The Yankees played two different games on Wednesday night. The one where they hit home runs and Gerrit Cole dominates and you can convince yourself that they're the kind of team that should win a World Series.

And the one where there is fumbling and botching and you can convince yourself that the whole group met in the parking lot before the game.

It should be put in a time capsule to describe the 2024 team.

In the end, the Yankees were unable to overcome the superior competition. They were in control of both the first game of this World Series and the final game of the 2024 season. They both lost. Two of the most inexcusable and painful defeats in their history. They never solved all the problems of poor fundamentals and poor execution that plagued them all year long. So their season ends not with a 28th championship, but with the misery of what could and should have been.

The Dodgers defeated the Yankees 7-6, won their eighth World Series and celebrated on the field at Yankee Stadium.

The Yankees lost because stars Cole and Aaron Judge were both GOA-Ts and goats in this crucial game. Because they had a fifth inning that stunned you with ineptitude – unless you watched the Yankees all year. And because the Yankees couldn't counterattack enough when the Dodgers fought back.

Does this sound familiar?

It should.

This is the story of the Richter era. When the AL Central gets in the way, the Yankees are the best in the world. If stronger competition gets in the way, the Yankees won't win the World Series.

The Yankees had a 31-9 (.775) record against the AL Central (including the postseason) this year and a 71-65 (.522) record against everyone else. Since Judge's first full season in 2017, they have played seven rounds against the AL Central in the playoffs, including two to win the AL pennant this year, and have advanced in all seven rounds. They've played eight rounds against everyone else and won one, the one-game wild card in 2018 against the A's, who somehow belong spiritually (if not geographically) to the AL Central.

They won one World Series game this year – Game 4, when the Dodgers didn't throw one of their key pitchers: the AL Central of strategy.

The reality is that the Yankees should have won two more games, but they lost Game 1 in Los Angeles with a lot of poor defense. You'll never guess what happened in Game 5.

They took a 5-0 lead through the first three innings and Cole didn't allow a hit through the first four innings. Judge hit a two-run home run after three batters and Jazz Chisholm walked back. Alex Verdugo delivered an RBI single in the second and Giancarlo Stanton led off the third with his Yankee-record seventh home run of the postseason. Judge made a stunning catch as he slammed into the left-center field wall in the fourth – and because it was Judge, it felt great for the Yankees – as he does it, so often does the team.

And it felt like he finally got to the 120th World Series with his bat and glove. That raised the volume at Yankee Stadium and opened the door for the Yankees to become the first 25-team team ever to be defeated by zero in the World Series, even forcing a Game 6 and this best-of-seven to Los Angeles would for a possible baseball miracle.

But the tenor of the game changed when Judge dropped a one-on-no-out fly ball from Tommy Edman in the fifth – as Judge does, so do the Yankees. Then Anthony Volpe threw a throw to third that Chisholm couldn't contain, and the bases were loaded. And yet Cole had a chance to get out of the way. He beat both Gavin Lux and Shohei Ohtani. And then Mookie Betts hit a squiggly grounder to first.

In spring training, from the first day to the last, there's nothing better than pitchers' field practice – you go through the routine constantly. Going through a play like this when Rizzo should have been attacking. He didn't. Cole shouldn't have just rushed to the bag and stopped, but should have actually run for cover first. Betts therefore reached easily and a run was scored. A door flew open.

Freeman, the Series MVP, hit a two-run single and Yankee hitter Teoscar Hernandez hit a two-run double. The Yankees and the stadium lacked air. The Yankees were supposed to take a 6-5 lead in the sixth inning, but it was an inning in which they had three walks and no hits. They drew eight walks from the second through the eighth inning, and that was the only run scored. Overall they achieved a score of 1 for 10, with the runners taking the points position.

Luke Weaver was on the mound in the eighth for two sacrifice throws that gave the Dodgers the lead – aided, of course, by another Yankee error, a catcher's interference on Austin Wells.

The Dodgers had to shut out their starter Jack Flaherty after recording just four outs. They were on edge the entire game and tried to cover that with their pitching. And the Americans couldn't accept the gifts – not when they insisted on giving more gifts.

A World Series that they could and should have won instead ended in five games. The Yankees never cleaned up their game – and that's why they're facing a winter full of regrets.