Dispatch from The Matrix: The Yankees have built for us a Skinner Box, and they are conditioning us not to touch the Big Red Button with our noses.

Yesterday, heading to the 9th, didn't you know it was coming? 

The bullpen collapse. The botched grounder. The overturned call. The electric shock... 

Yes, that jolt of 100 volts, straight through the nose and directly into your cranial infundibulum. Ka-boom. Sizzle. Blink... 

Did you hesitate? Did you halt at the precipice, anticipating the painful, out-of-body loss that was surely coming? 

People, I bring grave news. 

We are not fans. 

We are mice in a cage.

Somehow - with their $679 million in annual revenues, and $7.6 billion valuation (real numbers, folks) - the Yankees have built for their fans a massive, global Skinner Box. 

For decades, we learned to press the Big Red Button with our noses and receive a treat, a three-run homer or a base-clearing double. That's how we grew up. We fed ourselves, emotionally and spiritually, by nosing the Big Red Button.

In recent years, the experiment has changed. The juju gods have reconditioned us. Nowadays, from the safety of our nests, we press our hairy sniffers into the Big Red Button, and instead of a joy pellet, we receive a nasty electric shock, often in the form of a bad throw to first or a misjudged fly. 

Yesterday, as I moved straw over my feces pile, thus clearing my treadmill path and water trough - I suddenly froze in front of the Big Red Button. I was hungry, famished, in desperate need of a victory food pellet. But my fear of the jolt - in this case, the image of Devin Williams warming up - provoked overwhelming paralysis. 

In the end - hey, a mouse has gotta eat, right? - I nosed the Big Red Button. 

For the first time in a week, no jolt of shock. A food pellet! It tasted delicious. So... now, what? Do I dare return to my treadmill, go back to stroking my fur, and to pressing the Big Red Button? 

I do not have an answer, but this I do know...  

The juju gods, in their white coats, are not done with us. Press the Big Red Button at your own peril. (And yes, it's not a glitch in the Matrix or new form of insanity: We do have a pitcher named Schlittler. What message are the juju gods attempting to send?)