New York Yankees starting pitcher Luis Severino throws during the first inning in Game 3 of a baseball American League Division Series against the Minnesota Twins, Monday, Oct. 7, 2019, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Bruce Kluckhohn)

Game 2 in the Bronx did not go the Yankees’ way, and not just because of the final result on the scoreboard. It was one of those games when line drives off Yankee bats were caught, but bloops and flares off Guardian bats found the grass.

In a well-pitched game on both sides, there were a handful of moments that determined the game. With a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the third, Josh Donaldson stood at the plate with two outs and runners on second and third. He ripped a ball to left field that would likely have scored two and might even have chased Cleveland starter Shane Bieber from the game, but left fielder Steven Kwan was able to race in and grab it for the final out. Later, with two outs and the bases loaded in the eighth, Kyle Higashioka looked for just a moment as if he would be the hero, but his line drive was snagged by third baseman Jose Ramirez, and again the Yankees were turned away.

Finally, in the top of the tenth inning, Aaron Boone sent Jameson Taillon (and not Clarke Schmidt) to the mound, a questionable decision considering Taillon had never before appeared in relief. The result was predictable, if not the manner in which things played out. First there was a bloop to left by Ramirez, a ball that Oswaldo Cabrera might’ve been able to catch were it not for a moment’s hesitation towards the end. The hustling Ramirez forced a desperate throw to second from Donaldson, and when that throw sailed into right field, Ramirez ended up a-huggin’ third. Oscar Gonzalez followed that with another bloop, this one falling in front of Aaron Judge in right, and the Guardians had their lead. (Josh Naylor followed with a double that was an absolute rocket, but it was the bloops that had done in Taillon.)

The Yankees were never going to go 11-0 in the postseason, and they probably weren’t even going to sweep the Guardians. This isn’t the time to panic. Luis Severino takes the mound today, and it’s been more than two weeks since he last allowed a base hit! Yesterday’s loss does nothing to change the fact that the Yankees are a better team than the Guardians, or that Severino is a better and more experienced pitcher than Cleveland’s Triston McKenzie. Tonight’s game is pivotal, but this isn’t doomsday. Come in off the ledge and watch the game. It’ll be fun!

Let’s-G0-Yank-ees!

Game Two gives a rare afternoon playoff game in the Bronx.

Yanks looking to stay ahead of the Guardians and not turn this into some kind of soggy, misbegotten weekend of horrors in Cleveland.

Never mind the doubts:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Today gives a pair of Game 2’s in the National League.

Never mind the chill:

Let’s Go Base-ball!

And so it begins.

Originally I wasn’t sure what I thought about baseball’s new playoff format — I’m generally against any expansion of the playoffs, any further dilution of the regular season — but I actually think they got something right this time. (Mets fans, sadly, likely have a different thought right now.)

But our Yankees are fresh and ready to go, and so are we. Sure, it’s nice that the bullpen arms are rested, but I didn’t mind having five days free of anxiety either. So bring on the Guardians!

If you’ve been paying attention for the last twenty years — and you wouldn’t be reading this if you haven’t been — you know that there’s some deep recent history between these two teams. As the Yankees were rising in the mid ’90s, the rivalry with Cleveland was sometimes more intense than the one with Boston. It’s blasphemy, but it’s true.

It began with Mariano Rivera’s ill-fated cutter that floated up in the zone and then into the seats off of Sandy Alomar’s bat in 1997, one of just two bad postseason losses during an otherworldly six-year run. The following year, Cleveland gave the 1998 Yankees their only moments of tension (helped a bit by Chuck Knoblauch) before El Duque Hernández showed that he was still an ace, fourth starter or not. Almost a decade later, Cleveland had the upper hand again, this time when a swarm of midges engulfed Joba Chamberlain and changed the course of the 1997 ALDS.

The Yankees eliminated Cleveland in the 2017 divisional series and again in the 2020 wild card series, but it’s interesting that I don’t remember a single thing about either of those moments. Didn’t Giancarlo Stanton do something monstrous in 2020? Perhaps.

