Let’s get this out of the way early — Sunday’s 9-6 comeback win over the Blue Jays was the biggest victory of the season, bigger even than the extra-inning miracle against Oakland two Saturdays ago. This was a classic “get up off the mat” game, as the Yankees were down 5-2 after six innings while Baltimore was cruising to yet another win over the Red Sox. A loss would’ve dropped the Yanks out of first place for the first time since June 10 with just three games to play. Given the massive advantage that winning your division gets in the new playoff format (hosting a divisional series vs. having to win a play-in game for the right to play a divisional series without home-field advantage), every game now has a playoff-like intensity to it. So to come back and win with two straight dominant innings at the plate, in a MUST-WIN game (bigger than a normal “must-win” because of the division title implications) is a huge boon for a Yankee team that has struggled to come from behind.
That said…dear God this team is causing me to age prematurely. I been a Yankee fan since I was old enough to know what baseball was, and I have never followed a team that I loved/hated as much as the 2012 Yankees. And all of it — the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, the Galling, the Glorious — was on display Sunday.
