Yankees fans embracing Mookie Betts doofus (or Fat Joe) likely cursed 2024 team

One of these Yankees curses is far easier to parse than the other, but after Game 5, it's perfectly clear that the wrong kind of ghouls were working this World Series.

After all, the Yankees lost the Fall Classic on Wednesday night, fumbling spectacularly in their attempt to force a Game 6, the only saving grace being that their malfeasance occurred in just the fifth game, so far from an impossible-to-envision finish line.

But ... when you really break it down and torture yourself ... they were one out away from securing Game 1 after somehow, some way retiring Shohei Ohtani with runners on (he never hit in the series and popped his shoulder out, by the way). They loaded the bases with one out in the ninth, a run already in against Blake Treinen in Game 2. They were one Anthony Volpe poke away from Jose Trevino's harmless final out being a tiebreaking sacrifice fly. Game 3 was a no-show; Game 4 was a resounding victory.

They could've been cruising for the clinch in Game 5 instead of welcoming elimination, and that's where the supernatural comes in.

Karmically, it was probably fan malfeasance that tipped the scales. Not only did two local galoots interfere with Mookie Betts in Game 4 and stretch his wrist like wild dogs, but sections of the fan base actually dared to embrace them in the aftermath as some sort of tide-turners. Oh, those "beauts" (as ESPN's Jesse Rogers called them) turned the tide, alright.

Add in the horrific fan captured on mic heckling Freddie Freeman during the Stand Up to Cancer moment of silence (Freeman lost his mother to cancer, a fact too ghastly to credit this utter moron with knowing ... but if he did ...), and the Yankees were dead in the water, thanks to their fan base's absolute dregs.

Yankees sunk by Mookie Betts Curse, Fan Karma, Fat Joe in 2024 World Series

Naturally, Betts hit the ground ball that Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rizzo forgot how to field. He also delivered the eventual winning run on a sacrifice fly.

The Yankees tried extremely hard to turn the karmic tide, offering the offending Betts-grabbing fans' seats to a pediatric cancer patient and his family. The reality of who was forced to witness Game 5's stunning meltdown only made it more painful.

Of course, there may have been someone else in the stands responsible for the Yankees being "Space Jam'd" in the fifth inning of Game 5: rapper Fat Joe, whose pregame "hype" before Game 3 woke up all the wrong people, sending the Yankees into a slumber. He was shown on the video board before the fifth inning calamity began, and the Dodgers' dugout certainly noticed.

Were cosmic forces at play here? Quite possibly. Either way, the reality is the Dodgers entered the fifth inning motivated and comfortable, and the Yankees played the entire nightmarish inning in Skittish Mode, as if they were the ones trying desperately to close the barn door on a clinch.

The universe had other, fatter plans.