A first round ejection will not go over well in New York City or across the Yankiverse

You could decipher the handwriting: The Phillies and Dodgers - our fellow first-round bye partners - sit one loss from elimination and, like the Yankees, face younger, hungrier and hotter teams. That week off, the first-round bye that is supposed to help teams, looks more and more like a perpetual curse. Win the summer, lose the fall.

Our two top pitchers, signed to lead us from this 15-year malaise, have utterly failed. Our big bats have gone silent. And though it's hard to process, Yank fans see far more on the line than just 2024.

Let's explore the terrors of a first-round elimination...

1. A quick knockout would turn NYC into a Mets town. For nearly 30 years - since Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden switched genders - New York has been a Yankee encampment. The Bombers have owned the back pages, talk radio, the zeitgeist of America's greatest continuing sports show. 

That can change.  

If the Yankees fall, while the Mets beat Philly, it would flick a cultural switch as profound as the one flipped by Boston in 2004, ending the Yankee domination. 

For 15 years at the helm, Hal Steinbrenner has never experienced the Yankees as NY's second team. I wonder what it will do to him. My guess: He'll grow disillusioned, depressed - angry at how he is characterized - and then pour more personal resources into supporting Westchester Republicans and winning the Kentucky Derby. 

2. A first-round barf could push Juan Soto out the door. It's already a given that some billionaire owner, looking to become MLB's newest swinging dick, will offer Soto more money than Hal wants to pay. Of course, the Yankees will bid competitively - as they did with Joggie Cano! - but money doesn't grow on trees, people! And Hal is a loyal country clubber, his name surely inscribed on some gold-plated golf locker in some Northeastern spliced version of Mar-a-Lago with the Bohemian Grove. 

There is also the razor-edged NY sports media, which won't be kind to a first-round kaboom. There will be calls for human sacrifices. Boone is as close to a virgin as we will find. But our looming free agents - Verdugo, Gleyber, Holmes, Soto - are playing well. They would all go, leaving Yank fans with the unshakeable October memory of Giancarlo Stanton running to first while pulling an invisible slab of concrete. 

3. Here's a fun thought: Soto could cross town. That's already a Mets thing, featuring Severino, Bader and Ottavino (Gooden/Strawberry in reverse.) Mets owner Steve Cohen might want to put a cherry on his postseason by adding Soto over the winter. 

Of course, Hal would simmer over such an indignity. It wouldn't be cricket! But like the 2004 Redsocks, Cohen wants to seize NY and hold it. The two men are not alike.    

4. In KC, Aaron Judge won't hear distracting chants of "MVP." Unless he breaks out of his 1-7 slump, another failed October will breed whispers. He is starting to remind me of A-Rod, a postseason pariah until 2009, late in his career. Remember his 1-for-14 against Detroit in the 2006 ALDS? Fans booed as he marched back to the dugout after striking out. He hit 35 HRs that year, batting .292. And he was booed. Incredible. 

Nobody will boo Judge. Yank fans love him. I sure do. But damn, it hurts to watch him flail at pitches that should be landing in the cheap seats. If the Yankees can just beat KC - that is, get Judge into the next round - he can silence the critics, the criers, the doomsday seers. But right now, Austin Wells and Giancarlo do not strike fear in opponents. I doubt Judge will see a hittable pitch in KC - or until March 27, 2025, opening day. Something to look forward to, eh?

5. Damn, 2024 has been one long, hard, unforgiving slog. We sat in first most of the year, yet we've been a stumbling, bumbling disappointment for three brutal months. In many ways, an early self-immolation always seemed our destiny. Now, it's here, and the immensity of such a defeat is hard to fathom.

 If we go out in the first-round, get ready for one long, painful drought, which will surely outlast my time on this planet. It would to be hard to ever again feel hope about the Yankees. What am I supposed to write about? Pickleball?