And so what will 2022 hold as these two teams face off again? Will we remember this series forever, or will it disappear into the corners of memory?

There’s been drama in the Yankee camp, as Aroldis Chapman has been left off the roster for this series because he failed to show up for a workout — or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, we’ve likely seen the last of Chapman in pinstripes, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, who among us would’ve felt comfortable watching him on the mound in an October game that mattered?

Our old friend Matt Carpenter is back, and even though his role is yet to be seen — will Stanton play the field to let him DH, or will Carpenter just be a pinch hitter? — I’m as happy for him as I am for the potential impact he might have on the Yankees’ playoff run.

Aside from the efforts of the Cleveland Guardians, a better team than some might think, there are two things that will determine the Yankees’ success or failure in this series. The first one is obvious, the $324 million elephant in the dugout, but we’ll get to that later. What I’m interested in seeing is how the more inexperienced Yankees fare in the postseason spotlight. I don’t worry for a minute about Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton or Luís Severino or even Josh Donaldson. Even if those players don’t perform, it won’t be because of the moment.

But what about Nestor Cortés? We’re told that he doesn’t fear anything, but I don’t think that even Nestor himself knows how he’ll feel when he toes the rubber on an October night in Yankee Stadium. Oswaldo Cabrera has been an important contributor over the past month, and observers have noticed how comfortable he looks. Will he still have that same comfort with two outs and a runner on second in the eighth inning? We’ll see.

The truth, however, is that nothing that I’ve written so far matters nearly as much as how Gerrit Cole pitches tonight. He’s still one of the best pitchers in the game, the type of pitcher who’s a threat to throw a no-hitter every time out, but this season he’s also been one of the most volatile pitchers in the game. At no point tonight, no matter how well he appears to be throwing, will I be relaxed. It won’t matter who’s in the batter’s box, it won’t matter how many strikeouts Cole has, I will always worry that he’ll groove a fastball or hang a curve or lose a changeup and the ball will disappear into the night.

The Yankees gave him the richest contract in their history precisely for Game 1. It’s the reason that Aaron Boone named Cole the starter for this game weeks ago, even though an objective look at the statistics would’ve resulted in Cortés getting the ball instead, or even Severino.

But it always had to be Gerrit Cole. This was always going to be his moment. And so much depends on this moment.

Aaron Judge didn’t hit a home run during the weekend series against the Orioles. He hasn’t seen that many strikes, though yesterday he whiffed three times. Can’t help trying to hit a home run at home. He had at least two pitches yesterday that were mistakes. He put a good swing on both of them. Fouled them both off. The difference between a hot streak and “pressing.”

The Yanks are winners of the AL East and end the regular season against the Rangers in Texas. Tomorrow gives a double header so figure Judge will play three of the four games.

Never mind the pressure:

Let’s Go Jud-ge!

The Yanks clinched the AL East on Tuesday night. They’ve got eight games left (including a double header next Tuesday in Texas). Under normal circumstances, Aaron Judge would get a game or two off. That’s not going to happen with him sitting on 60 homers.

You know he’s got to be pressing and yet last night he walked four times. He was up five times and the count went full in each at-bat. In the first inning, he lined out sharply to third and after that, he spit on the 3-2 pitch, all enticing, and took his walks.

One of Roger Maris’s sons sits next to Judge’s mother at each game. It’s all exhausting—Michael Kay has to rev up into “historic” mode each time Judge comes up—but in the meantime, the Yanks are winning and all is well.

Everyone should have such problems.

Never mind the great expectations:

Let’s Go-Yankees!

Hitting home runs is not easy even for the best of the them.

All eyes on Aaron Judge again this afternoon. Yanks have beat the Sox 5-4 each of the past two nights; he walked three times on Thursday and hit a long fly ball that he “just missed”; got a base hit and whiffed twice last night. The magic number for clinching the AL East is down to four for the Bombers.

