Yankee fans face mandatory evacuation order from 2017 team

Lead by four. Lose by six. 

Run off the field by a trade deadline seller, that started the evening at one game above .500.

Two four-run cushions and our "ace" on the mound, and then... wow-factor embarrassment. 

On the Five Pineapple Scale of Yankee Fan Torture Porn, that's a four. 

Okay, I get it... everybody has a bad game now and then. But I ask you, how does one not feel like drinking Dewars and Draino after a game like last night in a season like this, where every omen feels like a sound truck in your neighborhood, ordering you to leave immediately?

We keep waiting for Aaron Judge to wake up from his self-induced coma, and then we sense fleeting eye movement, a twitch of a finger here and there, and we tell ourselves it's a sign of hope. And then, there he is - watching a called strike three that bisects home plate the way the European model has Hurricane Irma skewering Florida.

We keep waiting for Greg Bird to return and anchor the lineup,  but - gulp - where the hell is he? Do the Yankees have a new Brigadoon? Last month, the most hopeful scenario that didn't include Apple watches or A-Rod super-serum was that Bird would come, see and conquer - that is, revisit his spring training power surge and lead this team. It meant him playing every day, regardless of the pitcher. Now, we find he is platooning with Todd Frazier, which is like riding a seesaw with Chris Carter, except that Todd gets hit by more pitches. Seriously, people, what it is with Todd Frazier that has us waiting at the altar? 

For the record, in 184 at bats, Carter hit .205 and 8 home runs, and was stuffed in a bottle and put out with the Japanese tide. As a Yankee, in 142 at bats, Frazier has 7 HRs and is hitting .218 - and he's inconsistent in the field - yet when he steps to the plate, the YES announcers act as if Taylor Swift has a new boyfriend. Why are still running with this guy? Miguel Andujar is tearing down fences in Scranton, and he's not going to get so much as the light of day in 2017. They'll tell us that Andujar's glove isn't ready, but I'm still smarting from Frazier's two-error inning the other day, which - like everything else about the guy - seems to disappear into the memory hole by his next at bat.

And we keep waiting for somebody to rise in the bullpen and save this team. Well, the fact is, we're 140 games into the season, and Godot never came. We can sit here in the pumpkin patch until Halloween, but the vaunted farm system never provided reinforcements, and our great managerial handler of pitchers has no answers other than to do what hasn't worked. 

A four-pineapple loss in a four-pineapple season, and it's going to lead to a four-pineapple debacle if we're lucky enough to make the one-game Wild Card. All we're doing is proving that humankind will never invent a time machine, because otherwise, some diehard Yankee fan would have come back on July 29 and shot Cashman with a dope dart.