for optimism. While the top four (D.J. LeMahieu, Giancarlo Stanton, Gary Sánchez, Gleyber Torres) might’ve made sense back in April, the next five were simply preposterous. Four of the players were guys I hadn’t heard of back in April; three of them I hadn’t heard of two weeks ago.

We were promised an outfield of Clint Frazier, Aaron Hicks, and Aaron Judge, but for various reasons (mysterious dizziness, wrist surgery, and Covid-19, from left to right) Aaron Boone is left with Ryan LaMarre, Greg Allen, and Trey Amburgey. Seriously.

While it’s tempting to be critical of management for not jumping on Joc Pedersen when the Cubs unloaded him to the Atlanta Braves, here’s the counterpoint — no team in my memory has seen such a devastating stretch of injuries and extenuating circumstances impact a single position group like this. Looking at it from an organizational standpoint, the Yankees are currently working with their fifth outfielder (Brett Gardner), a converted utility infielder (Tyler Wade), and the starting outfield of the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Rail Riders. (LaMarre, Allen, and Amberguey).

But here’s the thing. Not only did the Yankees take the series against Boston with a decisive 9-1 win, they looked good on Sunday night. They were having fun.

The names you know were 2 for 15 (a single for LeMahieu and a hope-inducing homer for Torres), but the interlopers carried the day. LaMarre and the stylish Rougned Odor had two-run homers, and LaMarre and Allen each had a stolen base. (I’d look up the last time a Yankee had a home run and a stolen base in the same game, but I fear the answer might be Rickey Henderson, which would make be too sad to finish this post.)

While fans might the lament the lack of star power in the lineup, part of the appeal of what we saw over the weekend came from the joy of the players wearing the uniform, the clear appreciation of these unexpected opportunities.

LaMarre, a thirty-two-year-old journeyman who is hardly a kid, took a tumble that was serious enough to draw his manager all the way out to right field to check on him, but the outfielder stayed in the game. “I told Boonie that I’m not coming out of the game,” he explained. “You don’t get too many chances to wear pinstripes, so I want to take advantage of every inning that I get out there.”

It isn’t reasonable to expect these Bad News Bombers to make a realistic playoff push, but if they can at least keep up the illusion for another week or so until Aaron Judge, Gio Urshella, and maybe Luke Voit can rejoin the team, the playoffs will be a possibility.

Seriously.

When Gary Sánchez jumped on an 0-2 fastball from Houston’s Blake Taylor in the top of the 8th inning, he did more than just give the Yankees an insurmountable 7-2 lead. Before he had even finished the follow through on a swing so pure that it must’ve been hard for any observer to imagine his two-year slump, it felt as if we were witnessing a massive recalibration of Yankees Universe.

With just six more outs the Bombers would complete not just a 5-1 road trip heading into the All-Star break, but a decisive three-game sweep of the team that has clearly surpassed the Red Sox as the principal villains on the Yankee schedule.

Nestor Cortes, who always looks to me like he’s just gotten off his shift at Ray’s Pizza (Original Ray’s, not Famous Rays), started the opener and came an out shy of qualifying for the win but still lowered his ERA to a city-best 1.05 as the Yankees set the tone with a 4-0 win.

Cortes was impressive, but on Saturday evening Gerrit Cole was phenomenal. After yielding nine runs in eight and a third innings over two mediocre starts, the whispers were no longer whispers. Cole had struggled since baseball’s crackdown on illegal substances, and suddenly the most important member of the Yankee pitching staff — in 2021 and for the next five years — was no longer a known quantity.

Given those circumstances along with the current desperation of his team, his complete game shutout in the middle game of the series was his most important and most impressive outing in pinstripes. When Cole struck out Robel García with his 112th pitch to close out the eighth inning with a slim 1-0 lead, anyone who’s been watching baseball for the past decade logically assumed his night was complete, even it wasn’t statistically complete. So when Cole climbed back out of the dugout for the ninth inning to act as his own closer, it was as if we were all stepping back in time.