Never mind the pressure:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Aaron Judge hit home run number 60 last night to lead off the ninth inning. Four batters later, Giancarlo Stanton hit a line drive home run—the kind Dave Winfield used to hit—for a game-ending grand slam.

Tonight Judge goes for 61.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Well, the Yanks offense has been lousy this summer but Aaron Judge continues to astound.

What a season, with a couple more homers last night in Boston and Maris’s 61 within reach.

Funski.

Wow, this has been some kind of ugly, eh? And to think they still have the second best record in the league.

Aug 29, 2022; Anaheim, California, USA; New York Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge (99) grounds out in the first inning against the Los Angeles Angels at Angel Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

When my son and I were walking around Angels Stadium about an hour before the first pitch on Monday evening, we got to the open area out behind centerfield, and I pointed towards the water structure that separates the left field seats from the right.

“Judge is gonna hit one into those rocks tonight, I’m sure of it.”

It would be a rocky game for the Yankees as the offense continued to struggle, but when Aaron Judge came up in the eighth inning and crushed a ball into those rocks, the seven previous innings didn’t matter much anymore. It was August 30th and Judge had just hit his 50th home run, and by the time he got to second base the Yankees fans in the crowd had started chanting “M!V!P! M!V!P!,” not bothered at all that winners of four of the last eight MVP trophies were looking on from the other side.

I’d been watching the schedule for a month hoping that we might get to see Judge hit a round number, so for a moment as we stood and cheered, the 4-3 deficit didn’t matter that much, and I wasn’t even upset as we walked out of the park a bit later, the score still the same. We had seen history, and we had shared the moment with tens of thousands of other Yankee fans. I hope Judge gets 60 and 61 and 62 in the Bronx, but I’m glad he hit number 50 out here. It was a moment I’ll never forget.

The Dog Days are here, but they’ve been here so long that it’s hard to know what we’re seeing. The optimistic among us see a summer swoon compounded by untimely injuries and some bad luck, but the pessimists will say the goose is cooked. The first ninety games were a mirage, and this collapse is proof that Brian Cashman isn’t committed to winning, that Aaron Boone is incompetent, and that the entire franchise is a shell of its former self.

Like most issues like this, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The past has been romanticized to the point that yesterday’s embarrassments (George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin) have become the models that could save this season. “George wouldn’t stand for this, Billy would flip over the postgame spread.”

Perhaps.

Or maybe things will work out on their own.

At least things will look a bit different tonight, with Oswaldo Cabrera starting at third and Estevan Florial in center. The prospects are coming to the rescue. Perhaps.

This team doesn’t need to panic, it just needs to win a game or two. That’s all. The winning streak starts tonight.

I was nine years old when we moved to California in the summer of 1979. I had fallen in love with the Yankees two summers earlier on a trip to New York, so now I found myself three thousand miles and three time zones away from my favorite team. Cable sports networks and the internet hadn’t yet been imagined even in the wildest science fiction, so if I needed to know the Yankee score before the morning paper arrived the next day — and I always did — my only option was to listen to the Dodger game on the radio as I lay in bed.

In the beginning Vin Scully was simply a means to an end. If he didn’t share the out-of-town scores during the final innings, I’d try to stay awake for the postgame show.

Whether doing radio or television, Scully was that rare announcer who worked alone, providing the analysis to his own play by play, so instead of talking to a partner in the booth, he spoke to all of us. He spoke to me. (I’m sure this happened at other ballparks also, but Scully’s one-on-one connection with his listeners was so powerful and ubiquitous that Dodger fans were notorious for bringing their transistor radios to the stadium so they could still hear Vinnie call the game as it unfolded in front of them. Sometimes this would cause feedback during the broadcast, so it wasn’t uncommon to hear Mr. Scully politely ask the patrons below to turn down the volume.)

