Yankee fans are rightfully angry about not being able to reach the World Series

Here’s what we can’t do: We can’t tell Yankees fans what should make them happy. They decide.

This is their team and they are absolutely not happy right now, or having a lot of fun since July when they were still outdoing their stuff. In other words: Yankees fans aren’t spoiled, entitled, or big kids because they expect their team to give them a great October every now and then, no matter how many games they win to get there.

The Yankees are what they are now under this owner and this general manager. And who they really are, in many ways, is Notre Dame football. Notre Dame wins a lot of games and makes the occasional Final Four, like the Yankees just did. The Yankees play more big games every season than Notre Dame, one hundred percent. They just won’t win them. In many ways, the Yankees are a much more successful version of the Dallas Cowboys, with all the mystique of America’s Team, just without the trophies as of late.

Would Notre Dame fans be Yankees? Of course. So are Cowboys fans. Yankees fans don’t care. They don’t root for these teams. They root for their team, and every year, every year, they’re not just sold romance and history, they’re sold World Series or bad luck, whether the people in charge say so or not. It doesn’t just mean winning the division every now and then, winning a 5 game series against another JV team from the AL Central.

Should some fans in the stadium have booed Aaron Judge, possibly all the way out of town, when all is said and done? Of course not. Those who booed Judge after the season he just had (even if the weight of it clearly cost him and his team in the end) made everyone sound bad. But what you really heard, even in those moments when they were chasing their 62-homer favorite and the face of the team, was how angry they were at Steinbrenner, at Brian Cashman, at Aaron Boone, at a team that so dramatically, almost historically, have they gone from the achievers to the underachievers.

[ Breaking down what went wrong for Aaron Judge in the postseason ]

Have other players heard this noise? They heard well. But those Yankee Stadium crowds — and please spare me the descriptions of how “toxic” it all was, as if it were the sensation of delicate flowers being knocked down — were just as screaming for the owner, and the CEO, and the manager as much as the players on the field.

By the way? The world needs to move on from comparing Hal Steinbrenner to his old self. But one thing you can tell about the old man is that George was a loudmouth fan himself, just someone who happened to own the most famous sports team in the world. His son is not a fan. He doesn’t seem to like baseball very much. Or change. And here we are, die-hard Yankee fans now being sold a new plan that will make them something more than their opponents next season, and make them more than a team that has lost five straight championship series over the past decade or so.

Once again, you will read and hear that Hal’s only solution is to spend more money than he has. But the guy does have a right at this point, with this general manager, to want to know how much is enough. In the 19 years since Josh Beckett hit the Yankees’ home run in Game 6 of the 2003 World Series, Cashman has been allowed to spend nearly $4 billion on baseball players. A billion from a b. Cashman spent $263 million in adjusted salary this year, even though about 20% of that went to Josh Donaldson, Aroldis Chapman and front office favorite Aaron Hicks.

[ Yankees reflect on how and when the 2022 season fell apart ]

Again: Four billion dollars since the Yankees were crushed by the Marlins. One World Series appearance to show for it. The last non-AL Central team they beat in a postseason series was the Baltimore Orioles. That was in 2012, and they needed CC Sabathia to pitch a gallant complete game against the Orioles in Game 5 to win this time.

And when it was decided against the Astros at the Stadium in the final weekend of the Yankees’ season, the only legitimate product of the Yankees’ vaunted farm system on the field was #99.

Since the 2003 World Series, the Astros have reached the World Series five times, even making it in both leagues. Somehow they managed to get through the shooting spree that we always hear about in October from teams that aren’t good enough, like the Yankees are never good enough. The San Francisco Giants, who could wear No. 99 next season, have won three World Series since the Yankees last won. Of course, the Red Sox have swept the Yankees four times since 2004 and have swept the Yankees twice in 18 and 21, once at the Stadium and once at Fenway in the Wild Card Game.

Everyone knows that the Yankees went on to win the World Series after Cashman became general manager. But what he mostly did in those early years was toe the line. The one time he personally engraved the trophy was in 2009, the year he spent $450 million in the offseason on Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, Alan James Burnett. The closest Cashman’s Yankees have gotten to the World Series since then was Game 7 against the Astros in 2017.

“The only thing that derailed us was the fact of cheating [from the Astros] it knocked us off our feet,” Cashman said this spring.

But what about all the other years?

The Yankees never have a losing season and they never have a season where they win it all. They went 64-28 that season, then they went 35-35 the rest of the regular season, and then they went 3-6 in October. Now, ironically, Cashman’s contract is up as Boone is still working out the extension he signed last season. And the soundtrack with which they all leave the season, the owner and his general manager, their chosen manager and the 22nd Yankees, is a boo.

We hear all the time that Yankee fans are spoiled. But how can they be pampered when their team is no longer winning championships? They just go crazy. They want more than just the “auras and mystiques” Curt Schilling once said before the Diamondbacks beat the Yankees in the World Series. They want advice. They want to be bigger than the Cowboys when they play the biggest games. Be more than the New York Fighting Irish.

Wait a second, do the Giants have to worry about Geno on Sunday?

And I don’t care how the Patriots looked Monday night against the Bears, or how bad Mack Jones has looked this season.

If the Jets can beat Bill Belichick at MetLife, it will feel like the biggest win in 10 years.

More than beating the Packers at Lambeau.

More than anything they’ve done recently.

If you come here on Sunday, you know I’ve been playing with The West Wing lately.

I’m gearing up for season three this week, and everything I’ve seen so far confirms that there hasn’t been a more talented writer in the history of television than Aaron Sorkin.

This has nothing to do with what is going on in Tom Brady’s personal life.

No, it’s about what’s going on with the Bucs.

And what’s going on with the Bucks has turned Brady into a grumpy old man.

As my friend Stanton says, who would ever write Brady and LeBron on the pathetic side of the bye?

Year in and year out, no one does a better job of coaching their team than Mike Vrabel.

But when you look back at the Giants’ season and how they went 6-1, you really wonder how it all would have played out if they hadn’t made the two-point conversion Coach Dubs called late against Vrabel’s Titans.

Ben Simmons does have a great skill set on the basketball court.

If you watched the Nets-Mouse game Thursday night, you saw him gobble up Luca late in regulation as Luca drove the ball to the rim.

But I really want to challenge Ben to a game of HORSE.

If Brandon Nimmo leaves, and maybe if he doesn’t, I hope the Mets go after Trea Turner.

Or maybe go after Carlos Correa and let him play third base at Citi Field.

There is a man running for the United States Senate in Georgia, Herschel Walker, who can be stumped by asking him how many children he has.

Do you know what will happen if they expand the college football playoffs?

They are going to steal the magic and drama from their regular season.

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