There were maybe 10,000 folks left by the end, the bulk of the crowd scattered by the storms, if not the scoreboard. The faithful have come to realize that the Yankees are like a great football offense, capable of scoring from anywhere on the field.

It had been 8-2, Red Sox, and then it was 8-5, Red Sox, and here came the Yankees to take a crack at some 11 o’clock lightning, to go along with the crackling thunder from off in the distance. This is what the Yankees are in 2019: an eternal recalibration by the other team, wondering when the tying run is on base, or at the plate, or on deck, or in the hole.

It doesn’t even really matter when it doesn’t work out. The Sox held on, took their 8-5 win back to the bus with them, salvaged one game of the three this weekend, but it has to be a disquieting thing for the Sox to watch these Yankees work. A year ago, they were the ones with the late-inning pixie dust. You didn’t kill the ’18 Sox off easy.

You don’t kill the ’19 Yankees off easy.

Not even their ancient rivals, the defending champs, can do that.

“The compete in these guys,” Aaron Boone said later, “it never goes away. This was one of those games when you look at the score they could roll over a little and they never did.”

And this was a night when the Yankees didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory. There were the continuing misadventures of Clint Frazier in right field; if Willie Mays’ glove was where triples went to die, Frazier’s has become where they are born, nurtured and incubated.

There was a curious attempt at a double steal with two outs and two already in in the fourth, the Yankees starting to occupy a familiar place in the middle of David Price’s head. Price had been nine up and nine down, but then there were four straight hits and a sacrifice fly and everyone could see him and his nerves teetering on the brink.

But that 2-4-1-2-5-1 caught stealing served as a gentlemanly toss of a life raft rather than a dastardly spike to the neck. Price never again felt any danger, and by the time the Yankees turned their attention to the Sox’s bullpen they were six runs behind.

Not that six runs to the Yankees is the same as six runs to most teams.

“You have to play nine innings against them,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “There really is no other way. That’s how good teams do it.”

That’s how the Sox did it last year. That’s how the very best teams this year do it. Three-fourths of the sport’s elite teams have already reached 40 wins. The Dodgers did it a few days ago. The Twins and Astros did it Sunday. The Yankees, stuck on 38, will enjoy a day off Monday and resume the grim business of piling up victories in Toronto starting Tuesday.

All four of those teams are impenetrable blocking sleds, eager to seize on any mistake. The Dodgers were embroiled in a scoreless tie with the Phillies for 6 ½ innings; next thing you look up, it’s 8-0. The Twins ransacked the Rays this weekend. The Astros, down half their team, went into Oakland and put a three-game hurting on the previously scorching-hot A’s.

And the Yankees took two out of three from their fiercest adversary, and sure looked like they wanted to figure out a way to sweep. Matt Barnes came in and couldn’t find the strike zone in the eighth, then refused to throw the ball at all. The Yankees cut the lead in half and scared Barnes half to death. They got the leadoff man on in the ninth against Brandon Workman.

The 10,000 at the end left behind from the 40,068 at the start tried to make up for the 30,000 missing voice boxes. They’ve seen this show. They’ve seen how it’s ended too many times to think there weren’t a few ounces of good fortune to spare.

“Every time you control the strike zone, as we do, you give yourself a chance,” Boone said. “We have ourselves a chance. With these guys, it doesn’t cease.”

They do run out of outs once in a while, though. Two grounders flanked a strikeout. The Sox salvaged a game. The drenched crowd sloshed out of the stadium. The Yankees and Sox part 8 ½ games removed from each other, with a date in London awaiting them at the end of the month. The Yankees wanted to deliver a message this weekend. That they did.