Theres no escaping the brutality of this Yankees failure

This one will sting.This one will leave a mark.

There will be days and nights in the weeks and months to come when this game is going to visit you – in your sleep, daydreaming in your office, lamenting with friends around a water cooler. Some games stay with you. This one will stay with you. The Yankees lost Game 5 of the 120th World Series last night, 7-6, and it is almost impossible to understand how that happened.It is almost impossible to believe that they will not be holding a workout Thursday afternoon at Dodger Stadium, fielding more and more questions about righting a 20-year-old wrong and solving the 0-3 puzzle. They led 5-0.

Gerrit Cole threw four no-hit innings, at one point extending a two-game Yankees streak to 27 retired Dodgers in a row.He was everything he has always promised, and regularly delivered.

The crowd at Yankee Stadium, 49,263 strong, was planning for a three-hour party, and then a night, Thursday, to catch their breath and soothe their voice boxes before Game 6 Friday. Before continuing a quest to heal that two-decade wound. Then, in an eyeblink, it was 5-5. And that was impossible to understand, too.Aaron Judge — who’d nearly reduced the Stadium foundation to dust with a first-inning home run, who’d earlier robbed Freddie Freeman of extra bases by making a brilliant catch right beside the 399-foot sign — dropped a fly ball. Wait.

He did what? Yes.He dropped a fly ball, off Tommy Edman’s bat.

It was a Little League fly, too.If he sees that exact same ball a thousand times — no, make that 100,000 times — he catches it 99,999 of them.

It was inexplicable.And then Anthony Volpe — Gold Glove last year, maybe a Gold Glove this year — bookended it with a poor throw to third on a ball in the hole. You can’t give the White Sox five outs in an inning and expect to get away with it; you sure can’t give a team with 108 wins like the Dodgers five outs.

And yet Cole was so good, he nearly got away with it.He st...