The Yankees set themselves apart. That is the whole underpinning of their brand. Of course, they have the most championships, but it’s more than that. No beards. No names on the jerseys. No losing seasons in decades.

That last one is in serious peril. The Yankees lost for the eighth game in a row on Sunday, 6-5 to the Boston Red Sox in the Bronx. They are 60-64 this season, slipping ever closer to the first losing season for the franchise since 1992, the year Aaron Judge was born.

Judge came up in the ninth inning on Sunday, two on and no outs. A big hit would win the game. Kenley Jansen struck him out on three pitches, then got Gleyber Torres, too. The Yankees fanned 14 times before Ben Rortvedt, batting .095, flied to center to end it.

“It’s a gut punch today, especially in the fashion we lost it,” said Isiah Kiner-Falefa, the Yankees’ third baseman.

Kiner-Falefa had scored what seemed to be the go-ahead run in the eighth, before replay overturned the call. The Red Sox broke the tie on a double by Justin Turner in the ninth.

“Getting swept by those guys is definitely tough,” Kiner-Falefa said, adding later, “This can’t be happening.”

But it is, and the Yankees have single-handedly made their patchwork rivals relevant in the wild-card race. The Red Sox are one game over .500 when they don’t play the Yankees and 8-1 when they do. At 66-58, Boston is alive.

The Yankees are an afterthought, their season now defined by the pursuit of mediocrity. They are ordinary, the very last thing they ever want to be. They lead the American League in attendance for the fourth nonpandemic season in a row, but their descent makes you wonder how much longer they’ll be in demand.

Boring doesn’t sell, and the Yankees cannot even pretend to be pushing for a pennant.

“We’ve got to be unbelievable the rest of the way,” Manager Aaron Boone said. “So it’s not even about that. It’s about coming to try and win a game Tuesday. Then, all of a sudden, you start stacking, and an amazing thing happens. But we’re so far removed from that. We’ve got to get a win first.”

The Yankees’ eight-game losing streak is their longest since an eight-game skid in late August 1995. That team went 26-7 down the stretch to win the first A.L. wild card, with a quartet of precocious rookies — Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera — along for the ride.

What followed was unbelievable indeed: a dynasty that restored the shine to a tarnished Yankees crown. It’s easy to take today’s fan support for granted, but in the eight seasons before their postseason breakthrough (that is, 1987 through 1994), the Yankees drew fewer fans than the Minnesota Twins. A lot of Don Mattingly homers landed in empty seats.

This is not to suggest that one losing season will sour fans from supporting the Yankees next year. Recent history has actually been fairly compelling: The Yankees have reached the American League Championship Series five times since their last World Series title, in 2009. Losing all of those series has made this era more frustrating than fallow.

But the Yankees need a jolt, and the sugar rush of free agency — Shohei Ohtani, Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman — tends not to last. The Yankees’ payroll was $275 million or so on opening day, and much of it — Josh Donaldson, Aaron Hicks, Frankie Montas — has produced almost nothing.

The good thing, for Hal Steinbrenner, is that the Yankees now get $25 million by selling ad space on their uniforms to an insurance company. Teams are permitted to do this now, but they don’t have to. The classy move would have been to stay above it — the sanctity of the pinstripes and all that — but that’s not reality.

Not when a team can use the $25 million to effectively pay for, say, outfielder Giancarlo Stanton, who is owed that much annually (for luxury-tax purposes) through 2027. Stanton was out of the lineup on Sunday; he has hit .184 since the All-Star break last summer, striking out in a third of his at-bats. (He flied out with two runners on as a pinch-hitter in the seventh.)

Stanton is one of five players, all in their 30s, who will cost the Yankees a combined $143 million — again, for luxury-tax purposes — in each of the next three seasons. The list also includes Judge, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón and DJ LeMahieu.

Younger players have had encouraging seasons, especially starter Clarke Schmidt and shortstop Anthony Volpe, both former first-round draft picks. But most of the “Baby Bombers” from the mid- to late-2010s — with Judge the big exception — never amounted to much, and when MLB.com ranked the farm systems after the trading deadline this month, the Yankees placed 21st overall, with no prospects among the top 75.

