The last time there was baseball, or baseball that I cared about, was back in October in Game 7 of the ALCS. When the Yankees’ season ends, it’s saddening. When the season ends one win short of the World Series, it’s depressing. But now the depression is over. Real meaningful baseball cures it.

There’s no better feeling in the world than baseball being back. No better feeling. And after the way last season ended and the way this season is expected to go, it felt necessary to head north of the border for the first two games of the season. So I told Brittni to pack her bags, we dropped our dog Charlie off at my parents and made the trip to Toronto for Games 1 and 2 of 2018.

***

The Baseball Gods weren’t happy about Major League Baseball’s decision to start the season so early in March to incorporate more off days into the schedule. And they let it be known as they made sure it poured in the hours leading up to Opening Day. Of course there were no cabs available because for some reason there aren’t a lot of cabs in Toronto (and for another reason they are all different colors), and because Uber was even harder to come by at the time, it meant a mile walk from the hotel to Rogers Centre. Brittni wasn’t happy.

Normally, I hate the cold. I’m as soft as can be when it comes to the cold. I’m Jacoby Ellsbury when it comes to the cold. Well, my fingers are as soft as can be when it comes to the cold. The rest of my body is fine, but fingers aren’t, and once the cold hits them, I’m ruined. The coldest I ever was was at the Rangers-Islanders Stadium Series game at Yankee Stadium back in January 2014. The first period was fine, but once the Zamboni hit the ice for the first intermission, it was all downhill. After that game, I stood in the corner of my shower in my apartment on the Upper East Side, which was one-third the size of a regulation-sized shower, trying to hide from the hot water causing burning sensations in my hands and feet. It wasn’t that cold in Toronto on Thursday, but it was getting there and the rain was enhancing the cold. But it didn’t faze me. Baseball was back! Brittni, on the other hand, stepped in a Lake Ontario-sized puddle early into the walk, soaking her feet, and I tried my best not to make direct eye contact with her as her teeth chattered because I figured she might not just leave the walk and Toronto, but also me.

***

Rogers Centre is a much better dome experience than Tropicana Field, but I doubt there’s any worse dome experience than Tropicana Field. The roof of Rogers Centre is incredible in real life, hovering what seems like miles above the field. It would have been nice to have one game with it opened and one with it closed, but the Baseball Gods coupled with it being March 29 and 30 in CANADA(!) made sure that wasn’t going to happen.

My first look at Aaron Boone as Yankees manager was of him bringing the lineup card to home plate. Ten years earlier, I watched Joe Girardi in his Yankees managerial debut take the field at the Stadium to “JOE GIR-ARDI” chants (that was the first and last time he would ever hear those chants) only to have the game be called due to rain, so this tenure and season was already off to a better start.

Brett Gardner opened the game with a line drive to Curtis Granderson that the Grandy Man dropped. Aaron Judge made the first out of the inning and as Giancarlo Stanton stepped up to the plate for the first time in a Yankees uniform, a man who hadn’t missed a meal in a long time made his way to his seat directly in front of me. I stood up to change my viewpoint just as Stanton swung and connected. The ball kept carrying and carrying and carrying over the right-field fence, which didn’t seem like a possible result after such an effortless swing. Yeah, I think I’m going to like this guy on this team with this lineup.

From that moment on, the game felt over. Luis Severino showed up as the ace, dominating the Blue Jays lineup each inning for this line: 5.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 7 K. Stanton added an RBI double as well as a second home run, which might have hit our hotel if Rogers Centre weren’t enclosed, Gary Sanchez had an RBI double as well and Gardner showed off his power with a solo home run. Brittni got her beer and her hot dog and made small talk with the surrounding Canadians as she awaited her own Opening Day with Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers later that night. It was a near-perfect Opening Day with the only blip of the game coming in the eighth inning.

The first pitch of the season thrown by Dellin Betances was turned around for a Kevin Pillar solo home run. Clearly, Pillar was sitting on a first-pitch fastball from Betances, he got it, and didn’t miss it. It was a shocking moment, considering how Betances finished last season and all the talk in the offseason about how he would rebound, but I don’t think anyone thought he would go to his breaking ball on his first pitch of the season, and apparently, Pillar didn’t either. I’m the biggest of Betances fans, and always will be. He’s a native New Yorker and homegrown Yankee, who was the only consistent bright spot and star for the organization from 2014 until June 22 of last season. I believe he will return to his pre-June 22, 2017 self and once again be the most dominant member of the Yankees’ bullpen. I’m not at all worried about Dellin Betances.

