"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

WE'RE BACK, BABY!

Thanks to Tubbo.com's league-leading 21st win of the season, the Yankees clinched a playoff berth last night, along with Tampa and the Reds.

Notably absent from any playoff clinching activity were the Boston Red Sox, who lost last night and who will not be in the playoffs. The Yankees will be. The Red Sox are done. To recap: the Yankees will enjoy more baseball after this weekend.

The Red Sox will be doing whatever the hell there is to do in Boston when they're not wrestling with the inherent paradox of being "Fenway Faithfuls" that don't actually believe in their team.

So here we go. Now the question arises of: do we rest people and accept the wild card...or go all out and try to nab the division?

I say the latter. Definitely. Every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

You can't put a price on the benefit of homefield advantage. (Insert payroll/Yankees/$ comment here...)

Cmon, all we gotta do is sweep the Sox, really, who hopefully will roll over and die for us, since we're all such good chums. Or if that doesn't work, then maybe they'll roll over and die because they're such scrubs. Either or. Doesn't matter to me.

Round Boy's 21st win was the most wins from a Yankee since Andy in 96 and Guidry's 22 in '85. So, that's where we're at when it comes to CC. Moving on to the other starters...well, the bottom line is that the postseason rides on the shoulders of Andy Pettitte.

I know, I'm exaggerating a bit, but we need him so badly. It's beyond critical.

Regarding last night? Well, my favorite part was the winning. And seeing the awkward grown up hugging of the managers/coaches.

And what initially looked like totally-cas-no-big-deal-tempered-excitement from the old guard et al, but then realizing it was just totally-classy-guileless-thrill from the team, and understanding that they were just trying not to gloat on someone else's field.

Amazing.

Honestly, I like to think of myself as a generally ethical, do-the-right-thing kind of person, but it would still be hard for me to reign in my joy. The Yankees can because they're the Yankees. They're the face of baseball.

The Yankees scoring wasn't as impressive as its defense last night, but they scored more runs than the bad guys, so that's all that matters in my book. GGBG tripled and how he didn't get an inside the park homer is confusing still, considering the fact the Rogers Center is about the size of Spain.

No Yankee bombs in this game, they opted for a weird iteration of "small ball" that involved all 6 runs being scored without an actual hit. It was either a fielder's choice groundout, run walked in, or sac flys. Interesting. I'll take it, whatever.

And so on October 6, it begins. The most exhilirating time of the year. The most thrilling, the most maddening, the most heartbreaking, and the most soul-trying. I swear to God, I'm not kidding when I say this: last year, every single day the Yankees played a game in the postseason, I threw up before the game started. Before I even had so much of a sip of alcohol.

It was nerves. November 5 was the first day in over a month I wasn't in knots.

And now it will start all over again in exactly one week.

I can't wait.