For the Yankees, will the positive Covid tests deliver the final knockout?

A while back, I quit hoping for the return of normalcy. 

WTF is it, anyway? Certainly, no thinking Yank fan should desire it. Not in this millennium. For us, normalcy is an endless circus of injuries, most of which hit our players just as they get hot, and which returns them a month later, swinging the bat like Betty White. 

This year, added to this so-called normalcy, we've faced a new ailment, the new tweaked gonad... the positive Covid test.

So here we are, back to normal. We lose a player every day. Last week, it was Gary. Then Cole. Then Monty. Then Aroldis. Then Rizzo. Now, et tu, Gleyber? Doesn't matter. Rest assured, tomorrow, it'll be somebody new. Every day... 

This we know: Injuries are not fairly dolled out by the juju gods. For reasons I cannot fathom - but which might predate the beginning of time - the Yankees cannot protect their soldiers from muscle pulls, twisted wrists or things that go bump in the anus. Why do so many Yankees test positive? Why do so many get hurt? Is this some ancient curse? And if so, why aren't we marketing it?  

What did we do to piss off the juju gods?

Part of this may be the age of our lineups. Generally, the Yankees obtain players three or four years after their peak foliage. Old guys are more susceptible to tweaks, and they take longer to heal. Also, there is the Gotham factor: New York City poses more distractions than any other town - even LA. In a pandemic, this is especially serious: Players take the subway, sit in cabs, ride in elevators. If a guy doesn't get vaccinated - well, if you sleep with dogs, you catch fleas. So here we are.

For the Yankees, the Covid surges have been killers. The first wave hit in the spring, as the team was forming. The second came as the Yankees faced a grueling schedule against Boston and Tampa. The third wave is here, just as the calendar is turning.  

In upstate New York, where the difference between summer and winter is akin to that of heaven and hell, I believe everyone has an internal switch that portends the changing of seasons. In June and July, you think summer will last forever, as the days seem to do. Then, one cruel night in early August, you see a leaf fall, or a feel a chilling wind, and you instantly know that summer is doomed, that you better make the most of every sunset, that time is running out.

Yesterday, watching the Yankees flounder against Seattle, the switch flicked.  The YES announcers were watching the scoreboard, telling us what Boston and Toronto were doing. I felt like Jim Carrey watching the Oscar nominations. 

Comrades, time is running out.