Betances retired the next three batters he faced and Aroldis Chapman pitched a perfect ninth, striking out Steve Pearce and Kendrys Morales to end the game.

***

I missed that feeling after a Yankees win. I hadn’t had that feeling since leaving the Stadium following Game 5 of the ALCS when the Yankees finally solved Dallas Keuchel en route to a 5-0 win. That was back on Oct. 18. I hadn’t had that feeling in 162 days.

I didn’t care that it was still pouring outside Rogers Centre. Luis Severino’s dominance and Giancarlo Stanton’s unbelievable power had me dreaming of what this season and future seasons might hold. Sure, it was only one game, but for now that’s all I have to go off of.

Brittni and I made our way down Blue Jays Way and to Wayne Gretzky’s, and it might have been better than the game. A restaurant and bar lined with memorabilia from The Great One’s life took me back in time and made me forget about the Yankees’ win momentarily. A few Coors Lights, nachos, a grilled chicken sandwich and being surrounding by the presence of 99 was the perfect end to the perfect start of the season.

Part II of my two-day, two-game trip to Toronto coming tomorrow.

The worst contract in the history of the Yankees was one that never made any sense. This wasn’t the Yankees competing against several other contenders to add Carl Pavano or even Jaret Wright after the 2004 ALCS collapse. This wasn’t the Steinbrenners overruling Brian Cashman to give A-Rod a 10-year, $275 million after his second MVP season in three years. This wasn’t the Yankees continually upping their offer to CC Sabathia to put so much money in front of him that he would have to say no to California. This wasn’t the Yankees giving A.J. Burnett $82.5 million because he led the league in strikeouts once (with an above-4 ERA). This wasn’t the Yankees stepping in and stealing Mark Teixeira away from the Red Sox with an eight-year, $180 million deal. This was the Yankees deciding to pass on their own homegrown, All-Star talent to sign essentially a one-year wonder to a seven-year, $153 million contract (with a $5 million buyout for an eighth season, which we can’t forget) when NO ONE ELSE was bidding.

Given the contract and performance, Jacoby Ellsbury is the worst player in the history of the New York Yankees. Pavano is not a counter argument. There is no argument. And all of the weird injuries and issues aside, Ellsbury made more in his first two seasons with the Yankees than Pavano did in his four, and two years from today, Ellsbury could still be a Yankee, weakly grounding out to the right side, hitting for no power, stealing no bases and blocking prospects with real baseball talent from reaching the majors.

The idea that having Ellsbury and Brett Gardner hitting first and second at the top of the order was what the Yankees needed after the disastrous 2013 season was such a bad idea that it makes choosing Gary Sheffield over Vladimir Guerrero look good. Like that Sheffield-Guerrero decision, maybe this decision also wasn’t Brian Cashman’s call after the 2013 season since ownership had to watch the Red Sox win their third World Series in 10 years while the Yankees put together the 2006 All-Star team with Ichiro, Travis Hafner, Kevin Youkilis, Vernon Wells and Lyle Overbay. If it weren’t for Alfonso Soriano’s MVP-like return in the middle of the summer to string Yankees fans along until early September, maybe the front office would have done something more drastic than signing Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran. Maybe they would have also signed Shin-Soo Choo to a seven-year, $140 million deal. (Unfortunately, that’s not a joke as Cashman and Co. did offer Choo a seven-year, $140 million deal.)

I never thought I would find a hitter streakier than Gardner, but Ellsbury has been that, except his hot streaks last a quarter of the time of his cold streaks. Yes, the Yankees’ plan was to put the two streakiest hitters in the game back-to-back at the top of their lineup in hopes that hot streaks would occur at the same time. Why would you want to do that? If you know the answer then maybe you can also tell me why you would want two Brett Gardners on the same team? And then maybe you can also tell me why would you want to pay the real Brett Gardner $13 million per year and the bad Brett Gardner $21.1 million per year?

