2023 has felt more like Dostoevsky than a superhero comic, but tonight in Space City felt like a storybook. The vibes were on another level with five rookies in the lineup. While Jasson Domnguez and Austin Wells made their MLB debuts — and did so in style — a trio of veterans each took Astros starter Justin Verlander deep in a 6-2 victory over perhaps the Yankees’ most despised rival.

Let’s start with the future center fielder. Domnguez capped off an incredible season of development at 20 years old (the youngest Yankee in 39 years) when he stepped into the box in the top of the first inning. Following a strong spring training, he struggled at Double-A Somerset before surging and adjusting to Triple-A for a week and a half. His strategy appears to require some time to adjust to each successful level before his natural talent takes over. So the money was on him needing some time to adjust to facing pitchers like Justin Verlander.

The adjustment period lasted only one pitch, a strike one get-me-over curveball. A second-pitch fastball on the outer third was deposited into the Crawford Boxes, igniting the flames of a Yankee legend.

Watching your fellow rookie start his career in such a way must have added to the pressure Wells was under, and he did have to fight a little harder than the Martian against Verlander. Nonetheless, the 2020 first-round pick out of Arizona got his first MLB hit:

A seven-pitch battle against a Hall of Famer, with two strikes, and you get a base knock? It’s not as flashy as a two-run home run, but I’m sure Wells wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Ho-hum, the team’s veterans hit three more home runs:

DJ LeMahieu’s leadoff homer set the tone early on, Giancarlo Stanton reached the 400-Homer Club with No. 399, and Aaron Judge had a memorable night of his own. The captain’s long blast to center field was his 30th of the season, which is impressive given that he was out for two months. It was also the 250th hit of Judge’s career, making him the fastest player in baseball history to reach that milestone.

This game had so many milestones that you needed a spreadsheet to keep track of them all. Carlos Rodón’s third straight strong performance was perhaps the least important. The southpaw pitched five innings, allowing two runs, but he did his job on a night when the offense came through. We’re all here to talk about the rooks, but in a season that has been so disappointing, he left the game with a lower ERA than he came in with, so that’s a plus!

I’m not sure how much weight to give to “vibes”… are the vibes good because a team is winning, or are the vibes good because a team is winning? If Jasson and Wells had come up and gone 0-for-8 with 6 K’s, not only would the game’s outcome be very different, but we would not be as optimistic as we are now.

This was on a very short list of the most enjoyable games of the season. There are 27 games remaining in 2023, and not all of them will be as entertaining as this one. Still, all signs point to subsequent lineups looking a lot like tonight’s, and even if we don’t start each game with The Martian going the other way for two runs, we’ll have more fun than we did in July and August.

Hopefully, the excitement will continue in game two of this series tomorrow. The resurgent Luis Severino faces rookie Hunter Brown in primetime at 7:10 p.m. ET.