It will sting. It will leave a mark. There will be days and nights in the coming weeks and months when this game will visit you – in your sleep, daydreaming in your office, complaining with friends around a water cooler.

Some games stay with you.

It will stay with you.

Yankees lost Game 5 of the 120th World Series last night, 7-6and it is almost impossible to understand how this happened. It’s almost impossible to believe they won’t hold a Thursday afternoon workout at Dodger Stadium, raising more and more questions about righting the wrong 20-year-old and solving the 0-3 puzzle.

They led 5-0. Gerrit Cole threw four hitless innings, at one point extending the Yankees’ two-game hitting streak to 27 Dodgers in a row. He was everything he always promised and delivered regularly. The Yankee Stadium crowd of 49,263 planned to party for three hours and then a night Thursday to catch their breath and quiet their vocal cords before Friday’s Game 6.

Before continuing an attempt to heal that two-decade wound.

Then, in an instant, it was 5-5.

And that was impossible to understand, too. Aaron Judge — who nearly pulverized the Stadium’s foundation with a first-inning home run that earlier robbed Freddie Freeman of extra bases by making a brilliant catch just short of the 399-foot mark — threw a ball.

Wait. What did he do?

Yes. He threw a fly ball off the bat of Tommy Edman. He was also a Little League fly. If he sees the 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 — the Gold Glove last year, maybe a Gold Glove this year — bookended it with a poor three-pointer 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 108-win team like the Dodgers five outs. And yet Cole was so good, he almost got away with it. He hit Gavin Lux and the crowd roared. He hit Shohei Ohtani and they tried to replicate Judge’s home run noise.

And then he got Mookie Betts to ground out to first.

He was going to get out of this.

He just suffered a brain spasm at the worst possible time. He failed to cover first base. It’s remarkable: On the last day of September, the other baseball team in town nearly saw its season die because Edwin Diaz couldn’t cover first. Now, on the last day of October, Cole did the same. One run scored. And it was impossible to know at this point, but the Yankees’ season started to die a little there, too.

(Follow-up: You REALLY can’t give the Dodgers six outs and expect to get away with it.)

They didn’t get away with it. They took the lead later, 6-5, but the moment was too much for Tommy Kahnle. Luke Weaver, so good for two solid months, was good here too – but two of his outings were bag flies. It was 7-6. And 7-6 is where it would stay. Forever.

“Guys are pouring their hearts out right now in the clubhouse,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “We’ve talked about it all year, they love each other out there and it’s awfully hard out there right now.”

Now begins the long, endless offseason, one of the longest Yankees fans have endured in decades. Now the Soto clock begins. The whole city suddenly feels like it’s on the clock. In a way, it might be therapeutic to occupy your attention with how aggravating this World Series has been instead of endlessly updating your social media for Soto updates.

“The end is cruel,” Boone said. “I am heartbroken. It doesn’t take away from my pride in what that room means to me, what that group did and went through to get here.”

Boone is right. The end is cruel. All sports are cruel. The Yankees won 94 games and finished in first place. They won eight more in the playoffs. They had two players in Judge and Soto enjoyed as explosive a 1-2 punching outing as he’s ever had. There should be plenty of snaps to enjoy. And they will, in time. Until then…

“This,” said Gerrit Cole, “is about as bad as it gets.”

But they are Yankees. It’s right there in the mission statement: Title or bust. This year, they fell to three wins. And for most of the night, in what turned out to be the final night, it certainly looked like they were going to get two bonus days of baseball season, at least. It’s almost impossible to believe it won’t happen. Almost.