If it the decision wasn’t Cashman’s then it needs to be made public. I can’t sit here four-plus years later with potentially three seasons left of Ellsbury (his fourth season will be bought out) and not know whose decision this was. Cashman has gotten a lot of praise in the last year and a half after he tore down a team he built and netted valuable assets like Gleyber Torres, Clint Frazier, Justus Sheffield and Dillon Tate. But if the Ellsbury signing was Cashman’s decision, I need to know. If it was someone in his front office then I need to know that they are no longer making decision for the New York Yankees. And if it happened to be ownership’s decision, well, that would make the most sense since Hal Steinbrenner and Randy Levine’s smart decision-making track record starts and ends with the Rafael Soriano signing. And if it weren’t for Mariano Rivera shagging fly balls in Kansas City, they wouldn’t have a smart track record.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whose decision it was. What does matter is that it can be fixed. The person responsible for the worst contract in Yankees history, which produced the worst Yankee in the team’s history, can salvage the monumental mistake that cost the franchise $153 million (plus his $5 million buyout for 2021) and Robinson Cano. And it’s very easy. Release Jacoby Ellsbury.

No team wants Ellsbury, not even for pennies on the dollar. Unless the Yankees eat a significant portion of his remaining $68 million and attach a prospect or prospects to him, no one is touching the one-year wonder, and that was made abundantly clear this offseason. Despite all the rumors and reports of November, December and January, no team was ever close to acquiring Ellsbury and Ellsbury made that known at spring training when he said the Yankees never asked him to waive his no-trade clause. I’m not even sure any team even entertained the thought of trading for Ellsbury.

The Yankees aren’t getting out of this mistake. They can’t pay Ellsbury to play for another team through a trade like they did with David Justice or A.J. Burnett or Brian McCann. The only way out is to release him and find out which team is the dumbest in the league. If the Yankees release him and he signs with another team for the league minimum, which he most likely will, so be it. He’s not going to become the player he was for one season of his 11-year career. That one season also happened SEVEN YEARS AGO! He’s not going to be rejuvenated and revitalized with a change of scenery and more playing time because he isn’t good. He’s not going to come back to hurt the Yankees. He will most likely play like a Hall of Famer against them when he faces them because every ex-Yankee does, but he’s not going to be the missing piece of another contender, and he’s not going to get some big hit or make some big play against the Yankees that ruins their own championship aspirations. Because in a game of that magnitude, Ellsbury will be on the bench, like he was for the 2015 Wild-Card Game and like he was for nearly the entire 2017 postseason aside from a few DH at-bats.

Aside from tying up $21.1 million that could have been used on Yu Darvish or can be used on Jake Arrieta, Alex Cobb or Lance Lynn, Ellsbury is destroying the development of Clint Frazier.  (Sure, the Stanton signing and the belief that two good months of Hicks’ career is enough to make him the starting center fielder are helping, but let’s stay with Ellsbury here.) If Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are going to be the right fielder and designated hitter the majority of the season and Brett Gardner is in left and Aaron Hicks is in center that puts Ellsbury on the bench. And that puts Frazier in Scranton. And if one of Judge (knock on all the wood) or Stanton (knock on all the wood again) or Gardner or Hicks goes down, that means playing time for Ellsbury. Right now it’s going to take two injuries from those four or Ellsbury-like seasons from two of those four for Frazier to get to the Bronx, and even then, it might not be enough. And I certainly don’t want any of those four to get injured and if two of those four have Ellsbury-like seasons and the two are Judge and Stanton, well pack up the bats and balls and we’ll see you in 2019. The path to the Yankees for Frazier without some sort of injury bug or 2013-14 season repeat is incredibly hard. Ellsbury makes it that much harder. Not even just for Frazier. For everyone. That roster spot and position player bench spot is a big deal.

