HOUSTON — Historically, generally, it presents as fun debate fodder.
Specifically, Saturday night at Minute Maid Park? Ain’t nothing fun or fodderish about it for the Yankees.
Let’s not call American League Championship Series Game 1 a “must-win” for the visitors, because we’ve seen too much baseball overall and 2019 Yankees action in particular to make such a concrete declaration. Nevertheless, the circumstances that immediately preceded this long-anticipated clash of the titans portend that it would be a far, far better thing for the Yankees to prevail in the opener.
They’ll have to win at least one game here in Texas in order to advance to their first World Series since 2019.