I was a month away from turning five when I attended my first Yankees game in August 1991. The Yankees were dreadful. They would finish the year 71-91 and 20 games out of first in the pre-wild-card, two-division American League, but back then I wasn’t worried about their record or the in-game decisions of Stump Merrill, and I didn’t care that the Yankees hadn’t been in the postseason for going on 10 years. When you’re nearly five years old, just going to a major-league game — and a Yankees game — is cool, and back then it was cool because Don Mattingly made it so.

I knew who Mattingly was because of my dad and my older brother, and because they liked the Yankees and Mattingly, I liked them too. Donnie Baseball turned 30 that season but was talked about as if he had turned 90. He hit .288/.339/.394 and was only 3 percent better than league average at the plate (which would make him a star on the current Yankees). After being arguably the best player in the world from 1984 to 1987 and still awesome in 1988 and 1989, Mattingly had a horrid ’90 season, and while better in ’91, he would never return to his prime years of leading the league in hits, doubles, RBIs, batting average, OPS, OPS+, and total bases — all while winning the Gold Glove at first each season to go along with an AL MVP and a second-place finish for the MVP another season.

Mattingly got screwed on the timing of his life. He debuted with the Yankees in 1982, a year after they went to the World Series, and retired after 1995, a year before they would win the World Series. He only got one trip to the postseason because until his last season there was no Division Series, Wild Card round, or Wild Card game. The 1983 Yankees won 91 games and didn’t play in the postseason. The 1985 Yankees won 97 games and didn’t play in the postseason. The 1986 Yankees won 90 games and didn’t play in the postseason. Under the current postseason format, Mattingly would have played in the postseason in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1993, 1994 (if there hadn’t been a strike), and 1995. Instead, he only appeared in the postseason once — in 1995 — and went 10-for-24 with four doubles, a home run, and six RBIs, posting a .417/.440/.708 slash line.

Mattingly became the Yankees’ hitting coach in 2004, and sure enough, the Yankees pissed away a 3-0 series lead in the ALCS. He stayed in that role in 2005 and moved to bench coach for 2006 and 2007, only for the Yankees to have three straight ALDS exits. He was then passed over for the manager position and followed Torre to the Dodgers. He became manager there in 2011 and, in five years, managed three first-place teams, but each time fell short of the World Series.

In seven years with the Marlins, he couldn’t get a roster with a payroll equivalent to one year of Carlos Rodón to the place he had never been, and it wasn’t until now — in his third season as bench coach for the Blue Jays — that he finally got to the World Series. Fourteen years as a player for the Yankees, two years as the hitting coach for the Yankees, two years as the bench coach for the Yankees, three years as the hitting coach for the Dodgers, five years as manager of the Dodgers, seven years as manager of the Marlins, and three years as bench coach for the Blue Jays.

I despise the Blue Jays — Vladimir Guerrero Jr., George Springer, Alejandro Kirk, Bo Bichette, Max Scherzer, Kevin Gausman, Ernie Clement, Isiah Kiner-Falefa — all of them. If they win, there isn’t a member of the team I would be happy for other than Mattingly.

For as much as I despise the Blue Jays, I despise Dave Roberts more. Of course, for the steal which led to the Red Sox winning their first World Series in 86 years, but also for his mismanagement of his lineup and bullpen in the 2018 World Series, which gave the Red Sox their fourth championship in 15 years. His recent post-NLCS remarks about the Dodgers “ruining baseball” did make me like him momentarily — and then I remembered he batted Kiké Hernández third in the 2018 World Series and used Ryan Madson like it was 2009.

Thanks to the Aaron Boone Yankees, I lost the ability to chirp my wife about her having never seen her Dodgers win a “real” World Series since she was born after the 1988 win — and because 2020 wasn’t exactly real. So part of me wants to think it’s OK now if they win again, and the other part of me remembers the Dodgers bailing out the Red Sox in August 2012, which allowed the Red Sox to get out of the bad contracts for Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford and retool and win the World Series the next season. That other part of me also doesn’t want the Yankees to lose the title of the last team to win back-to-back championships when they won three straight from 1998 to 2000.

The Dodgers winning is good for my stance that the postseason isn’t a crapshoot, but the 94-win Blue Jays winning also helps that argument, as they are the 1-seed in the AL. The Dodgers winning proves the Yankees should have a better revenue-to-payroll ratio, while the Blue Jays winning shows creating a lineup full of low-strikeout players is what’s needed in October. The Dodgers winning makes my in-laws happy, but the Blue Jays winning gets Mattingly his elusive ring (even if it comes wearing that disgusting uniform).

When I lay it all out, there’s no good choice. There’s no right choice. They’re both bad options. Unfortunately, one of them has to win. At least it’s not the Red Sox or Mets.

The All-Star break is here, which means the season is “half” over. For the Yankees, it’s actually 59 percent over with 66 games left.

