Could 2020 - the Yankees' great hope for resurgence - be a wipe-out?

Everybody's depressed. How can you not be? Right now, I'd trade the family quilt for a 24-rack of Charmin double-ply. Yesterday, roaming the grocery, I was pondering salt-bomb cans of Campbell's soup and post-doomsday Hostess Twinkies, while the store played a Muzak version of "Who'll Stop the Rain." Even for the Fates - (who are bastards, by the way) - that's a low blow. So today, I say we gin up some high-octane, slit-the-wrists, IT IS HIGH Yankee pessimism. By comparison, today's visit from god of death Wolf Blitzer will seem bubbly. 

The other day, Trump predicted normal life might return by July-August. He doesn't know. If he's off, then it's September-October. Even if they've been living at camp, MLB players will need several weeks to ramp up. An August opening day might mean a 40-game season, unless they move everything to Florida and Arizona. Fifty games? Sixty? Or maybe - gulp - the owners punt, cash in their insurance claims, and jettison the season entirely.

Yes, it's time to ponder the worst case scenario, the societal nuclear bomb... no baseball season at all. 

It hurts my head. My gums bleed. By September, this blog will be a cookbook. We'll have re-watched every Yankee Classic, binged every Netflix series, and I'll have re-read Gravity's Rainbow to the point of understanding 20 percent of it. And that's if I'm not hooked up to a steam calliope. 

No season at all? Wouldn't that be the ultimate lawn dart in the ass? We Yankee fans go 10 diddly-shit years, while Boston grabs two rings - one in which they probably cheated - and then, when we finally have an ace to lead us, the world becomes an episode of Twilight Zone, where we sit in fortified chicken coops, like Osama waiting for Seal Team 666 to call our numbers. Well, lemme tell you something: If that turns out to be my fate, the juju gods are going to get an earful. They may think they heard foul language when Rosemary Clooney reached her final gang-tackle, but if they deny Yankee fans our rightful opportunity to march one more time down the Canyon of Heroes... we riot. 

That's right. Sticks and stones. Ski masks. Whatever. This would be the worst thing foisted on us since bell-bottom jeans, and if the Universe thinks it can get away with it - well - I'm saving up my Purell hand soap for one last hearty, lathery fling. If the Fates cancel the season - I mean, scuttling an obvious Yankee world championship - ooooh, they're gonna get it! 

I know what you're thinking... Duque, for God's sake, keep your big fat yap shut. You don't jabber about the jail break before the jail break. But this is supposed to be our fucking year. Sports Illustrated - what's left of it, anyway - recently picked the Yankees to win it all. And why wouldn't they? Look at that lineup: LeMahieu, Judge, Torres, Stanton, Andujar, Voit, Sanchez, Urshela, Gardner. With a little luck, it could be the best Yankee batting order in our lifetimes. I count seven guys who could hit 30 HRs. And now, we face the possibility that 2020 will be scrapped - the worst season in Yankee history - even worse than when we traded Al Leiter for Jesse Barfield, and I gotta tell you, that was pretty awful. 

A complete wipe-out? What are we supposed to do, starting hyping 2021? No. I refuse. Listen-up, Fates... you pull the rug on this season, and I'm coming for you.