I, hereby, will go to my grave believing...

... That Aaron Boone's miserable decisions were a major factor in the recent Yankee meltdown, but we were not going to beat Boston. The better team won; they outclassed us. Still, everyone knows Boone left Severino and Sabathia in too long. What was he thinking? That they needed a vote of confidence for the rest of the season? There is no rest of the season. 

... That Gary Sanchez squandered the greatest chance he'll ever have to inscribe his name into Yankee history. That 3-2 pitch from Craig Kimbrel was a meatball, but Sanchez got under it. Ten more feet, and it's gone, and Sanchez vaults forever into Monument Park, his redemption ticket punched, architect of one of the great moments in Yankee history. Ten more feet, and we play Boston on stilts tonight. But he missed. He missed. 

The YES men talk about how hard Sanchez was working, doing damage control over his mid-season embarrassment. I dunno. We heard that shit in spring training, how he was going to elevate his game and become a star. He missed, and it won't surprise me if the Yankees this winter opt for a purely defensive catcher, like all the winning teams in the playoffs have.

... That if Giancarlo Stanton has a therapist, he or she should suggest that "G" asks to be traded. The Yankiverse will never forgive him for that series. Remember: It was the Redsocks. Of course, there will be no trade. His contract tethers him to us for life. He'll stay, even if we sign Bryce Harper and promote Clint Frazier. Stanton is our permanent DH. But he should take a long look at Jacoby Ellsbury, who doesn't even have parking privileges at the stadium anymore. One of these days, maybe sooner than we think, Stanton will become the new Jacoby. It will always be lucrative. But it won't be pretty. If he could engineer a trade to a smaller pond, with the Yankees paying a little per year, he could live happily as the big fish. And we wouldn't have to look at him. 

... That the short right field porch and the bandbox, homer-haven dimensions of Yankee Stadium undercut our ability to field a well-rounded team. It's been nearly 10 years in the new park, and aside from 2009, with the free agent infusion, what have we seen? Team after team of power-drunk whiffers, guys who notch 25 HRs by flicking at mistakes, and who are incapable of bunting to beat the over-shift. Meanwhile, our pitchers get pounded, as fly balls leave the park. I just looked it up: In the nine years of the new ballpark, only one Yankee starter with more than 150 innings has compiled an ERA of under 3.00. (Luis Severino, in 2017, with 2.98 - a stat that cruelly reveals his downward slide.)  You can homer your way through a regular season. Come October, when the best staffs are distilled, pitching always wins, and in this new park, we never seem to have it. 

... That, fundamentally, something is fundamentally wrong in the fundamental way the Yankees approach this fundamental game. It's - hmm, what's the word? - THE FUNDAFUCKINMENTALS! Watching the Redsocks steal bases, hit and run, make fielding plays... I kept wondering, why can't we do this? It's a question that should haunt Brian "Cooperstown" Cashman, who assembles teams with good numbers but which don't execute the essential tasks to win a championship. A lot of you want Cashman fired, if not railroaded to White Plains and hung in effigy. I don't. I just wish he were kicked upstairs, given one of those click-clack desk thingys, where he can make suggestions and not wheel and deal 24/7. The Yankees should not be run by the front office, or its post-game show surrogate. They need to be run by a wrinkled, tobacco-chewing gasbag who screams at the umps even when they get the call right, and who benches the superstar who jogs out a grounder. For all of Cashman's trade deadline churning - and some of it worked (Luke Voit, JA Happ) - I can't honestly say it got us any further than we'd have gone without them. Before the deals, we were the wild card team. And that's all we are now. 

... That it's a fine line between experiencing a post-season so ugly, so depressing, so soul-crushingly terrifying that you actually wish your team had not made it to the playoffs. There are times when that happens, when the embarrassment and humiliation is so intense that - all said and done - you wished we came in third. This was almost one of those situations. But I'm not there. We still have Aaron Judge. We still have Didi. There is Miguel Andujar (if he doesn't get traded) and Gleyber, and Hicksie and Luke and - yes - I'm still lighting a candle for Clint Frazier. Maybe Mean Chad Green can become the starter that he once was. And maybe Sevy - who knows? - was he tipping his pitches? If so, he can learn how not to. 

I will go to my grave believing these things. But that's another thing. I am fucking old, and it has dawned upon me that the Yankees may never win another World Series on my watch. We have become Boston's cat toy, a lackey to cuff around when they need to feel good about themselves. And it'll be another whole year of it. But damn, let's hope Houston doesn't make the same mistakes we did.