Being responsible for mediating between one’s child and the world often puts one in the position of having to explain complex concepts imperfectly understood even by oneself. I refer not to the birds and the bees, but if you will permit an old appellation for the Dodgers, between the birds—or Robins—and the Tigers.

This week I found myself in that position hours after the trading deadline when my son asked me why so many people seemed upset with the Dodgers just then. I will spare you my explanation of the situation, which you well know, but share my feelings of dislocation because when I was his approximate age the high-spending New York Yankees were logging consecutive 90-loss seasons. The fan’s aggravation then was not “How can they spend so much and be so good?” but rather, “How can they spend so much and be so terrible?”

Perhaps it is one’s peculiar destiny to be the explainy-guy, because it was also my role to decode that miserable epoch for my father, who until late in life didn’t engage with sports at all (then, disconcertingly, he became a Tom Brady fan). I look forward to the day my children surpass me in knowledge of important matters and start explaining things to me. Then, at last, I may rest, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be free of the burden of those miserable Yankees teams.

The Yankees’ speed-run into the iceberg in the 1980s was so eventful it’s hard to put it into succinct terms. Looking back, it’s hard not to conclude that the owner wasn’t in the grip of some kind of mania; if someone dropped a memoir revealing that George M. Steinbrenner III was secretly doing a kilo of coke a day it would explain a great deal and perhaps even partially exculpate him from some of his worst decisions. The same would be true if his son were to explain that his father was suffering from any of a number of professionally diagnosed psychiatric illnesses. The man did so much, complained even more, and achieved so little. The team chewed up and spit out an endless series of managers, pitching coaches, and players, failed to solve any of its on-field deficits in even a momentary way, and was unable to reach the postseason after 1981 despite routinely running the highest payroll in the majors. The more reactive Steinbrenner became to the problem, the further away success got.

The Yankees had won consecutive pennants from 1976 to 1978 and defeated the Dodgers in the World Series in the latter two seasons. A 103-59 win-season in 1980 was followed by a second-half collapse in 1981 that revealed a rapidly-aging roster reaching the point of obsolescence. Due to that season’s pre- and post-strike standings, the Yankees still made the playoffs, reached the World Series, and blew a two-games-to-none lead to the Dodgers, an unprecedented unraveling that came about in part due to the owner dictating lineups and making pitching changes from his box.

The rest of the decade was a frantic effort to cope with the effects of age on a roster without accepting the dysfunctional decision-making that led it to being a geriatric club in the first place. This was primarily the result of the owner’s disdain for young players and his concomitant addiction to veteran free-agents. This led to the team giving up its first-round (and sometimes second- and third-round) draft picks in all but one season between 1978 and 1990, and that sole pick (pitcher Jeff Pries, 22^nd-overall, career strikeout rate: 3.8 per nine) was a bust. In a minor miracle, they landed on Al Leiter in the second round, but were unable to help him overcome a hard-throwing young lefty’s typical wildness or persistent blister problems, let manager-du-jour Dallas Green put 163 pitches on his arm, and then traded him to Toronto for outfielder Jesse Barfield. Barfield was a very good player but not one who addressed their core problems, which was that their non-Leiter starting pitchers tended to be between 35 and 45 years old.

Via this process of spasmodic transactions, the Yankees went from 97-64 in 1985 to 74-89 in 1989, in the former case in a rough three-way tie with the Angels and Braves for highest payroll in the game and in the latter the fifth-highest behind the Red Sox, Royals, Mets, and Dodgers. Significantly, all four of those teams made multiple playoff appearances after 1981 and three of the four won World Series championships.