The Yankees have become a team of Wayne Tollesons

 You know what's sad? I mean - beyond the national debt, or Caitlin Clark, or Count Binface, or electric shock gloves, or the reflecting pool, or that explosive diarrhea from bad lettuce, or - oh, fukkit - practically everything. 

What's truly sad is that Cody Bellinger leads the Yankees in hitting, at .259. 

Yeahp, two-five-nine. That's Don Slaught territory. That's Wayne Tolleson. That's a hopeless, toothless, run-resistant number, which optimizes shutouts and allows no sense of late-inning, or late-season, heroics. Every game, every strikeout, every squandered opportunity, feels like a microcosm of the Yankees, if not the floundering state of humankind, in this decade of the Donald. (Slaught, of course.)   

Two-five-nine. That's Lyle Overbay. That's Eduardo Nunez. And game after game, inning after inning - that's us.  

I know, I know - this is the modern era, and we're not supposed to give a Mexican whit about clunky old batting averages. It's a dead, horse-and-buggy stat, right? We value the OPS, or the OBP, or BABIP, or WAR - whatever makes whatever point you're trying to advance. 

But once upon a time, we dumbasses simply divided the number of ABs by the number of hits, and that was how we knew Rod Carew was not human. That's how we celebrated Don Mattingly when he retired (career BA: .307) and mourned when Mickey Mantle fell short of his greatest goal, a career BA over .300. (He finished at .298, a source of great sadness.) We used that ridiculous stat to dismiss Travis Hafner and marvel at Wade Boggs. (Who, btw, looks frighteningly bulked up in a photo shown on YES this week. WTF?)

Two-five-nine. That's our top BA among hitters with a qualifying number of at-bats. Eliminate the filter, and only two Yankees - George Lombard Jr. (8 games, .276) and Ali Sanchez (34 games, .271) make the cut. 

Two-fifty-nine. And that's from a guy currently out with an injury. 

This is beyond sad. It's past paltry. It's downright embarrassing. If you look at everyday starters, you find six Yankees - Grisham, McMahon, Chisholm, Jones, Wells and Ramos - batting below .225. 

And sorry, folks, but this won't necessarily correct itself when Aaron Judge returns. Last year, on August 12, Judge was hitting .337 and chasing a Triple Crown. This year, his numbers look ghastly - a BA of .248 - in part because he may have played several weeks with a slightly fractured rib - and he now might return with that same ailment.

Two-five-nine.  Where have you gone, Mr. Mattingly, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.