It’s Game 3 of the World Series. The Yankees have their backs against the wall. They lost the series 2-0, and in the fourth inning – with Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Jazz Chisholm Jr. coming to the plate – they lost by three. The home nine desperately need a win – to get back into the series and keep their title hopes alive, but also to restore some of the aura that defined this proud franchise. A three-point deficit can evaporate in the blink of an eye, and with the bulk of the order approaching, this particular moment seemed like the time to strike. Sitting high in the right field stand, where the Yankees had set up their auxiliary press box (“the boxes”), I stood up with the crowd (who had not seen a World Series game at the Yankee Stadium for 15 years) and felt the rush of October baseball.

As I looked around at the anxious faces that made up the crowd, the ghosts of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle swirled in the autumn air, but something was wrong. A new character had appeared. As the entire section hung on to every pitch in hopes that Judge could start a rally, a digital glint nuzzled into the corner of my eye. The kid in front of me had his iPad out. Peter Griffin was making his way through the Fortnite universe.

This is not a defining statement about Generation Alpha, but rather about the state of the New York Yankees. That aforementioned aura — which all previous generations of sports fans were naturally aware of — has slowly dissipated with each of the last 14 World Series that didn’t include the boys in pinstripes. There was a glimmer of his return during the Game 4 victory and early stages of Game 5, but when the Yankees experienced a Deepwater Horizon-level disaster in the fifth inning, the aura headed for the rim . He soared when New York’s bullpen faltered in the eighth and surged when the final out was recorded, cementing a brutal defeat on the biggest stage. The Yankees, the New York Yankeesbecame the first team in Major League Baseball’s incredibly long history to lose a decisive World Series game by squandering a five-run lead. To those of a certain age, the idea of ​​the Yankees collapsing so dramatically in the literal World Series is incomprehensible. When everything started to go downhill in the third game, it happened in a way that perhaps could was less exciting than a YouTube clip of someone else playing video games. It’s not the child’s fault, it’s just the world he was born into.