2013 was an embarrassment. 2014 was a disappointment. 2015 was great until the trade deadline and awful after it. 2016 sucked until after the trade deadline. 2017 was unexpected and the most fun I have had as a Yankees fan since the moment before Derek Jeter’s ankle was ruined in Game 1 of the 2012 ALCS. 2018 and moving forward is going to be like it was before 2013 when the Yankees were the Yankees and winning a World Series was an attainable goal. If the Yankees don’t win a championship this season it will be a disappointment like it was for eight years after 2000 and again for three years after 2009. Ownership likes to apologize to the fans when the goal of winning a championship isn’t met and they promise to do better and do the things necessary to win moving forward. Getting rid of Ellsbury is doing better and doing something necessary. It doesn’t matter if he’s the last man on the bench or the 25th man on the roster. He’s there and he’s a reminder and a holdover from the recent run of disappointing seasons and the bad contracts that led to those disappointing seasons.

It’s just the money, and it’s just $68 million at this point. The other $90 million has already been wasted. Sure, the Yankees could have used the Ellsbury contract to sign Cano, or give 765 New York City high school students $200,000 towards college, or give a $100 ticket or food credit at the Stadium to 1.53 million Yankees fans, or done anything other than give a one-year wonder on the wrong side of 30 a seven-year contract to play Major League Baseball. But they did and now it’s time to fix it. Release Jacoby Ellsbury.

And just like that, it’s over. The daily grind that started in Tampa back on Sunday, April 2 has ended.

Twenty-eight hours ago I was planning my trip to Los Angeles for the World Series for an event that I thought would never happen, let alone nearly happen this season: my Yankees against my girlfriend’s Dodgers.

Back then, all those 28 hours ago, it was win tonight OR tomorrow and the Yankees are headed to the World Series for the first time in eight years in the most improbable of ways by reaching the postseason as a projected 81-win team, by beating Minnesota in the wild-card game after falling behind 3-0 in the top of the first, by overcoming a 2-0 series deficit to top-seeded Cleveland after going off on Corey Kluber for the second time in five nights and by overcoming another 2-0 series deficit to the Astros after winning three straight at Yankee Stadium. But now, here I am, wondering how a dream so close to finally being realized ended with one run scored in 18 innings against an Astros team the Yankees had seemingly figured out for three straight days in the Bronx.

Saturday night’s Game 7 was the fifth time the Yankees played for their season in 19 nights, starting with the raucous night at the Stadium back on Oct. 3, before the wild Sunday night Game 3 against the Indians on Oct. 8, followed by the series-tying Game 4 against the Indians the next night on Oct. 9 and then the second batting practice in five days against Corey Kluber two nights later on Oct. 11. You could even count Games 3, 4 and 5 against the Astros as elimination games because if the Yankees had gone down 3-0, 3-1 or 3-2, their season would have been over as well. I didn’t think going back to Houston UP 3-2 would mean the same.

I’m not angry with the way the season ended. Not like I was after the 2010 ALCS when the failed trade for Cliff Lee was the sole reason the Yankees didn’t win the pennant (and likely didn’t win back-to-back World Series). And I’m not mad with the way the season ended. Not like I was after the 2012 ALCS when I had to watch Derek Jeter break his ankle in what would be his final postseason game, and really the end of his career, as the Yankees were swept by the Tigers.

Those two ALCS losses were different. The window of opportunity on those Yankees teams was closing … OK … slamming shut and those two series represented the last real chances for that group to add to their collection of five championships.

After 2012, with Jeter suffering a career-altering injury at age 38, and Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte entering their final season, half of the “Core Four” would be joining Jorge Posada in retirement following the 2013 season, and Jeter would follow after 2014. Aside from the Yankees who had been Yankees since elementary school for me, Alex Rodriguez was 37 and coming off a 3-for-25 in the postseason, in which he was pinch-hit for in the ALDS; Robinson Cano, coming off his own 3-for-41 in the postseason after hitting .313/.379/.550 with 33 home runs in the regular season was entering the final year of his contract in 2013; Curtis Granderson, who had hit 43 home runs in the regular season and 41 the year before, put together a nice 3-for-30 with 16 strikeouts in the postseason and was up for free agency; Nick Swisher, who made Brian Cashman look like a genius for acquiring him in exchange for Wilson Betemit, had hit 105 home runs in four regular seasons with the Yankees, but had been the worst postsesason player in history in those same four years, and played himself out of the team’s future plans as a free agent; Russell Martin had lessened the hurt of Jorge Posada retiring, but he was also up for free agency, and the Yankees’ catching depth (and by catching depth, at the time it was Francisco Cervelli, Austin Romine and John Ryan Murphy, not Gary Sanchez) meant he was gone.

