This is the way you build the kind of record you’re going to need to survive the gauntlet of the American League. They can’t all be 11-1 cakewalks, and they can’t all be beautiful, and they can’t all be the kinds of games you press between the pages of your memory.
Sometimes, you have to slog it.
Sometimes you have to piece it together with Scotch tape and paper clips, and hold your breath to the very end before you can exhale. There are more games like this game — this 8-5 Yankees win over the Braves — than you tend to remember during the course of a year.