It was the late Dale Earnhardt who popularized the term that “second place is the first loser,” and there’s a lot of folks in our midst who have been feeling that for the past 10 days or so.

By just about any measure, the Yankees had a successful season this year. You can’t qualify for the World Series and not feel that way. For one thing, for eternity, the Yankees can rightly refer to themselves as champions twice over — of the American League and also of the AL East. That’s not everything, no, but it’s not nothing.

But there aren’t a lot of Yankees fans who’ll acknowledge that right now, and it’s not just because Yankees fans are drilled from the cradle to accept nothing less than a World Series championship as the measure of a successful season. The truth is, losing the championship round is almost always a devastating pill to swallow, for any team. You get that close, it’s hard to feel anything other than disappointment when you fall shy.

Interestingly, only Jets fans have been spared having to confront that issue through the years, since they are 1-for-1 in Super Bowl appearances. Everyone else has been a bridesmaid at least once (the Islanders, 1984) and as many as 14 times (the Yankees, and honestly the fact they’ve lost 14 World Series is just one more astonishing number in a history that includes almost nothing but astonishing numbers).