Once was the time that the Yankees defined themselves by winning World Series and only by winning World Series. That was when managers would be called to the principal’s office following postseason failure. That’s when the principal (owner) was George Steinbrenner, who once apologized to the City of New York when his team lost the 1981 World Series to the Dodgers.

The world turns, though. Baseball economics and the advent of advanced front-office thinking have dramatically resodded the playing field. Teams no longer win through economic might alone. And through the game’s evolution — or maybe its revolution — the Yankees stopped winning anything of value even though they never stopped winning a lot of games year after year after year.

That represented no crime. Cries from Brian Cashman that the postseason is generally a random crapshoot after a succession of postseason early eliminations always hit a tin note, for the general manager sure never said anything like that when the Core Four teams won the World Series four times in five years, from 1996 through 2000.

This is an era in which players and teams are evaluated almost solely by the number of rings they earned. It is why Eli Manning, a nice QB and a compiler with two heroic playoff and Super Bowl runs on his résumé, is a Hall of Fame candidate despite a won-loss record of no better than break-even. It is why Henrik Lundqvist, without a Stanley Cup, is a polarizing historical figure despite carrying the Rangers on his back to considerable success for over a decade.

So presenting the 2019 Yankees, a wholly admirable group who clinched their first division title in seven years with Thursday’s 9-1 bombardment of the Angels at the Stadium. This had long been considered a fait accompli, the Yankees going into first place for good on June 15 and holding a lead of no fewer than eight games since Aug. 3, but anticipating this accomplishment does not diminish it in the slightest.

This was a season of low, rather than high, drama. It was a season of overcoming unending adversity in which a major league-record number of injuries struck down starters, their reinforcements and the reinforcements of the reinforcements. This organization, those in and out of uniform, has every right to be proud. And every right to bask in winning a title for the first time since weeks before Derek Jeter broke his ankle in the 12th inning of the first game of the 2012 ALCS in what became a sweep by the Tigers. The waiting, as someone once famously said about another team in town, is over.

Still, is this enough for this team to be remembered by if October goes sour, if the Yankees don’t win their first World Series since 2009, much less fail to get to the Series for the first time in 10 years? Will appreciation for this team endure if the Yankees, next month, do not?

“You know what, I don’t know,” Aaron Boone said after becoming the first manager in big league history to win at least 100 games in each of his first two seasons. “I’m so entrenched in this, I’m going to enjoy it with the guys and appreciate what we’ve accomplished to this point.

“Look, we want to be a championship team, and that’s where the focus is. How people look at it and judge it, everyone can formulate their own opinions. Everyone is going to have a different one. We’ll move on from today and really concentrate on getting ready for the playoffs and moving on in the playoffs. So I don’t really pause in that sense to say what it all means. We’re proud of this and will enjoy it.”

The Yankees were rather businesslike with their post-victory handshake line on the field before doing it up in a champagne-bathed clubhouse. They earned this night. They earned it by playing huge chunks of the season without Aaron Judge, without Giancarlo Stanton, without Aaron Hicks, without Gary Sanchez, without Didi Gregorius, without Miguel Andujar, without Luis Severino, without Dellin Betances. That is a partial list.

They are a baseball purist’s 100-54, a half-game back of Houston for the best record in the AL and the majors. They turned that trick with Mike Tauchman (now down for the count) and Gio Urshela becoming household names. The Yankees conducted themselves professionally while bashing their way through the season, their four home runs in the clincher giving them 27 in their past 11 games, 36 in the past 15 and a major league-leading 292 for the year.

Now, the postseason.

“To this point, we’re having a really good season, obviously,” Boone said. “And we’ve put ourselves in a position to have a special one.”

History, and history’s judgment, await.