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Baseball players suit up each day knowing that there’s a strong likelihood that they will get their asses kicked that night, sleep on the shame, then return to the field to try the same thing again the very next day.

It’s a sport uniquely designed to teach its students about resilience. After all, one of the most famous quotes about the game is one in which it’s described as one where “good performers” only succeed three times out of 10.

Baseball can make even its most talented players feel like they just keep stepping on rakes. It’s the ones who figure it out who advance — through tee-ball, through Little League, through high school or college, and then up to the majors. Failure, frustration: Those are just part of the game. Learning to live with it makes players better, but no one ever really enjoys the process.

“It’s a game that will humble you,” Aaron Boone likes to say.

Look around a major-league clubhouse and you’ll find guys drafted in the first round of the amateur draft collaborating with teammates drafted 1,000th overall. Bullpens feature guys who signed for $10 million and guys who accepted $100,000 just to have a chance.

The Yankees, especially during an injury-riddled season, are no exception. So, The Athletic asked around — hitters, pitchers, and even the manager — for stories about times in their baseball career from high school on up, when they felt the most overwhelmed, frustrated, or close to walking away.

Many players who were surveyed said they’d never quite reached a breaking point like that, but the ones who did seemed to recall the circumstances clear as day. So from those guys, here are the tales of the times they recall feeling their most fed up.

Luke Voit, 156 major-league games played:

Last year was really hard for me going up and down constantly (with St. Louis). I felt like I had no direction and I felt like it affected my play because I was so frustrated. I hit a pinch-hit home run then I got sent down three days later. You can be at an all-time high and then I show up to the field and they’re like “Hey, Mike Matheny’s gotta talk to you.” And I did nothing wrong, but they wanted to bring a pitcher up or something because they needed bullpen help. That’s where you’re just like “I don’t get it.” But you’ve gotta understand it’s a business.

It’s nice to have close friends like Carson Kelly, who was in my wedding and I played with throughout the minors, to remind me “It’s OK, bro. It’s gonna happen. It’s happened to 800 other guys, too.” Even the guys who have been up in the big leagues are like, “Dude, it happened to me two years ago.”

Aaron Judge, 314 major-league games:

It’s always a big jump going from high school ball to college, and when I first got to Fresno State, I probably hit around .200. You have fall ball early on and intersquads, and I think I hit around .200 for the whole first month of fall ball.

I remember talking with my roommate and we were like “Man, I don’t know if I’m good enough for this.” We both got drafted out of high school, so we were like, “maybe we should have just signed.” So after venting to each other for a little bit we came out with calmer heads and thought “This is going to make us better.”

We lived across the street from (the baseball facility) and we had nothing else to do, so I was like “Hey man, do you mind soft-tossing me in the cage?” So we started sneaking over to the batting cages and we’d take turns hitting around midnight.

We kinda laughed about it after. We were thinking “We shouldn’t have come here, we should have done something else” and it’s good to just laugh about it now.

Domingo Germán, 39 major-league games pitched:

Germán quit baseball entirely when he was a child when his coaches wouldn’t let him pitch and instead would only play him as an infielder. After two years away from the sport, two friends convinced him to try training as a pitcher independently.

“It was very difficult,” Germán said through an interpreter. “But pitching is what I wanted to do.”

Asked if he made the right choice, Germán, who has been the most reliable pitcher on the Yankees staff this season, had a short and enthusiastic answer: “Sí.”

Adam Ottavino, 388 major-league games pitched:

Tommy John surgery is something that a pitcher worries about their whole career and I felt like it was always a possibility. But when the Rockies told me in 2015 that I needed it in April, I was hysterical. I couldn’t see the bigger picture.

I felt like it happened at the worst possible time because I had just started closing and I was pitching my best ever. I felt like “Man, I finally get to this point and now it’s getting taken away.”

Very quickly I realized they weren’t just going to give up on me and I had plenty of support and I would be fine. But in the moment I was just super devastated because it was in April when I found out, so I felt like I had so much more season left to play and I didn’t want to be done with that year. I don’t think my wife appreciated the way I called her and told her because I couldn’t even get the words out. But I got over it pretty quickly, and then I was just scared to have the surgery.

Mike Tauchman, 86 major-league games:

Hitting in college was pretty easy for me. I hit like, .420something my senior year (.425), so I was not used to failure. After I was drafted, I was in A Ball in Washington state and I had a few hits. I wasn’t playing terribly or anything like that. Then a week into the season we came back from our first road trip.

We got one of the velocity machines that spins the hell out of the ball and we did do that for batting practice. Of 50 swings that I took that day, I probably made contact with eight… and I didn’t hit a ball out of the cage.

Everybody was laughing at me, I was on the verge of tears. I felt just terrible so we finished batting practice and I called my dad and was like “Dude, I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can play. I don’t know what to do, man.” I was really on the verge of tears wondering if I wasn’t cut out for it. I just swung and missed like 40 times in batting practice. It was not a good moment.