Perhaps we weren’t headed all the way to the days of Tom Seaver, who hit double-digits in complete games in each of his first eleven seasons, or Bob Gibson, who had fifty-six complete games over 1968 and ’69, but it felt a lot like Jack Morris’s World-Series-clinching ten-inning shutout of the Atlanta Braves in 1991. (I understand that a performance like that in Game 7 of the World Series puts Morris on another level, but if we focus just on the pitching, this is a good comparison.) While Morris pitched all ten of his innings that October night without any runs on the board for either team, Cole worked his masterpiece with the benefit of just a single run, courtesy of an Aaron Judge homer (more on this later).

Like Morris three decades ago, Cole impressed just as much with his determination as with his brilliant stuff. After a lead-off single to José Altuve forced Cole to work the the rest of the ninth inning with the game-winning run standing in the batter’s box, the once and future Yankee ace took hold of the moment and refused to let it go. A ten-pitch battle with Michael Brantley ended with a harmless fly ball to center field for the first out, and then Yuli Gurriél went down on three quick strikes. What followed is the stuff of legend.

When Cole had last faced the Yankees back in May, Yordan Álvarez had touched him twice for two long home runs, so it was no surprise that Aaron Boone popped out of the dugout as the Houston slugger made his way to the plate to face a hurler who had already thrown 126 pitches. Pulling Cole would’ve been the easiest decision of Boone’s night, and it would’ve been that rare move that could never have been second guessed. After all, this is 2021, not 1951.

But Gerrit Cole was not ready to go quietly into that good-night. Surrounded by an infield ready to pat him on the back, Cole greeted his manager with defiance rather than deference, his head bobbing to punctuate words that didn’t need to be heard to be understood. When asked afterwards what he had said, Cole admitted that, “I said the f-word a lot, and I kind of just blacked out. I don’t really remember what I told him, to be honest.”

Whatever he said, he won his case, then threw three fastballs past Álvarez at 97, 99, and 99 miles per hour, the last pitch accompanied by a primal scream that echoed from Houston to the Bronx and back again. In a month that had seen two of the worst regular season losses in recent memory, Cole had spun a superlative on the other end of the spectrum, giving goosebumps and optimism to Yankee fans everywhere.

The Yankees hung on to that momentum into the third game, plating single runs in the third, fourth, fifth, and seventh behind an impressive effort from starting pitcher Jamieson Taillon, so when the Kracken launched that three-run homer in the top of the eighth, I celebrated.

After a long first half of mediocrity and several different losses that felt like rock bottom, I truly believed the team had found itself, and perhaps even forged a new identity. Saturday’s game had ended with the signature moment of Cole’s defiance and determination, but there was a moment during Judge’s home run trot that seemed, at the time, to carry more longterm weight than anything happening on the pitcher’s mound.

As Judge rounded third, he took a quick peek into the Yankee dugout before clutching his jersey with two hands and pulling it tight, clearly mimicking Altúve’s celebration after his ALCS-clinching homer in 2019, an action that led to rampant speculation about cheating that was more high-tech than just the banging of a trash can.

It was a decidedly un-Yankee-like moment for the de facto captain of this team, an on-field jab at an opponent that we never would’ve seen from Jeter or Mattingly or Randolph or even Munson, but it seemed like exactly what this team needed. When asked about it afterwards, Judge smiled mischievously and talked about how chilly it is in Houston in July. He was just reminding the guys, he said, to stay warm.

Joe DiMaggio was probably spinning in his grave, but the modern day Yankees welcomed the opportunity to join the rest of baseball in 2021. When Sánchez returned to the dugout after his blast, his teammates had somehow found a parka, and he wore it draped over his shoulders (stay warm!) as he paced up and down, accepting congratulations.

It was a happy time. The Yankees would surely close out this game and head into the much needed break in the best possible way. Only a week earlier I had texted friends saying, “The Yankees aren’t going to make the playoffs, but for real this time.” But thanks to this series — thanks to Judge, thanks to Cole, thanks to the Kracken — all of that Sturm und Drang had washed away. The Yankees were back.

But you know what happened next.

