BALTIMORE — Prominent Yankees acolyte Billy Crystal has a book out called “Still Foolin’ ’Em,” and maybe we can say the same about the team that once head-scratchingly allowed him to hit in a Grapefruit League game.
Perhaps the Orioles just were being polite and politically correct Friday, before they outlasted the Yankees, 3-2 in 10 innings at Camden Yards, when they answered The Post’s questions about their tattered and shattered rivals from The Bronx, whom they now lead by five games in the American League East. I don’t think that’s entirely it, though.
The Yankees, thanks to their budget and their history, still command a level of respect, generally throughout baseball and specifically in the division.
Even last year, when they missed the playoffs for the first time since 2008, they scored points for hanging around until the final week despite fielding a lineup whose members are mostly no longer in the major leagues.
So there’s more at stake for the Yankees here in this perilous 2014 than just their financial bottom line. There’s also their industry-wide reputation of invulnerability.
“You don’t bypass the Yankees,” Orioles All-Star center fielder Adam Jones said. “Those pinstripes have got some sort of a mystique to them.”
“I look at them as a given,” Orioles manager (and former Yankees manager, of course) Buck Showalter. “You know what they’re going to be about. I don’t really dwell on that.”
On Friday night, the Yankees were about blown opportunities, one of the primary themes of this disastrous season, as they fell back to .500 at 46-46. They failed to capitalize on a strong start by Hiroki Kuroda (seven innings, two runs) the lone surviving member of their original starting rotation, as well as a dominant, two-inning relief performance by All-Star rookie Dellin Betances. They went hitless in four at-bats with runners in scoring position. And now they have lost two in a row.
“We need to play well in these last two games” before the All-Star break, Derek Jeter said.
It’s common sense that the Yankees are toast, in the wake of Thursday’s news that Masahiro Tanaka has a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. Even if Tanaka can defy the odds and avoid Tommy John surgery, he’ll still miss a minimum of six weeks, and the Yankees will struggle to tread water for such an extended period given that they now have lost 80 percent of their Opening Day starting rotation, with Ivan Nova, Michael Pineda and CC Sabathia joining Tanaka on the sidelines. A trade for a starting pitcher — Cole Hamels or Cliff Lee of the Phillies — still wouldn’t seem likely to plug the huge hole here.
“That’s when you’ve got to call on your farm system,” said Orioles reliever Darren O’Day, the (briefly) former Met.” If you don’t have anything there because you traded them away, that’s what happens.”
Whoops. The Yankees don’t have much pitching help left in the minor leagues. They don’t even know yet who will start Sunday night’s game, their last before the All-Star break.
“They’re still the Yankees,” Orioles first baseman Chris Davis said. “Their lineup hasn’t changed. They still have the potential to go out there and score runs. The good thing about baseball is you have four other guys who can step in and kind of carry your team, so to speak.”
Eh. The Yankees ranked 11th in the AL with 371 runs scored entering Friday’s late action. Carlos Beltran sits on the seven-day concussion disabled list, and the Yankees’ lineup regularly features lightweights like Zoilo Almonte and Kelly Johnson.
Then again, the Orioles don’t quite look like world-beaters, either, even as they have won nine of 11. They put their disappointing free-agent acquisition, Ubaldo Jimenez, on the disabled list Friday with a right ankle injury, and they, too, figure to be in the trade market for a rotation upgrade.
When I asked Jones whether he considered his Orioles the team to beat in the AL East, he responded: “I’ll let you know that answer Sept. 1. We’ve just got to worry about ourselves. Don’t look ahead. If you look ahead, you’ll be behind. You worry about today. That’s all you can control.”
Hold on. Back up. Sept. 1?
“With a month to go, if you put yourself in a good position, then, ‘All right, here’s what we’ve got,’ ” Jones confirmed and explained. “That final push to get in.”
It will be an upset if the Yankees are still in serious contention come Sept. 1. And if they finish a second straight season with an empty October, their opponents can’t talk of them as being natural heavyweights without being challenged.
“The Yankees always seem to find a way to find help. To get surprise people every year,” O’Day said. “No one is writing them off. No one in here is, at least.”
That’s the smart approach. It probably isn’t necessary, though.