Then I had three seeing-eye singles that night. That’s the story I always tell people who get drafted. A week into pro ball, I was there like, I dunno about this.

Brett Gardner, 1,403 major-league games played:

I remember after I got drafted I was in Staten Island (Short-Season A). I didn’t get off to a great start and I remember we were playing in Aberdeen, Maryland and I think I had a day where even though we went to extra innings, I went 0-for-5 or 0-for-6 with a few well-hit balls that were just outs. It was just very, very frustrating. I think to make matters worse, when we were leaving Aberdeen, we were headed to Batavia, New York. This is 14 years ago and the bus driver somehow took a wrong turn and I think we wound up turning a however-many-hour trip into one where we got in at two or three p.m. the next day with a game that next night. At that point, I was like, “maybe this isn’t worth it,” and I think I called my dad.

Aaron Boone, 1,152 major-league games played:

I had a year when I was playing and my dad was my manager. I was scuffling and every now and then, postgame, my dad would tell me “you’re wearing it, it’s a grind.” I had a brother playing, my dad, my grandpa was still alive, all of them could certainly relate to what I was going through.

The one thing I remember that year was that I got to a point for me — which was very liberating — where I was kind of like, “Screw it, the heck of it. I made it to the big leagues. I’ve had a nice run. I’m gonna work hard every day, but I’m not gonna beat myself up and stress out over the results.” To truly get to that point, not just say you’re getting to it, where you have a little “Eh, I almost don’t care. I’m gonna work my butt off and at the end of the day the results are gonna be what they are”… it really freed me up and I went on a really good tear.

Dellin Betances, 357 major-league games pitched:

In 2012, when I was in Triple A, I just felt like I wasn’t having fun. I put too much pressure on myself because I wanted to be in the big leagues. So I was pitching every start like that would lead to my call-up, and things weren’t going well and I kind of let that boil over.

I was just having doubts, but I talked to my wife — she was my girl at the time — and my brothers, and I finally felt good again when I went to the Fall League. They told me I was gonna pitch out of the bullpen for the first time ever, so I just went out there and I tried to enjoy it. I got to play with different guys from different teams and I just had fun doing something new. It helped me come into 2013 feeling way better than I did in 2012.

Joe Harvey, eight major-league games pitched:

In May 2017, I was in extended spring and i didn’t have any money and I came back from Tommy John surgery. I remember calling my parents and telling them “I’ll probably give it another two weeks and then I’ll retire.”

I just didn’t feel right, and extended’s not a place you wanna be when you’re 25, so I was just like “I need to make a decision about whether or not to get on a flight.” So I decided “Ok, let’s see what this has to offer,” then I pitched well for a week and stuck with it.

The next year in spring (2018), I told my parents and my fiancée that if I didn’t break with Double A that I was gonna call it. I broke with Double A, I was there for like two weeks, then I went to Scranton.

I guess that’s two times in the last few years I’ve kinda given myself an ultimatum. And then I… wound up here.

(Harvey has now had two stints in the big leagues this season.)

Gleyber Torres, 169 major-league games:

When I was playing High A with the Cubs, my first couple months I think I hit like, .190, and I felt really bad. I called my dad and he told me “Just play, baseball is not an easy sport. Sometimes you feel really good and play really well, but then everybody catches the ball. So just play.”

The next day I went to the game and I felt really bad again and I called my dad again and I said “Hey, I did everything you said” and he said “It’s part of the baseball. Tomorrow, try again. One day you’ll hit pretty well and you’ll forget all the bad moments.” And just like that, I went straight to the game and I felt a little bit more confident and I started hitting really well.” I called him and said “You were right.”

Gary Sánchez, 298 major-league games played:

(Through an interpreter.)

I never felt like giving up on baseball, but one time I remember really struggling was the first time I came over to the United States because it was the first time I left my family. Another important thing was just learning when I was young how to handle frustration when I wasn’t getting results, because I was so used to having them.

Cameron Maybin, 1,060 major-league games played:

There was a point when I was with the Marlins, early in my career, where I just wasn’t having the fun that I’ve had my whole life playing baseball. For my personality, I always felt like I played baseball but I’m not going to define myself as an athlete. People be like “oh, you’re the baseball player.” and I’m like “I play baseball but I’m CAMERON.”

I’ve always been interested in sports medicine and massage therapy and things like that and at the time I was still really young and thought that maybe I would go back to school and try to play basketball. It was a moment in my career where I was just questioning where my passion was, but I was actually playing well.

So I called my mom one day and I told her “I’m thinking about asking for my release and just going to figure out what else I wanna do with my life” and she kinda talked me off the ledge and told me to keep riding it out and that I’d have plenty of time in my life to figure out other avenues and other things I might be passionate about. So I stuck with it and here I am, 13 years later, loving the game like I’ve always loved it.