It’s Game 3 of the World Series. The Yankees’ backs are against the wall. They’re losing the series 2-0, and in the fourth inning—with Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. coming to the plate—they’re losing by three. The home nine desperately need a win—to get back into the series and keep their title hopes alive, but also to restore some of the aura that used to define this proud franchise. A three-run deficit can evaporate in the blink of an eye, and with the meat of the order coming up, this particular moment felt like the time to strike. Sitting high up in the right field grandstand, where the Yankees had set up their auxiliary press box (the “aux box”), I rose with the crowd (who hadn’t seen a World Series game at Yankee Stadium in 15 years) and felt the rush of October baseball.
As I looked around at the anxious faces that made up the crowd, the ghosts of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle swirled in the autumnal air—but something felt off. A new character had emerged. While the entire section clung to every pitch in hopes that Judge could get a rally going, a digital glow snuggled its way into the corner of my eye. The kid in front of me had his iPad out. Peter Griffin was blasting his way through the Fortnite universe.
This is not meant to be some defining statement on Generation Alpha, but rather the state of the New York Yankees. That aforementioned aura—which all previous generations of sports fans were innately aware of—has been slowly dissipating with each of the last 14 World Series that did not include the boys in pinstripes. There was a glimmer of its return during the Game 4 win and the early stages of Game 5, but when the Yankees experienced a Deepwater Horizon-level disaster in the fifth inning, the aura made its way toward the ledge. It climbed up when the New York bullpen faltered in the eighth, and jumped when the final out was recorded, cementing a brutal loss on the biggest stage. The Yankees, the New York Yankees, became the first team in the impossibly long history of Major League Baseball to lose a World Series clincher by squandering a five-run lead. For those of a certain age, the idea of the Yankees melting down so dramatically in the literal World Series is incomprehensible. When everything started to unravel in Game 3, it happened in a way that maybe was less exciting than a YouTube clip of someone else playing video games. It’s not the kid’s fault, it’s just the world he was born into.