The retirements, injuries, free agents and uncertainty following 2012 led to this Opening Day lineup in 2013:

Brett Gardner, CF
Eduardo Nunez, SS
Robinson Cano, 2B
Kevin Youkilis, 1B
Vernon Wells, LF
Ben Francisco, DH
Ichiro Suzuki, RF
Jayson Nix, 3B
Francisco Cervelli, C

If that didn’t make you sick, here’s who played the most games at each position that season:

C: Chris Stewart
1B: Lyle Overbay
2B: Robinson Cano
3B: Eduardo Nunez
SS: Jayson Nix
LF: Vernon Wells
CF: Brett Gardner
RF: Ichiro Suzuki
DH: Travis Hafner

Still haven’t thrown up? The following players played for the 2013 Yankees:

David Adams, Zoilo Almonte, Brennan Boesch, Reid Brignac, Luis Cruz, Alberto Gonzalez, Travis Ishikawa, Corban Joseph, Brent Lillibridge, Melky Mesa and Thomas Neal.

Somehow the 2012 Yankees played for the AL pennant against the Tigers and the 2013 Yankees went into a time machine to the Stump Merrill era and featured a roster that might not have won the Independent League. (Somehow, they won 85 games in Joe Girardi’s greatest accomplishment as a manager). The most highly-touted position player prospect to play for the Yankees in 2013 was David Adams, who will always be remembered as the player whose ankle nixed the Cliff Lee deal. The 26-year-old rookie hit .193/.252/.286 with two home runs and 13 RBIs in 152 plate appearances.

That’s why I’m not angry or mad or frustrated or disappointed or upset at the way this season. I’m sad that baseball is over. I’m sad that the young Yankees weren’t able to do the unthinkable and win it all well ahead of schedule. I’m sad that I won’t be going to the world in New York or Los Angeles. I’m sad that there isn’t a meaningful baseball game for me until March 27. But what I’m not sad about is that the dark days of 2013-2016 are over.

Gary Sanchez and his 53 career home runs in 175 games will be 25 in December. AL Rookie of the Year and possibly AL MVP Aaron Judge will turn 26 in April. Top 3 AL starting pitcher with the hardest fastball velocity for a starter in the majors Luis Severino will be 24 in February. Healthy Greg Bird, who hit three postseason home runs to go along with a .426 on-base percentage, will be 25 in November. Jordan Montgomery, who pitched to a 3.88 ERA in 29 starts as a rookie, will be 25 in December. Old man Didi Gregorius, who set the Yankees’ franchise record for home runs in season by a shortstop and saved the Yankees’ season in the wild-card game and again in Game 5 against Cleveland, will turn 28 in February.

There’s no more fake prospect hype and a long list of bad contracts. There are real homegrown stars, superstars even, on this team and when you figure that Chase Headley only has one year at $13 million left, the only real bad contract left on the team is Jacoby Ellsbury’s $63.4 million over the next three years and then the $5 million to buy him out of the 2021 season. One bad contract! That’s it! A-Rod’s $21 million to not actually play is over. There’s only $5.5 million left to pay Brian McCann to get big hits against the Yankees. Matt Holliday’s $13 million has cleared. CC Sabathia will return, but he won’t be making $25 million per season. And again, there’s just one more year of Chase Headley at $13 million. One. More. Year.

The future isn’t just bright for the Yankees, it’s you-have-to-buy-those-special-glasses-like-you-did-for-the-total-eclipse bright. The next core of the franchise is already in place and that’s before Gleyber Torres and Clint Frazier find their full-time place on the team with others like Miguel Andujar, Tyler Wade, Chance Adams and Justus Sheffield to follow. And if needed, that whole part about tens of millions of dollars coming off the books between this year and next will happen just in time for the 2018 free-agent class, which includes Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, who will both be 26 on Opening Day 2019.

All of this helped me as Justin Verlander pitched like Curt Schilling in Game 6 on Friday night, and it comforted me after Evan Gattis’ solo home run in the third inning in Game 7 on Saturday as I watched the outs go by knowing the inevitable: the 2017 Yankees would fall one win short of the World Series.

