HOUSTON \u2014 While talking about Yogi Berra late Sunday afternoon, Aaron Judge, who had just tied the legendary Yankees catcher for fifth place on the\u00a0franchise home run list with 358, was asked to name his favorite \u201cYogi-ism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt ain\u2019t over ’til it\u2019s over,\u201d Judge said with a smile. \u201cThat\u2019s always a pretty good one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he \u00a0turned serious.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut he was more than that,\u201d Judge said. \u201cHe was a fantastic baseball player. Ten World Series [won] . . . That\u2019s pretty impressive. That\u2019s what we\u2019re all chasing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Yankees\u00a0have been chasing their first championship since 2009.\u00a0Judge has overlapped\u00a0a significant part of that, making his full-season debut in 2017.<\/p>\n
That year, as no fan of the team needs reminding, marked the first of three ALCS losses to the Astros in\u00a0the next six seasons (after falling in seven games in 2017, the Yankees lost in six games in 2019 and were swept in 2022).<\/p>\n
That history is not particularly relevant to this week when, on Tuesday night, the Yankees start a big late-season series at Daikin Park, formerly known as Minute Maid Park.<\/p>\n
Only\u00a0two position players remain on the active roster from that 2022 club \u2014 Judge and Giancarlo Stanton (injured pitchers Gerrit Cole, Clarke Schmidt and Jonathan Loaisiga also are holdovers).<\/p>\n
Still, Minute Maid was the site of so much Yankees\u00a0heartbreak and caused so much anguish inside the organization the last decade that\u00a0any time the Yankees play a series of consequence in Houston, their grotesque postseason history in that ballpark inevitably comes to mind.<\/p>\n
The Astros, after all, are the single biggest reason for the Yankees\u2019 title drought since 2009.\u00a0Starting with the 2015 American League\u00a0wild-card game, Houston\u00a0eliminated them four times in eight Octobers. The 2017 and 2019 ALCS eliminations occurred in Houston; the eliminations\u00a0in 2015 and 2022 came at Yankee Stadium.<\/p>\n
None of that, Judge said, comes to mind for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHouston Astros. Good place to hit. That\u2019s\u00a0about it,\u201d a stone-faced Judge, a part of the three ALCS setbacks, said Sunday of his thoughts upon hearing the name Minute Maid Park.<\/p>\n
Do any of the past team failures that have occurred there \u2014 especially Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS and Jose Altuve\u2019s series-clinching walk-off homer in Game 6 in 2019 \u2014 enter his\u00a0mind at all?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. That\u2019s in the past,\u201d Judge said. \u201cWhat could I do about it?\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Aaron Boone, who took over for Joe Girardi as manager after the 2017 season, he said he won\u2019t think about it either.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho we\u2019re facing that day, what\u2019s the lineup we\u2019re going up against, how do we get that out? That\u2019s how you look at it,\u201d Boone said. \u201cWe\u2019ve won a lot over the last few years there. Obviously, we\u2019ve had playoff heartbreak there. It\u2019s 2025. It\u2019s a whole new year, whole new challenges, and we\u2019ve got to go play well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0 In 2023, the Yankees swept three games at Minute Maid after making two of their heralded prospects \u2014 Jasson Dominguez and Austin Wells \u2014 Sept. 1 call-ups in a playoff-less season. The Yankees followed that by sweeping four games there to open the 2024 season.<\/p>\n
The Astros, who reacquired longtime Yankees\u00a0tormentor Carlos Correa before the July 31 trade deadline, took two of three from the Yankees in the Bronx from Aug. 8-10. Correa and Altuve, forever public enemy No. 1 among the Yankees\u2019 fan base,\u00a0delivered big home runs in that series.<\/p>\n
Like the Yankees (76-61) \u2014\u00a0who are in a virtual tie for the top wild-card spot with the Red Sox and \u00a02 \u00bd games behind the AL East-leading Blue Jays \u2014\u00a0the Astros (76-62) are in a dogfight for their division title. After winning Monday afternoon, the Astros, coming off an August in which they were\u00a013-15, were 2 \u00bd games ahead of the Mariners (who played the Rays later Monday night).<\/p>\n
For the Yankees, Tuesday is the beginning of a run of four straight series against teams that would make the AL playoffs if they started today, teams the Yankees haven\u2019t done well against this season \u2014 the AL West-leading Astros (1-2), the AL East-leading Blue Jays (3-7), the AL Central-leading Tigers (1-2) and the Red Sox (2-8). That adds up to 7-19.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got something to prove, I think more to ourselves than anybody else,\u201d Judge said of his club\u2019s struggles against winning teams. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a special team here, and the guys know the opportunity we\u2019ve got ahead of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of it \u2014\u00a0appropriately, some might say \u2014\u00a0starts at the former Minute Maid Park, where, depending on how the next month plays out, the Yankees may well return\u00a0in October.<\/p>\n
A place where,\u00a0\u00a0at least for\u00a0the fan base, an ugly past is never completely out of mind.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\tErik Boland started in Newsday’s sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2014 While talking about Yogi Berra late Sunday afternoon, Aaron Judge, who had just tied the legendary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2389],"tags":[4369,42,5,139,54,3211,4,62],"class_list":{"0":"post-286468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-astros","8":"tag-analysis","9":"tag-astros","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-houston-astros","13":"tag-houstonastros","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-new-york-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115132253166835357","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}