Like any announcer anywhere, Scully’s repertoire included a handful of phrases that would come up from time to time. If the Dodgers began mounting a rally after trailing throughout, he’d explain that this was the first time the Dodgers were “getting a look at the game.”

As I lay listening in the dark, Scully gave me a look at the game in a wider sense. Even as a boy I knew a fair amount about baseball, and Vin Scully was my guide as I travelled deeper into the game’s history. The wonderfully slow pace of the games allowed him to weave narratives throughout the course of inning, skillfully telling stories one pitch at a time. Davey Lopes would take a throw at second and fire to Steve Garvey to complete a double play, and suddenly I’d hear a story about how Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski would routinely catch a throw from his shortstop by pinning the ball against his closed glove with his bare hand to make for a faster exchange. Reggie Smith’s helmet would come off while rounding third, and it would remind Scully of how Willie Mays would wear his cap a couple sizes large so that it would come off every time he raced around the bases, a bit of gamesmanship that gave the crowd an extra few minutes to cheer and further rattle the opposing pitcher.

These were the bedtime stories I needed, told in the soothing voice of Southern California’s grandfather pulling memories from a lifetime of announcing baseball games. He called some of baseball’s most iconic moments — Henry Aaron’s 715th home run, Don Larsen’s perfect game, any number of World Series clinchers — and even made his presence felt in other sports. His was the voice describing Joe Montana’s pass to Dwight Clark to beat the Cowboys and send the 49ers to their first Super Bowl.

But I’d argue that his Hall of Fame career was built with smaller moments. Describing the ballet of a 6-4-3 double play, narrating a youngster’s efforts to finish a melting ice cream cone in the stands, opening each game by telling his audience, “It’s time for Dodgers baseball!”

Or teaching a nine-year-old boy all about the game.

The days and weeks leading up to the major league trading deadline first and foremost offer opportunities for a franchise to transform itself, but it asks fans to declare something as well.

The Yankees made some smaller moves, picking up a starter, two relievers, and a couple outfielders while also moving Jordan Montgomery in a late surprise, but the big move came courtesy of the San Diego Padres.

There are always a few shiny objects dangling in July, and Juan Soto was the shiniest. When the youngest superstar in the sport is on the trading block, all of the usual big market teams are immediately linked, and there was certainly speculation that Soto could end up playing right field in the Bronx, giving the Yankees the most lethal left-right combination imaginable.

But it was a smaller market team that swooped in with a genius stroke to get a player whose combination of power and plate discipline has been favorably compared to the legendary skills of Ted Williams. Adding Soto to a lineup that already includes Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis, Jr., gives the Friars three of the best young players in baseball at least through 2023, and that’s where the brilliance of this plan truly lies.

Tatis is in the first year of a 14-year $340M contract, but it’s heavily backloaded, so he’ll be making a relatively modest $20M in 2025, the year that Juan Soto will be an unrestricted free agent. It doesn’t seem remotely possible that any franchise, and certainly not the San Diego Padres, could keep all three of those elite players. Those three alone would cost more than a hundred million dollars a season, but Machado has an opt out after 2023.

So what the Padres have done is assure that they’ll have these three players together for this pennant race and all of next season. With Soto in the fold, a Machado opt out will now actually benefit both parties. Machado will certainly be able get more than the $150M that will remain on his contract, and the Padres will shed that obligation just a year before they have to give a long term deal to Soto. If for some reason they prefer Machado, they can sign him and let Soto walk. It’s a win-win for San Diego, and they just might win a World Series along the way.

There are certainly Yankee fans who are furious right now that Soto isn’t headed to the Bronx, no matter which prospects might have gone in the other direction. And while it’s tempting to imagine what Soto might have done with the short porch in right, I’m okay with Brian Cashman’s decision.

Unlike any other sport, baseball is built on dreams. Every organization has a prospect who might become the next Ted Williams, and it’s easy to be enchanted by that hope. It’s why people don’t stop at a roulette table to bet on red or black but to wink knowingly at the croupier and drop a chip or two on 23. We dream big.