The stunning part of this latest ninth-inning collapse wasn’t so much that it happened — we’ve grown used to this now — but how quickly things fell apart, how quickly the universe tilted back into disarray. And unlike previous games, it was hard to question any of the manager’s decisions.

Domingo Germán had looked great in two innings of relief of Taillon, and with a five-run lead and Jonathan Loaisiga on the Covid list and Aroldis Chapman on the what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you list, it made sense to roll with Germán through the ninth.

And you know easily things could have broken differently? Gurriél led off the inning with a single, but it was a ball that dribbled down the third base line before dying in the grass for a base hit. Two pitches later Kyle Tucker hit a rocket off the wall in left for a double, and Green was done.

The unhittable Chad Green came in at 4:39 local time, and things combusted quickly.

4:40 — Double by McCormick, 7-4 Yankees.
4:42 — Double by Toro, 7-5 Yankees.
4:44 — Single by Castro.
4:46 — Line out by Maldonado, one out.
4:49 — Home run by Altúve, 8-7 Astros.

Ryan Roucco described it perfectly: “A crushing gut punch here in the ninth.”

LoCastro might have had a shot at McCormick’s double, Judge had come about two inches short of catching Toro’s double, and Torres really seemed to have skillfully dropped Maldonado’s lineout, setting up what should’ve been an easy double play. Had just one of those butterflies flapped its wings, the Houston rally might not have happened.

But it did happen. As Altúve stepped on home plate to complete the comeback, the smallest man in the ballpark disappeared beneath a horde of celebrating teammates. He was shirtless when he emerged, giving the Astros not just a win but the final word in the conversation Judge had started the night before.

So where do we go from here? If there’s one thing we know, it’s this — no team in baseball has the experience that this team does in rebounding from devastating losses. The only difference now is that they’ll have to rebound with a roster decimated by Covid and against the Boston Red Sox.

We. Shall. See.

If the Yankees were 54-32 and comfortably cruising towards the playoffs rather than 44-42 and desperately clinging to dwindling hopes, this weekend’s series with the Houston Astros would be filled with drama and secondary storylines. We’d be gnashing our teeth heading into a three-game set with a team that isn’t just the class of the American League but a true Yankee nemesis filled with villains up and down the lineup.

But as things are, the Yankees can’t afford to worry about which team is in the opposing dugout. Whether it’s the Astros or the Orioles, the Yankees need wins and lots of them. They’ve put themselves in a position where they’re essentially already in the playoffs, but instead of a five-game series they’re engaged in an eleven-week crucible that demands they win five of every eight games at a minimum. They’ll either eliminate themselves early and limp to the finish line, or they’ll arrive in October battle scarred and forged into a team no one will want to play.

Can this team pull off such a feat? That’s the true value of a series like this. The Yankees can’t afford to think about revenge. Should Aroldis Chapman wind up facing José Altuve with a one-run lead in the ninth inning (gulp!), it won’t make sense to think back to how the Yankee season ended in 2019. Winning two or three games this weekend obviously won’t change the outcomes of either 2017 or 2019, nor will it guarantee anything this season. If the Yankees manage to win twice this weekend, it will simply mean that they’ll need to win just 48 games the rest of the way instead of 50. First-half mediocrity brings nothing but second-half pragmatism.

The good news? It’s possible. Sure, Thursday saw the Yankees fall into old habits as they made a rookie pitcher look like Sandy Koufax and failed to close the deal on a potential series sweep, but there are positive developments that give reason for optimism. Luke Voit had seven hits in eight at bats during the first two games of the Seattle series, Gary Sánchez is a serious offensive threat again, and were it not for the most anti-climactic MVP race I can remember, Aaron Judge would be a strong candidate for the award.

So buckle up, everybody. We’re about to learn something.

I think I’ve decided that this is it. This is the team we have.

In the three weeks since I last opined in this space, the team has changed and changed back again, teasing us into optimism with flashes of quality play but then falling back into their old ways, cruelly reminding us that we should’ve known better.

