We traditionally consider the art of scoreboard watching to be a regular-season activity. For years — before scores were stripped at the bottom of your TV, before 20-20 radio updates, before you could follow games on your telephone in real time — that’s how pennant races played out, always in two places.

One: in whatever stadium you were at.

Two: in the room where the Western Union wire would deliberately relay a score from St. Louis or Detroit or Cleveland or Philadelphia.

“I’ve been scoreboard watching since I was a kid,” an old Giants fan named Joe Torre told me once, during one of those seasons when the Yankees and the Red Sox were Alydar and Affirmed, racing neck-to-neck and nose-to-nose with each other. “I’ve heard guys say they don’t do that, or can’t. But I don’t think you’re human if you don’t steal a peek at the out-of-town scoreboard every now and again. That’s part of the fun of this.”

Well the Red Sox may still hold a special place of enmity in the living hearts of Yankees fans, but their season ended before August did, even if they kept playing games until the first few days of October. And besides: though the Red Sox will always be the Red Sox, they aren’t the biggest source of fury among Yankees fans anymore.

That distinction belongs to the Houston Astros.

And so it was that on the first day of the Yankees’ playoff autumn, with a game awaiting at night with the Cleveland Guardians, Game 1 of the AL Division Series, Yankees fans — and undoubtedly a sizeable crew of real-life Yankees — stole the occasional gaze at what was happening at Minute Maid Park in downtown Houston.

And, no doubt, shivering with delight.

Well … at first, anyway.

Watching the old-fashioned way, the first number that appeared on the Yankee Stadium scoreboard was a “4” — which is what the Mariners hung on Justin Verlander and the Astros in the top of the first inning.

(Hmmm … an aging ace getting thrashed early in a playoff game … where have I read that before …)

Maybe that early joy was tempered when the Astros cut the lead in half, 4-2, and maybe that joy was multiplied when the lead jumped back to 6-2, and then to 7-3 …

And, well, if you were watching you saw how it ended. You saw Yordy Alvarez cap a Houston comeback for the ages with a three-run walk-off blast, two out in the ninth. Hey: nobody ever said scoreboard watching was all fun.

Look, nobody in the employ of the Yankees would ever dare say — on the record or 100 miles off it — that they’d rather play the Mariners than the Astros, because this is the time of year when people who are inclined to believe in the mystical powers of the baseball gods really start to lose their minds with that stuff. Plus … you know, the Mariners are good. Be careful what you wish for.

(And, yes, there’s the small matter of winning three against the Guardians before the Guardians win three against the Yankees …)

But one thing is undeniable:

In Yankees Nation right now, there is no greater feeling than watching the Astros lose right now. That’s true in May against the White Sox, so it’s even more true in Game 1 of a short series. The Yankees are on the record believing they have been wronged by Houston, cheated by the Astros, and their fans have certainly not been shy about endorsing that viewpoint.

And sure: it might be the sweetest thing of all to take a personal hand in shoving the Astros out of the playoffs, which could happen if both teams survive. It would be a sweet bit of baseball revenge to turn the table on the team that’s ousted the Yankees three times since 2015, the last two under clouds of suspicion darker and angrier than the rain clouds heading toward New York that may imperil Game 2 of the Cleveland series.

Still: nobody would argue if the Mariners got them first.

So there were a lot of eyes trained west Tuesday night. You can actually watch all of these games now, so that was an option. There are a hundred apps that allow you to do that on your phone. Or maybe the old school among them just enjoyed looking out at the scores as they flashed at Yankee Stadium looking for good news. And when the news is, indeed, good … well, that really is part of the fun.

And when the news is bad? Be honest. You’ll do it all over again on Thursday.