AFTER A WEEKEND away in upstate New York and chatting with a multitude of sports fans — okay, maybe seven or eight — I’m starting to come to the realization that the normally cocky, confident, and Boston-dismissive Yankee fan is starting to get a little hot under the collar with the way that the 2003 baseball season is starting to unfold. It’s admittedly a little mysterious that the typical pinstriper follower would get so worked up this early in the season, particularly since their team is (as of this writing) just a half-game out of first place. But the fact is, the typical Bronx Bomber devotee accustomed to seeing the Yankees reach — and more often than not, dominate — every post-season since 1995 is starting to sweat a bit.

Pray tell, why?Could it be the juggernaut that is the Boston Red Sox? That's doubtful. The Sox’ bullpen problems, along with their recent spate of injuries to their starting-pitching staff, do not present a particularly foreboding division contender.

Is it the surging Blue Jays’ rise in the American League East standings? Unlikely, since the Jays are, like Boston, primarily an offensive-minded team, and ultimately their pitching may prove to be their downfall — at least, one anticipates, during the course of this current season.

Is it the fact that the veneer of invincibility is starting to fade from the team that makes its home in the House That Ruth Built? Now we’re getting a little closer to the truth. Add to that commonly held principle the notion that in the ranks of baseball’s other major-league representatives, there appear to be a number of league-wide, and MLB-wide teams that pose serious challenges to the Yankees’ efforts to advance beyond even the very first round of playoffs come October. And that, frankly, is starting to become a real possibility for those boosters who call the New York Yankees their team: that their beloved gang of ring-bearing multimillionaires are just not good enough anymore to earn the World Series trophy that they have grown so accustomed to in recent years.

One of the first signs of rumblings in the Bronx was the rash of injuries that the team endured during the early months of the spring. Rarely in the past seven years had New York been put in the position of not having so many key members in place for the duration of the season, but when closer extraordinaire Mariano Rivera was on the disabled list for the first six weeks of the season, and then Derek Jeter was hurt on Opening Day, Joe Torre was forced for the first time in his tenure to deal with a significant short-handed situation. Add to those absences the placing of DH first baseman Nick Johnson on the DL in mid May with a wrist injury, and the season-ending surgery that set-up man Steve Karsay had to undergo, and the Yanks started off the season at a significant disadvantage.

Or did they? Instead, the Empire jumped out to a 20-4 start and was baseball’s hottest team.

Then Jeter and Rivera came back. And the problems, for whatever reason, began in earnest.

New York has gone just 15-23 since, and, as mentioned, fallen out of first place two separate times since mid May. This was never a cause for concern before, as the Red Sox in the past two years have traditionally gotten off to hot starts and dominated the AL East’s early going. Yankee fans in the recent past have never realistically paid any attention to the comings and goings of their division brethren, and in fact have dismissed the notion that there was any realistic competition for their perceived AL East domination. After all, the numbers bore that out: since 1995, the Bombers won four of the next five world titles, won the AL East six of seven years, and haven’t missed the playoffs since the strike year of 1994.

This year seems to be different, however, and Vader’s followers are getting a bit antsy. Even their bombastic owner, George Steinbrenner, hasn’t been immune to the fans’ ire. Whereas the Boss, like his players and the team’s fans, was accustomed to dismissing the Red Sox’ (and others’) challenges out of hand, this season he was vocal early, complaining about Sox GM Larry Lucchino labeling his Yanks as the "Evil Empire" during this past off-season, and throwing a hissy fit last month when the Yanks dropped a four-game series at home to Toronto. Even worse, he uncharacteristically whined that in the first week of interleague play, his team had to play a much tougher schedule (Cincinnati, Chicago Cubs) than the Red Sox did (Pittsburgh, Milwaukee). Never mind that these things tend to even themselves out in the long run, and that in past years the Yanks have met as their traditional interleague rival the underachieving Mets, while the Sox have been pitted against the perennial playoff-bound Atlanta Braves.

The fact that Steinbrenner even chose to emerge from his Tampa hibernation to make such criticisms of his own team, and the schedule-makers themselves — particularly at this early stage of the season — is noteworthy. It means that even George Costanza’s mentor is starting to see what others in the baseball world are starting to see: that despite a record payroll of $152,749,814 — which is $35 million more than the second-ranked team in total salaries (the Mets) and $49 million higher than the next-ranked AL team (Texas) — the Yankees are a flawed team, and that even money doesn’t necessarily buy you a championship forever.

Disgruntled Yankee fans surely note that their team has been hampered by the aforementioned injuries, in addition to the recent absence of centerfielder Bernie Williams for another month, but they fail to note that other teams have been hit even harder, particularly their cross-town rivals the Mets, who in recent weeks lost at least six starters to serious injuries. Given their huge payroll, the Yankees should be able to compensate for these absences with the sheer depth of their bench, but sadly, that has not been the case. And when the pinstripers’ vaunted starting pitching begins to show its age — or even crash and burn, as lefty Andy Pettitte has been routinely doing this season — then the shallow bullpen’s shortcomings are exposed.

Even Rivera has not been the Superman he was in the past, as particularly evidenced by his performance against Boston on May 28th, when he entered a 5-1 game in the top of the ninth and proceeded to give up four runs, with the go-ahead run barely thrown out at the plate.

There have been other factors in the Yanks’ recent slide. Fielding-wise, the team is only ninth in the AL and just 22nd out of 30 major-league teams. Fundamentally, New York does not make the plays that they used to make routinely when they were the dominant team of the late ’90s. Additionally, even the Yankee "luck" factor has been surprisingly absent, as the team that made Jeffrey Maier a household word no longer gets nearly every break in every clutch situation as it used to.

Meanwhile, for three straight outings Roger Clemens has not fulfilled the goal of winning his 300th game, and the Yankees have in the last month lost home series against Anaheim, Texas, and Toronto, along with road series losses at Oakland, Cincinnati, and Wrigley Field. Even worse, a week ago they went into Detroit — arguably baseball’s worst team — and blew a 7-1 Clemens lead on Sunday before needing 17 interminable innings to beat the Tigers, 10-9, to escape with the series, 2-1.

Clemens’s unrealized efforts so far to hit the vaunted 300 mark are indicative of the team’s overall struggles, and fans are starting to remember that this team has not won a World Series since 2000 (not a long time for long-suffering Sox fans, but an eternity for spoiled Yankee fans), and last year the team was dispatched in five games in the first round by a wild-card team (admittedly, the eventual world champions) whose total payroll was $64 million less. It is only June, but Yankee fans apparently are starting to realize that perhaps the team is on the downside, rather than a prolonged slump. And for a team that is spending $50 million more in payroll than the second-ranked team in the league — think of what most teams could do with five extra $10 million players — and is only the eighth-best team in the majors record-wise as we speak, there is cause for alarm in the Bronx.

There is no reason to feel sorry for a team that has had as much recent success as Torre’s tories have in the last nine years, and any team that routinely fields guys like Jason Giambi, Alfonso Soriano, Jeter, Hideki Matsui, Robin Ventura, Jorge Posada, Raul Mondesi, Rivera, and five of the best starting pitchers ever to fill out a rotation — and still manages to fail to produce to the expectations of their fans and owner — is nonetheless in pretty good shape, especially just a half-game out in early June.

Yet there is something encouraging about the Yanks’ plight that gives all other teams hope, and even a little bit of schadenfreude — that "malicious satisfaction in the misfortunes of others."

And for Sox fans, Mets fans, Jays fans, Orioles fans — heck, even Padres fans — that kind of feeling has been a long time coming.

But worth enjoying — while it lasts.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com