But this is just the beginning, the way the heartbreak of 1995 was the beginning for those Yankees. These Yankees won’t ever be the underdog again. The young, fresh faces in the Bronx soon won’t be likeable or easy to root for by the rest of the baseball world as they will enter 2018 as the favorite to win the AL East and will be picked by many to get the win they weren’t able to get on Friday or Saturday to win the AL pennant.

I’m sad the season is over, but I’m happy the Yankees are the Yankees once again.

Gary Sanchez is the AL Rookie of the Year. Not Michael Fulmer. Gary Sanchez. And it’s not even close.

In an ideal world, there would be one Rookie of the Year for pitching and one for hitting and then this wouldn’t be something to argue and I wouldn’t have to write this story. But this is baseball, where the All-Star Game determines home-field advantage in the World Series, the wild-card game turns a 162-game schedule into a nine-inning game and no one knows for sure what call is going to be made after every review. So complaining about an award that really only benefits the player who wins it, his family, his agent, his bank account and his team’s fans is his team had a bad season seems kind of pointless, unless you fall into one of those categories. For me, I’m a fan of a team that had a bad season and has a player in the AL Rookie of the Year conversation.

When Sanchez got called up for good on Aug. 3, the Yankees were 53-53 and had just given up on the season by trading Andrew Miller, Carlos Beltran, Aroldis Chapman and Ivan Nova. (Ivan Nova really wasn’t part of them giving up, but he was in the majors and still is.) In return, they got an abundance of prospects and Adam Warren back as well as Tyler Clippard in a separate deal. The Yankees traded their best two pitchers, who very well might be the best two relievers in baseball, and their best hitter. They waved the white flag as aggressively as they could and turned to Sanchez to begin the top prospect showcase that Yankees fans had been waited for and what should have been started two or even three years ago. Sanchez gave Yankees fans meaningful baseball up until the final weekend of the season and climbed all the way back into the postseason to at one point trail in the wild-card standings by one game.

This isn’t a knock on Michael Fulmer and it isn’t meant to take away from his season or say he had a bad season. He had a nice season, making 26 starts and going 11-7 with a 3.06 ERA and 1.119 WHIP. Those numbers are solid and good and all that, but they’re not historical like Sanchez’s are.

Sanchez finished the season hitting .299/.376/.657 with 12 doubles, 20 home runs, 42 RBIs and a ridiculous 1.032 OPS. He tied Nomar Mazara for the most home runs by a rookie in the AL in 315 less at-bats, had three multi-home run games and homered in consecutive games seven times. He became the fastest player in history to 20 home runs (along with being the fastest to nearly all of the other home runs totals along the way), hit third in the Yankees’ lineup, forced Brian McCann to the bench and hopefully soon to Atlanta, and did all of this while mostly playing catcher. He made straightaway center at Fenway seem as close as the Pesky Pole, he made the seemingly-impossible-to-hit second deck in left field at Yankee Stadium look like the short porch in right and he turned Safeco Field into Camden Yards with three home runs in 11 at-bats in Seattle. He single-handedly saved the Yankees’ season for two months, turned a lost season into an eventful one with real promise for the future and made every one of his 229 plate appearances must-watch TV.

The idea that Fulmer is more deserving of the award than Sanchez because he was in the majors longer and pitched a “full season” is as ridiculous as someone winning the Cy Young solely based on their wins total or someone winning MVP based on if their team reached the postseason or not. In a game now controlled by analytics, how is it possible that such archaic ways of thinking and reasoning can still be used to decide yearly awards.

There’s a very good chance Sanchez won’t win the award because Fulmer was in the league longer, even if he did only make 26 starts didn’t join the Tigers until one month into the season on April 29. But Joe Girardi said it best (I can’t believe I just said that Joe Girardi said something “best”) when he as nicely and as politically correct as possible said, “I think Fulmer’s had a great year, but if I had a vote, it’d be for Gary,” following Sanchez’s 20th home run in his 185th at-bat. And for someone who has heard nearly every word Girardi has said as manager of the Yankees over the last nine years, he basically said what I said earlier, “Gary Sanchez is the AL Rookie of the Year, and it’s not even close.”

