Last night, the ghosts of the new rivalry reappeared, and they could shake the Yankiverse down to its foundations

Last Aug. 2, the mighty Yankees visited Boston looking to set things straight in the AL East. They stood in second place, 6 games behind the Redsocks, who looked ready to stumble once again - the longtime tradition between the rivals:

For ninety years, with the season on the line, the Yankees always won. 

In game one, the Yankees took a 4-0 lead, and Boston fans chewed their fingers. Then CC Sabathia fell apart, and the Redsocks scored 8 in the fourth, en route to a 15-7 decimation. Boston swept the four-game series, taking the finale in 10 innings, after Aroldis Chapman walked the bases loaded and blew a three-run lead. The Yankees left Boston 10 behind, with a brand new tradition in place. 

These days, it's Boston who waits to pounce late in the season, and it's the Yankees who fidget and fall. 

These days, the phrase "Boston Massacre" signifies an entirely different outcome than from 1979.

Last year's embarrassment came with one major difference from last night: It happened after the MLB trade deadline. Thus, it couldn't go off in Brian "Cooperstown" Cashman's medicated brain like a Fourth of July M-80. 

Already today, the Yankiverse echos with full-throated bleats for Cashman to do something, anything!, to staunch the bleeding. The Gammonites of NYC - on and off the team's YES payroll - are calling for Cash to trade whatever he's got for whatever he can get - be it Marcus Stroman or the reanimated carcass of Hideki Irabu. It doesn't matter who goes. Just trade for someone.

The calls come 25 days after the Yankee owner couldn't be coaxed to dig into his pockets and sign Dallas Keuchel, who has been a savior to Atlanta. In a strangely suspicious mini-auction, both teams submitted truncated versions of what they had offered Keuchel last winter, and neither budged. So Food Stamps Steinbrenner kept not only his money but his warm standing among the super-rich country clubbers who own baseball teams.  

But if Cashman is compelled to make a deal this weekend, maybe it's time to take stock of the Yankee farm system, which three years ago was considered one of the game's best development machines. The well respected Fangraphs web site this week issued its mid-season ranking of MLB farms, and if you're a Yank fan, it's not a beach read. The Yankees rank 22nd out of 30, and almost all of their top prospects lurk in the lower levels of the system, where - frankly - everybody looks likes like a future star. If the Yankees drain this already-thin system, we could find ourselves back in the eighties, when the franchise consistently ranked among the worst in the game. 

Well, you can't predict baseball, Suzyn. But here's a likely scenario for the next four days: 

1. Cashman will trade several of the Yankees best prospects for a starting pitcher.

2. The courtier Gammonites will cheer the move, saying the Yankees didn't give up all that much.

3. The Yankee farm system will sink even lower.

Is this a certainty? No. I think Cashman fully realizes the danger in trading his best prospects. But he is the architect of the most fruitless decade in Yankee history, and if he really expects to reach Cooperstown, it's now or never. 

And there still is a chance to avert this scenario. It begins tonight. 

Last night, the Yankees were humiliated. If this continues all weekend, if the Yankees get blown out, stand back, everybody... because it's been a great year thus far, but some terrible shit is about to fly.