On Sunday, Stanton, who has not played since being activated from the Injured List, hit a hard single to left to score the team’s fifth run, giving the Yankees a lead in the eighth inning. Following the game, Stanton stated the following:
I have a ton of work to do. For now, it works well, but that doesn’t make sense to me.
Something smelled bad in the Bronx for the whole summer and a thankfully brief fall, and it wasn’t the exhaust from I-95. I experienced this smell personally, at considerable financial cost, and for very little other reason than my tribal loyalty to the rugged creature that preoccupied my childhood with the Core Four. But now that baseball’s protracted regular season is officially over, it’s time to own up to the following—or at least give it a thorough cleaning—: The New York Yankees of 2023 were just bad. I visited Yankee Stadium again in July, August, and even September even though I had no idea in April, had a feeling in May, and was positive by June. This statement is not very proud. (Once more,
They were unable to strike. They had one valuable position player and one starting pitcher. Their signature style was one of abrupt and intense sadness for those who paid to watch it. During the Yankees’ second-to-last home stand in the game I went to this season, I witnessed a beer vendor calling second baseman Gleyber Torres a “fucking bum” as he was selling his wares off the first-base line. This was done before the infielder had even dipped a toe in the batter’s box, effectively thwarting the team’s latest disastrous attempt at a rally.
The air was poisonous. It wasn’t very good. We Yankee supporters desired a victor. All we ever want is ae victor. Rogr Angell, the game’s poet laureate, once described these expectations as “admirable but a trifle inhuman.” The Bronx Bombers’ alluring black book, or their sales pitch, is that there is a team that front-runners can support when they want a world without failure. Even in this “disaster” of a season, they finished 82-80, marking their 31st consecutive season without a losing record. This team never gives up. They are meant to rise above it, and this is now also the symbol of their decline: they are not meant to go this low.