To be fair, the Yankees did not seem so utterly hopeless through much of this season. They were 10 games over .500 on July 4, and Rodón was about to come off the injured list after missing three months with a forearm strain. Even with Luis Severino struggling, it was plausible for the Yankees to contend with a strong bullpen supporting a rotation of Cole, Rodón, Schmidt, Nestor Cortes and Domingo Germán.

That group has disintegrated. Rodón — who returns Tuesday from another injury, to his hamstring — has a 7.33 earned run average in six starts. Cortes, an All-Star last season, has pitched once since May because of a rotator cuff strain. Germán finished June with a perfect game, went winless in July and left the team in August to seek treatment for alcohol abuse.

And that’s just the pitching. The Yankees entered Sunday’s game with a .305 on-base percentage, which ranked 26th among the 30 teams, and a batting average of .230, ahead of only the Oakland Athletics. The Yankees have not hit so poorly as a team since 1968, when the mound was higher, pitchers batted and Mickey Mantle played first base.

Mantle’s former slugging teammate Roger Maris finished his career that season with the St. Louis Cardinals. The Yankees gave out bobbleheads of Maris on Sunday, commemorating his 61-homer season in 1961. They’ll have a similar promotion next month for Judge, who broke Maris’s A.L. record with 62 last season.

That seems like a long time ago, a time of excitement and hope and a last-place team in Boston, not the Bronx. Now the Red Sox routinely stamp the Yankees — or, as Boone put it, more or less: They kick their butts.

“We’ve played a handful of competitive games that have come down to the end where they’ve taken us,” Boone said. “We just haven’t been good enough.”

A transgender pride flag appeared in the stands of Hayward Stadium in Eugene, Ore., just as the middle distance runner Nikki Hiltz stepped onto the track.

The pink, blue and white flag was held overhead, then waved as Hiltz, who identifies as transgender and nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, made their way to the far side of the track for the 1,500-meter final of the U.S. National Championships in July.

“It was a statement,” Hiltz said. “It reminded me that this is bigger than just me.”

After 4 minutes 3.10 seconds, Hiltz broke the tape with an explosive final kick to overpower a stacked field that included Athing Mu, the 800 gold medalist at the Tokyo Games; Cory McGee and Heather MacLean, Olympic 1,500 runners; and Sinclaire Johnson, the 2022 national champion in the event.

Hiltz had gotten to this point, they said, partially because of the community around them that cheers not because of their fast times but because of what and who they stand for, starting with themselves.

“I just feel like the L.G.B.T.Q. community needed a win,” Hiltz, 28, said soon after becoming the national champion. A smile was painted across their face. This was a ticket to the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, yes, but it was more.

Since publicly sharing their gender identity on March 31, 2021, Hiltz has shouldered this weight of representation, one they embrace.

Doing so has brought Hiltz joy in their community and anguish as they bear witness to an onslaught of bills placing restrictions on transgender youth, limiting sports participation, gender-affirming medical care and bathroom access.

Legislation has directly targeted adults’ health care, too. Bills introduced in Oklahoma and South Carolina would make it a felony to provide hormonal or surgical transition treatment to transgender people younger than 26.

In March, the international governing body of track and field, World Athletics, effectively barred transgender women from competing at the highest levels of the sport. The exclusion, similar to rules set by the world governing body for swimming in June 2022, would apply to “male-to-female transgender athletes who have been through male puberty.”

The rules, which are mostly targeted toward transgender women, are some of the strictest in international sports.

For Hiltz to continue competing at the top level of women’s fields, they cannot pursue gender-affirming care, meaning, specifically, taking testosterone. They hope to one day have top surgery, a gender-affirming double mastectomy, but at this point the goal would be to wait until they have had the opportunity to qualify for and race in the Paris Olympics in 2024.

“Right now, competing in the women’s category still feels OK for me and my gender and where I’m at with that journey,” Hiltz said. “But the second it doesn’t, I’m not going to sacrifice myself for my sport. I’m going to choose the relationship with myself before my relationship with track and field.”

It is a sensitive conversation Hiltz has with a frequency that would make even the most media savvy athletes freeze. Hiltz is not just asked about their race strategy, their training or their reaction to their finish time. They are also asked to explain, if not justify, their existence, and contextualize it within this era of culture wars. What does this win mean for them? What does it mean for the entire queer community, or for representation at large?

“I’ve talked probably more about my trans identities than actually unpacking the race,” Hiltz said the afternoon after winning the national title. That is important, they said, but they added, “I am a nerdy athlete at the end of the day; I want to talk about tactics.”

