Yankees' team reaction to AL Championship rings proves how locked in they are

The New York Yankees received glittering, glowing, hefty representations of their failure a few weeks ago. The team's 2024 American League Championship rings are gorgeous. If you squint, you could almost mistake them for the type of hardware that might be given out to a team that swapped Tim Hill for Nestor Cortes in Game 1, or wowed the home crowd with sterling fundamentals in Game 5.

Instead, they are ostensibly losers' gear gear, sparkling keepsakes that future generations will enjoy, but that look like gilded cursed talismans to anyone still on the team hoping to get over that final hurdle and capture Championship No. 28.

In case there was any doubt about how these Yankees would handle their baubles, the quotes that came out after the ceremony erased all of it. Giancarlo Stanton may have been the most forceful, but absolutely nobody in that room was satisfied with accepting second place.

"This isn’t the one we wanted, boys,” Stanton said, in public during the event. “The one that we want is in front of us. I’d better not see any of you guys wearing these around.”

Yankees' Giancarlo Stanton, Tim Hill, Clarke Schmidt ... nobody wants the 2024 AL Champions ring.

For everyone who mocks the Yankees' high standards, just know that "World Series or Bust" somehow only grows more forcefully as a mandate the closer you get to the end of the road. And the players feel the weight more powerfully than any fan ever could.

Schmidt's take on the non-honor might be the most heartbreaking of all: “I don’t want to walk around with this runner-up or second-place ring from when I was with the Yankees, looking back and saying, ‘That was my shining moment,’” he told MLB's Bryan Hoch.

Tim Hill claimed he "looked at it once," then "threw it in a box". Carlos Rodón, who tried to steer the Yankees out of the skid after a horrendous Game 1 heartbreak, explicitly called it a "First Loser" ring.

Thankfully, upon Stanton's return, all four will still be involved in the Yankees' follow-up journey. New York is thriving, thanks in large part to the pair of MVPs they replaced Juan Soto with (Cody Bellinger, Paul Goldschmidt), as well as the rotation fortifier they signed in Max Fried. The Yankees have made their hunger perfectly clear, and these self-forgotten rings will serve as a signifier of what's left ahead of them.

Watching the entire team react the exact same way was highly refreshing.