Soto would’ve been a big win, but I’m happy putting my chips on Jasson Dominguez. Thirty years ago the Yankees drafted a kid from Kalamazoo, and I dutifully followed his career through the minor leagues, hoping that he might become something special. A few years after that, Yankee scouts convinced me that another young prospect could be the next Mickey Mantle. The first you know; he was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame last summer. The second you might not. His name was Rubén Rivera, and he hit .216 over the course of a nine-year career with five different teams.

There’s no telling what might happen with Dominguez, but the odds are certainly against him matching what Soto has already accomplished. Even so, I’m glad he’s still with us. I’m glad I can still follow his minor league numbers and imagine what he might become in New York.

I choose to dream.

Ah, the trade deadline.

It’s not been an easy time of it for Joey Gallo in New York. But every time I read something about him he seems to be thoughtful and self-aware and it makes me like him. And because I like him I’ve taken no joy in his failures as a Yankee. I don’t think his failure has anything to do with a lack of effort and while I know that doesn’t cut it when it comes to professional sports and winning championships and fan appreciation, it does count for something as a professional. And Joey Gallo has acted like a professional in New York. And that’s not nothing. Especially in the face of bombing. I wish him luck no matter where he winds up—so long as it’s not with the Red Sox.

There is no greater crucible in sports than baseball’s 162-game schedule, and the New York Yankees are running roughshod on their opponents this season. Today — and for the past two months — the Yankees have the best record in the game. At 64-30 they have a comfortable twelve-game lead in the American League East and are all but assured of winning the deepest division in baseball and advancing to the playoffs. All season long, they’ve just been better than anyone else.

Anyone else but the Houston Astros.

The Yankees and Astros completed their regular season series last night, with the Astros sweeping a double header in Houston and beating the Yankees for the fifth time in seven games.

Were it not for Aaron Judge and his walk-off heroics that saved two games in New York, the Yankees would have lost all seven contests with the Astros. In fact, those two swings by Judge were the only moments in a week’s worth of games against their arch rivals (sorry, Red Sox) that the Yankees enjoyed a lead. It’s been that bleak. (Judge did his best to rescue his team again on Thursday night, rocking a massive three-run homer to left to cut a five-run lead to two, but it wasn’t quite enough.)

The mightiest offense in baseball was repeatedly humbled by Houston pitching. The Astros threw a combined no-hitter against them in New York and opened the following game with six more hitless innings, and Houston pitchers, both starters and bullpen, were generally in control in all seven games. The Yankees scored 22 runs in seven games, including a disturbing two runs or fewer in four of the seven.

Not surprisingly, acorns are falling on everyone’s heads. Should the Yankees fall into mediocrity and go 36-32 the rest of the way, they’ll still finish with 100 wins and a division crown, but there are those who will tell you that the season is over. That this team cannot beat the Astros.

I understand this point of view because I carry the same scars you do, but regardless of what happened in this year’s seven-game sample, I’m comfortable saying that right now the Yankees of 2022 are better than the versions that watched their seasons end at the hands of the Astros in 2017 and 2019, and that the Astros of 2022 are weaker. If Brian Cashman decides to spend some capital to add Luís Castillo or gut the farm system to land Juan Sóto, the Yankee advantage over the Astros will only widen.

Let me say this again — the Yankees are better than the Astros. If you refuse to believe this because of that 2-5 season record or because of how listless the Yankees looked in so many of those games, I’ll ask if you also believe that the Cincinnati Reds (who handled the Yankees last week) are better than the 64-30 Bronx Bombers.

Yes, the seven games against the Astros were difficult, but sometimes baseball is like that. Everything’s going to be okay.

Over at Esquire, I’ve got a piece on the new Jeter ESPN docu-series that is both formulaic and self-serving while also being entertaining and as revealing a look at Jeter by Jeter that we’ve yet to see. Jeter comes off as guarded but also plain-spoken and funny.