Tactically, this race began some three years ago, when Hiltz changed just about everything.

They ended an Adidas contract and started one with Lululemon. They moved from Southern California, where they spent most of their life, to the flourishing high-altitude running capital of Flagstaff, Ariz. They began working with Mike Smith, the coach at Northern Arizona University, and found new training partners. They adopted a dog named Scout with their partner, the fellow runner Emma Gee. And they became a race organizer, hosting a virtual and now in-person Pride 5-kilometer race to support L.G.B.T.Q. organizations.

By the time in-person events and racing returned as the pandemic reached a new stage, Hiltz had a community waiting to cheer them on. Titles in road miles and track meets across the United States followed.

People “light up when they are in Nikki’s presence,” their mother, Liz Hiltz, said. “They feel like, ‘I’m in a safe place,’ and you can tell this is not happening to them very much. It breaks your heart open that they can have that much influence making people seen and heard.”

So when Hiltz arrived in Eugene with a plan to host a community Pride run the day after the 1,500 final, they felt like they had already won. It is the type of sentiment shared frequently by athletes, intended to lighten what can be crushing pressure. But when Hiltz says it, it is not hard to believe.

“There’s less weight on the race because I’m so balanced outside of it,” Hiltz said.

Gee, who organizes the Pride 5K event along side Hiltz, nodded.

“It’s addressing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” she said, referring to the 1943 theory that humans’ most basic needs must be met before they can concern themselves with anything else. “To have such a big, crazy, intense athletic performance and then to have that community space already set up the next day is so healing.”

Hours before the race on July 8, Hiltz received their regular race quote (or in this case, the first verse and the chorus from the song “The Cape” by Guy Clark) from their mother, who says she consults everything from “Dr. Seuss to Rumi” to find the right kind of inspirational message to send before Hiltz steps on the track. The tradition dates to Hiltz’s days competing at the University of Arkansas. If the race does not go well, Liz Hiltz will sometimes blame the quote, and never use the same author again.

When the gun went off in the 1,500 final, the dozen competitors became physical quickly. There was some jostling as athletes came around the first turn and someone stepped on the back of Hiltz’s shoe. With a quick and powerful stride, they slammed their foot down hard to get their spike back on their foot. Another athlete, Dani Jones, was not so lucky. She lost a shoe in the kerfuffle and did not finish. Hiltz tucked into the middle of the pack, patient.

When the bell rang signaling the final lap, Hiltz was cruising in fourth place, but said they knew they were going to finish in the top three to qualify for the world championships. Mu was ratcheting up the pace. Lactic acid was building and burning, and at 300 meters, Hiltz debated hitting the gas. They played it safe instead and waited for the last 50.

“No one was going to out kick me,” Hiltz said. And no one did. With the trans pride flag waving near the finish line, Hiltz flew past Mu to win the race. They passed Mu — they repeat her name in recounting the race, bugging their eyes out of their head — yes, Mu, the Olympic gold medal winner!

Mu finished second, Cory McGee third and Johnson fourth. With an automatic spot in the 800 as the defending champion, Mu decided to waive her position in the 1,500 at the world championships, so McGee and Johnson will join Hiltz on the U.S. 1,500 meter team.

In Budapest, where heats begin on Saturday, the Americans will have to contend with Faith Kipyegon, the Kenyan powerhouse who has shattered three world records in the past handful of weeks.

But no matter. A rising tide lifts all boats, Kipyegon’s competitors are known to say. There are few finish lines that are filled with more enthusiastic, full-bodied hugs after the race.

On July 21, when Kipyegon shattered the mile world record in a remarkable 4:07.64, she brought the field with her. Twelve of the 13 runners set personal bests and seven national records fell. That group included Hiltz, who set a new American record in the mile with a time of 4:16.35, breaking a mark from 1985.

It was the latest result that fueled Hiltz’s relentless belief in themselves, the same confidence they said got them to the world championships in Doha, Qatar, in 2019. But this time feels different.

“I’ve made a world final before, I’ve been there, done that,” Hiltz said. “Now I’m like ‘OK, what can I do?’”

They added: “My favorite thing is to compete and I’m excited to now do it again on the global stage in like that, with the momentum I have now and like the communities I have behind me.”