Yankees fans will hate Aaron Boone’s response to challenge snafu

Are you sitting down, Yankees fans? Have you had your Tuesday morning post-loss coffee yet?

If you’re still midway through, we recommend swallowing the hottest gulp before listening to Aaron Boone’s postgame press conference from Monday in Baltimore.

Though it’s likely the Yankees would’ve flopped like Cesar Valdez’s dead fish changeup in the ninth inning on Monday whether the score was 4-2 or 4-3, it did seem like they should’ve had an additional run on the board thanks to DJ LeMahieu crossing the plate before Aaron Judge was tagged at third for the final out of the eighth.

Why was Judge running to third? Who’s to say! That’s a question for another day.

Boone got himself rung after a confrontation with umpire Greg Gibson, who he believed didn’t afford him the right amount of time to decide on a challenge strategy.

Good! Sounds like the kind of thing that fires up a slumping team. An ejection is always an effective way to blow off steam and get a roster’s engine started.

Unless, of course, you mute your own actions by claiming to be the victim and complaining about being bullied in the aftermath.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone says he was a victim of bullying on Monday.

Yes, those were the real words that escaped Boone’s mouth immediately after this loss.

The Yankees, a team that should’ve reflexively challenged as soon as a close play went against them in the eighth inning, waited for their guys in the booth to give them a well-calculated go-ahead.

Did the Baltimore umping crew give them enough time to operate? Not really. Were they bullied? Hard no. This rings about as hollow as complaining about cancel culture every time you make a mistake.

In reality, it’s the fans who’ve been bullied yet again in 2021. Was this a “championship-caliber team” entering the season? Well, if things broke right, sure. For the 19th time in 20 tries, though, it appears things are breaking wrong, while teams like the Red Sox and San Francisco Giants have woken up and accidentally decided to contend this year.

It’s so easy for the rest of baseball, and so impossible for this team that’s constantly getting in its own way and crying victim when there’s still time left on the clock to punch back.

Is it impossible to crawl out of a 9-13 hole and win the AL East? No! What about the World Series? Of course not! Don’t rule it out.

The task does get more difficult, though, if team leadership gets this defensive at the drop of a hat and can’t seem to figure out that, even if they were “bullied” out of a run, there was still a way to control their own destiny in the ninth, as there is every single day.

They went down 1-2-3.

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