“This is crazy. This is crazy. This is crazy.” That’s what Clark Griswold said to himself as he tried to decide whether or not to skinny dip with The Girl in the Ferrari (as if there was anything to decide) and here I am saying the same thing to myself as the Yankees keep winning and keep inching closer to the postseason.

The Yankees weren’t supposed to be here. Not when they were 9-17 on May 5, or 24-28 on June 1, or 44-46 on July 16, or 52-52 at the trade deadline. They weren’t supposed to be here when they traded their closer to the Cubs, or when they traded the best reliever in baseball to the Indians or when they traded their best hitter to the Rangers. They weren’t supposed to be here with the kind of year A-Rod had and Mark Teixeira is having. They weren’t supposed to be here with the kind of year Brett Gardner and Jacoby Ellsbury are putting together at the top of the order. They weren’t supposed to be here with Chase Headley and Starlin Castro’s struggles or Brian McCann’s decline in production or all of the wasted at-bats given to Aaron Hicks. They weren’t supposed to be here with the inconsistencies of Michael Pineda and Nathan Eovaldi before his injury and Ivan Nova before he was traded. And they certainly weren’t supposed to be here when they called up three rookies in Gary Sanchez, Aaron Judge and Tyler Austin to become everyday players when the three of them had four combined plate appearances (all Sanchez’s) and no hits before Aug. 3. But here they are.

The Yankees have gone 21-13 since they “gave up on the season” and traded their three best assets not named Masahiro Tanaka. They have closed the gap in the division to four games in the loss column and the gap in the wild card to two games in the loss column. They have kept Yankees fans interested and intrigued into the second week of September when Yankees fans were supposed to turn to their NFL teams and start to countdown the days until the NHL and NBA seasons start. In a season in which nearly every preseason concern and question mark didn’t work out the way they did a year ago, the Yankees should have been buried long ago. But despite being a .500 team through 104 games and a team that hasn’t seen a positive run differential since the eighth game of the season, they are still in it.

I have given up on this team countless times this season only to be pulled back in and devastated only to be in on a potential playoff race again and again and again. It’s a vicious cycle that coupled with last season’s one-game playoff loss, the two postseason-less seasons in 2013 and 2014, the way the 2012 season ended and the recent retirements of Number 2, Number 42 and A-Rod has certainly deteriorated my health. Two nights ago, I was ready to be out on this Yankees team once again when Joe Girardi tried to manage the team to a loss with his bullpen decisions, only to have them come back on a Tyler Austin oppositie-field bomb, only to have to Dellin Betances nearly rip my heart out, only to have Blake Parker and Brett Gardner save the season.

Save the season. That’s been my motto all year. Carlos Beltran was the leader of the “Save the Season” campaign along with the Big Three in the bullpen and Didi Gregorius for a while. But with Beltran and two-thirds of the Big Three gone and Didi coming back down to earth somewhat, “Save the Season” has become a team effort. It was all Gary Sanchez for a couple of weeks. It has included Masahiro Tanaka for his last six starts (the Yankees are undefeated over those six starts). Luis Cessa and Bryan Mitchell have contributed, as have Tyler Clippard and Luis Severino. Starlin Castro has been involved when he isn’t swinging at pitches in the other batter’s box and Brian McCann has showed up from time to time. Even Jacoby Ellsbury, The Thief himself, and Chase Headley, The Bum himself, have had their moments. This Yankees team has gone from the most hated in my lifetime to one worth rooting for in a little over a month.

If the Yankees fall short of the postseason now, it will suck, but it won’t be lock-myself-in-my-room-for-the-offseason depressing like it would have been last season if they had (and they almost did). I have grown somewhat immune to bad seasons thanks to 2013 and 2014 and the majority of this one. This was supposed to be a lost season before it started and many times it was nearly finally lost, but each time, the Yankees came storming back. They aren’t in win-now mode the way most of the division is, and making the postseason this year would be a shock, but it would also be a bonus. (That’s a sentence I never envisioned myself writing four years ago.) The Yankees are playing with house money and as long as Joe Girardi doesn’t hit stay on a 16 with the dealer showing a 10 the way he did the other night with his bullpen management, the Yankees can’t lose.