Another All-Star break means another annual All-Animosity Team. I’ll always remember the teams which featured David Ortiz, Josh Beckett, Adrian Gonzalez, Chone Figgins, Dustin Pedroia, Robert Andino, Carl Crawford, Manny Ramirez, Delmon Young, Jose Bautista, Magglio Ordonez, B.J. Upton (when he went by B.J.) and many others. But I also like having a new generation of players to have animosity toward.

Here is the 2025 All-Animosity Team.

C: Danny Jansen
If you’re wondering why a career .219/.308/.414 hitter is on this team, you must have missed a lot of Yankees-Blue Jays games over the years. And not just Yankees-Blue Jays games, but Yankees-Red Sox games and now Yankees-Rays games as well since Jansen won’t just go away and leave the AL East.

Jansen may be a .219/.308/.414 hitter in his career, but he’s a .255/.378/.497 hitter in 51 games against the Yankees with seven doubles, 10 home runs and 26 RBIs. As crazy as it sounds, if you were to ask me the Top 3 hitters I least want to see at the plate with the game on the line against the Yankees, it would be hard for me to not include Jansen in that group.

1B: Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
In 96 career games against the Yankees, Guerrero Jr. is a .285/.352/.533 hitter with 23 doubles, 21 home runs and 70 RBIs. That’s a 162-game pace of 39 doubles, 35 home runs and 118 RBIs. Add in his public comments about how much he hates the Yankees (and rightfully so considering he plays in the same division as them) and it’s easy to see why he’s on this team. Now that Rafael Devers is out of the division and as far away as possible, Guerrero Jr. is the hitter I fear the most within the AL East.

2B: Jose Altuve
The captain of the All-Animosity Team and a future first-ballot All-Animosity Hall of Famer, this job is Altuve’s for as long as he plays in the league.

After hitting .320/.414/.560 with two home runs, four walks and a stolen base in the Astros’ 2017 ALCS win over the Yankees, Altuve hit .348/.444/1.097 with a double, two home runs, four walks and a stolen base in the Astros’ 2019 ALCS win over the Yankees. He’s responsible for ending the Yankees’ season with a walk-off, pennant-winning home run in Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS. He’s responsible for a lot of bad memories for Yankees fans. Even when he had a down series against them in the 2022 ALCS, the Astros still swept the Yankees.

He’s the face of this era of the Astros, a team the Yankees have never beat in the postseason, and because of that, he’s the face of this team.

3B: Rafael Devers
It doesn’t matter that Devers is out of the division and off the East Coast. He could be playing in Japan and he would still be on this team. I know Devers no longer plays the field, but he does on this team because what better way to recognize him than to put him back at the spot he was moved off of that led to his dismissal from the Red Sox.

The moment Devers hit that two-strike, opposite-field home run off Aroldis Chapman in 2017, I knew I had a problem. I also knew the All-Animosity Team had a roster spot locked up indefinitely.

In 119 career games against the Yankees, Devers is a .270/.348/.533 hitter with 79 runs, 22 doubles, 31 home runs and 78 RBIs. That’s a 162-game pace of 108 runs, 30 doubles, 42 home runs 106 RBIs. Of course Devers had to hit one last home run against the Yankees as a Red Sox on the day he was traded to the Giants. Thankfully, Devers will only get to hurt the Yankees in three regular-season games each season instead of 13.

SS: Alex Bregman
I’m playing Devers at a position he no longer plays, so I have to play Bregman at a position he hasn’t played in six years. I wouldn’t be a Yankees fan if I wasn’t so willing to play players out of position.

The first thing I used to think about when thinking about Bregman was how hard it is to retire him at the plate. Now when I think of him, I think of him standing there at the Astros’ fan fest after the 2019 season and giving the same rehearsed answer over and over about the team’s sign-stealing scandal with that smirk on his face and that sarcastic laugh. Bregman was the easiest of players to root against and that was before he signed with the Red Sox, which took the level of animosity to another level.

LF: Randal Grichuk
Like Jansen, Grichuk seems out of place on this team, considering he’s not very good and also that he plays for the Diamondbacks and hasn’t been in the AL East in four years. The number of chances Grichuk has each year to hurt the Yankees may have lessened, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t make the most of the opportunities he gets against them. His pinch-hit double in the April 2 game this year ignited a five-run eighth for the Diamondbacks in their 7-5 come-from-behind win over the Yankees.

Grichuk has a career .768 OPS, but it’s .825 against the Yankees. He has hit 18 home runs with 35 RBIs in 68 games against the Yankees.

My biggest fear for this trade deadline is that the Yankees will overpay for a third baseman who can’t hit or a third baseman who can’t field, or that they will part with George Lombard Jr. or Cam Schlittler. My second-biggest fear is that Grichuk will be traded to the AL and be an unwanted part of my life as a baseball fan more frequently again.

