Is Gary the new Jesus?

For five years, we Yankee believers awaited the Coming of Jesus Montero. We praised his first HR in the Florida play-gym league. We toasted his pilgrimages through Charleston and Trenton, and the Electric City/Anthracite Capital of the World. We devoured meaningless projections of how his Triple A stats would translate unto The Promised Land. We defended his defense, or lack of it. We believed in him. Mike Piazza! we said. Miguel Cabrera! we said. Mike Napoli! we said. Jesus was coming, this we knew.

Well, Jesus is gone, and He will never forgive us.

Oh, well, our new savior is... Gary! Gary Sanchez. Praise Glory, praise Gary?

For you who follow the Yankees sparsely - as in, "I hear they have a player named Arod, or something..." - Gary Sanchez is Jesus II. He catches, he hits for power, and he breaks the scale at 235. We paid more to sign him at age 16 - $3 million - than we ever paid before or since. The only concerns are his attitude and defense. The party line, believe it or not, was always that Gary was better than Jesus. Yes, better than Jesus.

But dare we bother to follow him? Having betrayed Jesus, do we have unmitigaed gall to simply rewind the Savior Clock?

Last month, Gary turned 19. This summer, he probably starts in Tampa, at High Single A. Thus far, his career has been a Jesus carbon copy. If it continues, he'll ransack Tampa - Montero did - and ascendeth unto Trenton. That would have him blessing the mudfield in Scranton next year and reaching New York by 2014 - age 22 - like Montero, with the same hype but one big difference.

By then, we'll know if we blew it by trading Jesus.

If so, if Montero is the savior we gave away, Brian Cashman might not even be around in the Yankee temple anymore. You only get one Savior in life. If you trade it away, do you get a chance at a second Second Coming?

Should we believe, or does it still hurt too much?