Is Aaron Judge the Patrick Ewing of baseball?

 

My friend James, the Yankees superfan from SoCal, tells me that of all 50 guys named to the NBA's 50 best players on the league's 50th anniversary, Patrick Ewing is the only one who never played with another Hall of Famer.

I don't know if this is true, but James is very adamant in his opinions, and he knows people in his business who would be happy to kneecap me if I disagree, so I am willing to accept it. I was also a Patrick fan, and it did seem to me that Mr. Ewing got all sorts of unfair grief over the Knicks' failure to go all the way, even to the point of being blamed for John Starks' infamous Game 7, as if Pat Riley had somehow dematerialized from the Knicks' bench.

But I digress.

The point is that I fear a sad, similar fate for our own big man, Aaron Judge. Frankly, I am very glad he signed again with the Bronx team, for if he had not there would be virtually no one to watch on this sad collection of stumblebums. 

But if Judge did so with any hope of ever winning a World Series...he was nuts. 

Had he signed with the revivified Giants—now three games out of first place—he might have had a better chance. He might even have had someone to knock him in—someone such as Thairo Estrada, the doughty little Yankee who Cashman traded for a bag of cash because, after all, the Steinbrenners so desperately need more money that they are willing to put up "This space for rent" signs on the sacred pinstripes.

As previously noted, in the almost eerie coincidence of their careers, nearly 60 years ago to the day, 31-year-old Mickey Mantle returned from missing 61 games after taking on a cantankerous fence and breaking his foot, and pinch-hit a three-run homer to help the Yanks pull out a win over the Orioles.

Judge, also 31, returning from 42 games out after contesting ground with another fence, returned against the Orioles...to walk three times, and there remain, stranded on first.

I should have mentioned that the Yankees won Mantle's return game by 11-10, implying that there were a few other people on the team displaying basic competence with a bat. 

There were. Namely, the MVP at catcher, the all-time greatest catcher who was his back-up, two-time MVP Roger Maris in the outfield, Tommy Tresh, Johnny Blanchard, etc., etc. That 1963 Yankees team could do many things well, boasting three Gold Gloves in the infield and a pitching staff that went rucketing through the AL, with Whitey Ford (24-7, 2.74), Jim Bouton (21-7, 2.53), Al Downing (13-5, 2.56), Bill Terry (17-15, 3.22), and Stan Williams (9-8, 3.21).

In the end, they finished with 104 wins, 10 1/2 games ahead of the competition.

Brian Cashman is never going to put together such a team. Or anything vaguely resembling it.

That win over the Orioles in 1963 put the Yanks 9 games ahead of the third-place Birds. The loss last night puts our fifth-and-last-place boys 9 games behind them.  

More than coincidence?

The world has turned on its axis, and now we're down where we once were up, and figure to be there for a long time. Eventually, this will be blamed on Judge himself, as it was on Ewing, which is a shame, but at least the big man will be well-compensated.