Aaron Judge continues to have a fine season. He’s been the one truly consistent Yankee in the lineup, but in a season which needs 2017 Judge, his consistency has been hardly noticeable. Giancarlo Stanton will have a week here or there during which it’s hard to imagine why anyone would ever pitch to him, but then he’ll spend the next week flailing at sliders six inches off the plate. Gleyber Torres has seemed so lost that I’ve caught myself wondering if a week or two in Scranton might do him some good.

Oh, but there’s been good news. Although D.J. LeMaheiu spent the first sixty games hitting a hundred points less than he did in last year’s sixty-game season, he’s been showing some signs of life recently, hitting closer to .300 in June. And if I had told you a month ago that Gary Sánchez would be the team’s best hitter at this point, would you ever have believed me? The Kracken has been slashing at .300/.372/.686 this month, featuring six doubles and seven homers; he had three doubles and six homers in April and May combined.

So as we heard several times this weekend from the YES broadcast crew, it’s been two steps forward and two steps back for the Yankees for a while now. That’s works fine for salsa dancing, but when you’re trying to make up ground in the suddenly-deep-again American League East, not so much.

All of this made this weekend’s series with the Red Sox even more critical than such games usually are. Winning two of three or — dare to dream — a sweep would have erased an awful lot of the frustration of the past few months, but when the Yankees dropped close ones on Friday (5-3) and Saturday (4-2), Sunday suddenly felt like a must-win game. Thankfully, Gerrit Cole was on the mound.

But if you’re reading this, you know what happened. Making his first Fenway start in pinstripes, Cole did not deliver. His first pitch was rocketed over the Green Monster by Kiké Hernández, Alex Verdugo doubled a few pitches after that, and two batters later Rafael Devers launched an 0-2 pitch 470 feet into the seats. There were still eight innings to go, but the game was over.

And you know the strangest part of the whole afternoon? I sat there and watched the whole thing. When Aaron Judge hit a two-run homer in the sixth to cut the lead to 6-2, I found myself getting hopeful. When the Yankees loaded the bases with one out in the seventh and LeMahieu and Judge due up, I started thinking about what a big win this could be.

But when my optimism was repaid with a 9-2 loss and I was forced to look back over an abysmal nine innings, I finally allowed myself to answer the question I posed in this space three weeks ago.

Yes. This is the team we have.

I’ve never really subscribed to the theory that teams built around power can’t win in the postseason, so the structure of this team never bothered me. After all, if you have the major league leaders in batting (LeMahieu) and home runs (Luke Voit), and then you add Judge, Stanton, and Sánchez, you’re obviously going to score a lot of runs. Yet only two teams in the American League, the Tigers and Orioles, have scored fewer runs than the Bronx Bombers, and if you watched the three Fenway games, it isn’t hard to see why.

The Red Sox outscored the Yankees 18-7, but the hit and walk totals were much closer — 38-35. The Yankees had plenty of opportunities to score runs, but they weren’t able to. We’ve been told that runs batted in is a meaningless stat in this era of statistical enlightenment, but here’s something that is enlightening. Aaron Judge leads the Yankees with 42 RBIs. Heading into Sunday’s game his then forty RBIs ranked 54th in baseball. I have neither the time nor the inclination to research this, but I’d guess it’s been decades since the Yankees’ leading RBI man ranked that low. (For comparison’s sake, Rafael Devers and Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., are tied for the lead with 68.)

If we were to rewind the season back to April and play it again, I’m not sure what would happen. If we were to simulate the season a few thousand times, exactly how many times would we see a team this talented look so similar to the Orioles or the Tigers or the Royals? (For the record, the number crunchers over at fivethirtyeight.com haven’t lost faith in our Yankees. Their statistical models see the Bombers as the fifth best team in baseball, but the same model also projects them to 87-75 and gives them only a 36% chance to make the playoffs, which feels about right.)

But we aren’t living in a simulation, and we can’t turn back the clock. Today the Yankees lost in embarrassing fashion, their sixth straight loss to the Red Sox, and they sit in fourth place at 40-37, six and a half games behind Boston. It doesn’t get much more real than that.