BOSTON — This?
This was one for the books. This was brutal, torturous, agonizing, atrocious. It was mind-numbing and gut-wrenching. It made an already miserable weekend positively wretched, woeful, dismal glum.
It was a game that can keep you up all night.
All week, really.
The Yankees were 58-0 when leading after eight innings heading into the ninth inning early Monday morning. They will wake up in Chicago 58-1 in that department, 68-42 on the year, losers of five in a row overall and four straight in Boston after this excruciating 5-4, 10-inning loss to the Red Sox.
It is the kind of loss that can linger. It had better not linger. It is about as awful a way to lose a game as Alexander Cartwright’s rules allow, and the Yankees have to do what baseball players always say they will do: shake it off, shrug it off and be ready to get on with the season.
“We can’t let this define what’s been a great season for us,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said when it was over, in the quiet of his office, while the remnants of a wild night at Fenway Park still filled the hallways and corridors beyond.
The Yankees had a 4-1 lead in the ninth, and they had their closer on the mound, and for all the miniature dramas Aroldis Chapman has endured and whatever occasional indigestion he has inflicted, he had still only blown one save all year. But he couldn’t find the plate. And he couldn’t get the final out. And when Greg Bird couldn’t scoop a bad throw by Miguel Andujar, 4-1 had become 4-4.
And 5-4 wasn’t going to be far behind after that. Andrew Benintendi solidified that fate with a two-out RBI single off Jonathan Holder in the 10th.
So they trudged off the field as Benintendi’s teammates mobbed him, then drenched him in a multi-color Gatorade bath, and the remnants of the 37,830 who’d filled Fenway with the largest crowd of the year were already singing “Tessie” and “Joy to the World” and allowing their voices to scrape the sky and flood the surrounding streets, the home team now 9 ½ games to the good of their ancient, detested rivals.
All of that happened. All of it was real.
All of it hearkened to something else Boone had said this weekend, after a 4-1 loss Saturday that at least didn’t require an Alka-Seltzer chaser.
“There’s no question that they’ve established themselves right now as the best team in this league,” Boone said then. “That said: If you walk through our room right now, to a man, we know we can absolutely play with them. We know that when we’re at our best, we can beat them.”
Boone admittedly can sound awfully Pollyanna when things aren’t going well for his nine, but he was right with both of his weekend observations. And it is important for the Yankees to remember that now, as they begin a 27-game stretch that by rights, ought to solve a lot of what ails them.
Look: This weekend was a bummer. There’s no softer way to describe it. It was. It wasn’t easy for the Yankees to get a firsthand look at what they’ve mostly just been observing from afar, from the safe remove of the out-of-town scoreboard and television highlights, just how complete a team the Sox are, a team that does just about everything well.
Now, take a step back.
Exhale.
Breathe.
And remember that the worst of the Yankees schedule is behind them for the time being. The next eight games are against the White Sox, Rangers and Mets, who are a combined 63 games under .500 for the season. After three home games with the always-pesky Rays, it’s 16 straight games against the Jays, Marlins, Orioles, White Sox and Tigers, who combined are a nifty 121 games under .500.
Yes, yes, yes, we can talk about how the Yankees haven’t been at their finest against terrible teams, how they lower themselves to the level of their competition, but that’s still 24 softballs in the next 27 games before the intriguing Oakland/Seattle swing in early September that will bring them face-to-face with their nearest wild-card competitors.
There ought to be an awful lot of wins lurking in there, and if the Yankees simply tend to their own business they ought to be fine. And, by the way: Aaron Judge will be back sometime in there, as well.
The weekend was brutal, a sharp kick to the solar plexus. But Boone is right, it doesn’t have to define them. And it better not.
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