Dear 2023 Yankees:

I have been waiting for you.

There have been previous years when I thought you would show up. I am still not sure how the 2013 and 2014 version remained in playoff competition deep into September. It was as if the organization was addicted to winning, as if that was part of its DNA, even if Jayson Nix or the ghost of Derek Jeter were getting lots of at-bats.

But annually, I have been waiting for 1965 to show up again and it hasn’t — until now.

Let me backtrack. The Post and Newsday had side-by-side seats at the old Yankee Stadium, and I loved when the terrific columnist Steve Jacobson would come out on Sunday afternoons. Steve had been a Yankees beat writer in the 1960s, and I was fascinated by the 1965 club and could not ask enough questions about it.

Why?

Because of how out-of-nowhere it was.

The Yankees did not have a losing record from 1926 through 64 — the personnel changed, but not the success. In those 39 seasons, they played in 26 World Series and won 19. That included playing in five straight World Series from 1960-64. How could that team fall so hard, so fast? They finished at 77-85 in 1965, then were 10th in the 10-team AL in 1966 (70-89) and ninth in 1967 (72-90).

The collapse was so sudden, unexpected and dramatic that I could not get enough about why and how it happened — it was like trying to make peace with the sports version of the Roman Empire falling. So I called Steve again this week, and also Al Downing and Roy White, who played on the 1965-67 Yankees. Because it is no longer guesswork. It is in front of me.

Those 39 straight winning seasons are the longest in the four major North American team sports. The Canadiens’ streak of 32 consecutive (1952-83) is second. Third is the current Yankees’ 30 in a row from 1993-2022.

The 2023 Yankees began September 65-69. So perhaps they could close 16-12 or better to finish at .500 or better. But what seems assured is that for the first time since 1992, they will not even meet the Fred Wilpon low bar of meaningful September games — their white flag waved already in summoning their position prospects who are close to being MLB-ready.

So these Yankees seem to be at an inflection point — similar to what occurred beginning in 1965. Something long and meaningful ended at that moment and did not begin to reverse itself until Thurman Munson joined the Yankees full time in 1970, giving them a Jeter-esque player who helped change the culture and fortunes as the first meaningful building block toward the superb teams of the late 1970s.

Both Downing and White cited the change of ownership after Dan Topping and Del Webb, who had run the team from 1945, sold the Yankees to CBS in August 1964, as the seminal reason for the downfall that began in 1965. As White said: “CBS took over the club. Yeah, that was the problem. They didn’t put any money into the organization.” Downing added: “They [CBS] just weren’t baseball people, and all hell broke loose. It took them time to learn how to run a baseball team.”

But the most common theory for the collapse has parallels to the 2023 club — a combination of older players getting injured, fading rapidly or both. Elston Howard, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris missed long periods due to injuries in 1965. All three were in their 30s and were never their dynastic selves again. Ace Whitey Ford was in his decline. The double-play combo of Tony Kubek (injury) and Bobby Richardson (personal decision) retired early; Kubek after the 1965 season, Richardson after 1966.

Jacobson recounts a story from midway through the 1965 season in which he asked Ralph Houk, then the general manager, if the team was just never going to surge. Houk was feisty and said, “Do you think Mantle is really not going to hit? Maris? Howard?” But the answer was no. They weren’t going to hit, in the way that current older Yankees such as DJ LeMahieu, Anthony Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton haven’t this year. Meanwhile, Jim Bouton was the Luis Severino of his time — early Yankees promise unfulfilled as injuries mounted.

That 1965 season also was the first year of the draft. For the previous decades, the Yankees had the advantage of being able to sign up the amateur players they desired. Suddenly, their pipeline became worse. Really good players such as White and Bobby Murcer came up in September 1965, not dissimilar to these Yankees summoning Jasson Dominguez and Austin Wells.

But mid-1960s players Joe Pepitone and Tom Tresh were analogous to recent players such as Miguel Andujar and Gary Sanchez — homegrown personnel who had initial success and looked as if they would be part of the four-decade baton pass of Yankees excellence. But they could not sustain that early success. And 1960s players such as Frank Fernandez, Phil Linz and Steve Whitaker failed to match their hype, so you can’t assume current Yankees Oswaldo Cabrera, Oswald Peraza and Everson Pereira will meet expectations.

There was no quick reversal out of the 1965 doldrums. That did not truly begin until the Yankees took Munson fourth-overall in 1968. Then came terrific trades executed first by then-GM Lee MacPhail and, especially, by his successor Gabe Paul (think Sparky Lyle, Graig Nettles, Chris Chambliss, Mickey Rivers, Ed Figueroa, Lou Piniella and Willie Randolph). Ultimately, George Steinbrenner bought the team from CBS in 1973 and played early free agency well, signing Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson and Goose Gossage.

Do George’s son, Hal, and GM Brian Cashman have the ability to make 2023 a one-off of awful and not repeat the decline of the late 1960s? Cashman has been the GM since 1998, and this will be just the fifth time one of his teams has missed the playoffs. But in those previous four failures, the Yankees were mathematically eliminated for a combined total of 16 games and never more than five in one season. This one might be mathematically eliminated with 16-plus games left — even in an era of three wild cards in both leagues.

Until this year, the Yankees of the past three decades had been addicted to winning. They had it in their DNA. Just because 1965 fascinated me so much, I kept wondering what it would look like when the winning stopped.

And that is when you arrived, 2023 Yankees.