CF: Enrique Hernandez
My wife is a Dodgers fan, so since 2013 I have watched nearly every Dodgers game. I have watched Hernandez’s entire career, first when he was a Dodger, then with the Red Sox, and again back with the Dodgers. Never has an eight-percent-worse-than-league-average hitter for his career had such a lasting impact against Yankees fans.

The combination of Hernandez and Dave Roberts single-handedly gave the Red Sox the 2018 World Series. Hernandez went 2-for-15 in that series and Roberts kept batting him at the top of the order. (Roberts also used Ryan Madson in every crucial spot in the series as if it were 2009 and not 2018.) So after helping the Red Sox in a championship as an opponent, he nearly helped them win one as a member of the team in 2021, as he went 20-for-49 in the 2021 playoffs. Thankfully, the captain of this team ended the Red Sox’ season.

Hernandez rejoined the Dodgers where he helped beat the Yankees in the 2024 World Series. He led off the season-ruining fifth inning of Game 5 with a single. It was his presence on first base that somehow led to Aaron Judge taking his eye off the line drive he dropped. It was his baserunning that somehow led Anthony Volpe to make a wild throw to third base.

When I think of Hernandez, I think of he and every Dodger doing their dumb post-hit dance when they reach base. I look forward to the day Hernandez is out of baseball.

RF: Juan Soto
Do I actually dislike Soto? No. Watching his 777 plate appearances as a Yankee was as enjoyable as watching someone bat could possibly be. I miss knowing who will be batting second every day for the Yankees and I miss the Yankees having the best back-to-back lineup situation in the league. But he’s gone and he’s never coming back and because of where he went and who he plays for and who roots for him, I have had to create animosity toward him.

Whatever was wrong with Soto through the first two months of the season is clearly resolved. Since June 1, he’s hitting .311/.455/.659 with 14 home runs and 29 RBIs in 39 games. After no-showing the Subway Series Yankee Stadium portion, Soto went 4-for-11 with three runs, a double, a home run, three RBIs and a walk in the Citi Field portion.

I’m glad he’s at least out of the AL. Now I just need to pray he doesn’t win a World Series for as long as he’s a Met.

SP: Nathan Eovaldi
Never trust a pitcher to who throws triple-digit fastballs and has trouble striking hitters out, which is what Eovaldi was with the Yankees and has mostly been in his career. The Dodgers gave up on him and then the Marlins gave up on him. The Yankees thought they could be the ones to hone his incredible velocity, but they weren’t.

As a Yankee in 2015, Eovaldi pitched to a 14-3 record, so every idiot who relies on wins and losses to determine a pitcher’s success thought he had a great season. It didn’t matter that he received 5.75 runs of support per start or that he routinely struggled to get through five innings because he needed 20-plus pitches to get through each inning. In 2016, it was more of the same. Eovaldi pitched to a .476 ERA over 21 starts and 24 games before being shut down for another Tommy John surgery, ending his time with the Yankees as they let him walk after the season.

Eovaldi returned to the mound in 2018 and pitched well with the Rays and was traded to the Red Sox. He went on to shut out the Yankees in an important August series for the division lead and shut them out again in September. He did it again in October (even if he received more run support than any opposing starter had received in a postseason game at Yankee Stadium in history).

In 2018, Eovaldi beat the Yankees and Astros in the playoffs, mixed in a few relief appearances and then became a hero for his bullpen work in Game 3 of the World Series (even though he took the loss after giving up a walk-off home run). Eovaldi helped the Red Sox win the World Series and five years later helped the Rangers win it all after earning five wins in six starts in the 2023 postseason. “Nasty Nate” will be on this team for as long as he pitches.

RP: Aroldis Chapman
When I think of Chapman’s time with the Yankees, I think of three things. The first being him giving up the pennant-winning home run to Altuve in 2019. The second being him giving up the go-ahead home run to Mike Brosseau in Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS. The third being him being told to go home after he skipped a postseason workout in 2022.

After leaving the Yankees, Chapman ended up with the Rangers and helped them win the World Series in 2023, alongside this team’s starter in Eovaldi. Now he’s with Red Sox, where at age 37 he was named an All-Star for the first time in four years and has posted a career-best 1.18 ERA, a career-best 0.763 WHIP, a career-best 2.4 walks per nine (4.7 as a Yankee) and a career-best 5.80 strikeouts per walk (2.96 a Yankee). He has allowed only 19 hits in 38 innings with 58 strikeouts this season. He has 17 saves and two against the Yankees.

If you haven’t had a vision of Chapman striking out Volpe to eliminate the Yankees in the postseason and Chapman standing on the mound raising his arms in the air as the Red Sox win their fifth championship since 2004 then you must not understand how things go for ex-Yankees after they leave the team.