There really is a great cruelty in sports. Particularly in what I would call the irretrievable moment, where some trivial mistake you make—just once, in the fraction of a second—can become something you never live down.
It has happened to players from Bill Buckner to poor, tormented Fred Merkle of the New York Giants in 1908, both of whom made blunders that they could never live down despite otherwise long, outstanding careers. Mistakes of a moment that would forever after be associated with their names.
This is entirely unfair. And that's the way it is.
It's possible that Judge will get a shot at redemption for his repeated failures in the postseason—and above all, for his fatal flub in the fifth inning last night (will it go down as "The Miss-Judgement"?). Others have. Ralph Terry was considered the goat of the 1960 World Series for allowing Bill Mazeroski's 9th-inning homer in Game 7...only to turn it around in 1962, and win the Series MVP, retiring Willie McCovey to win a 1-0 Game 7 against the Giants.
But Ralph Terry was just 24, playing on a perennial pennant-winner with those 1960 Yankees. What's more, he merely a serviceable, back-of-the-rotation starter when he gave it up to Maz, and not even the Yankees' ace in 1962. No one was counting on him to be the hero.
Aaron Judge, by contrast, is already 32, and tied for another eight years to a Yankees team that looks to be going nowhere but down. He is probably about to become an AL MVP for the second time (and it should be the third). Many consider him to be the greatest player in the game today—which is saying something, as many now consider this to be the era of the greatest players who have ever lived.
I have been surprised, while out flogging my book, to discover fans—even older fans—who dismiss the idea that any players of the past would have even a fighting chance against today's faster, harder-throwing behemoths. They are convinced that no one has ever before thrown such deceptive pitches, so hard—or driven them so far.
"Aaron Judge may have just had the greatest season ever by a right-handed hitter!" I've read more than once on the internet.
Did he?
Hey, it's a nice break having fans not believing that they was all giants in them days. But have we gone too far the other way?
Do we really think that Ty Cobb or Rogers Hornsby or Joe DiMaggio or Henry Aaron or Willie Mays, for cryin' out loud, never had as good a season as Aaron Judge just did? Not Josh Gibson or MartÃn Dihigo, or any of the other, great Negro League stars?
Or could it be that in the delusion of the present, we have fooled ourselves?
I don't necessarily doubt that today's ballplayers are bigger and faster than they have ever been. That they do throw harder, or that they have better stuff. But they also seem to break down much more easily, despite vastly superior training and medical care.
And as Yogi may or may not have said, "Ninety percent of this game is half mental." Like the fox and the hedgehog, players of the past knew how to do many more things, while those today tend to know one big thing—and often one big thing only.
They were taught how to do things like hit to the opposite field or pitch a complete game or field a ball, that simply aren't much valued anymore. Most of all, they were drilled to a fare-thee-well in fundamentals, and knowing what the situation was on any ballfield, and what they should do next.
All qualities clearly lacking in what is already the Yankees' notorious fifth inning last night.
I don't mean to just get on Judge. He mostly played a superb game last night, drawing a walk and lashing a double after his flub, as well as the home run and the near-home-run that preceded it, and making that terrific, running catch up against the centerfield wall.
Yet he will never retrieve that moment, when it looked as if he might just go back to LA and lead the Yankees to the most outrageous upset of all; a feat that would have cemented his reputation, once and for all, in New York and everywhere else, as one of the greatest there ever was.
Instead, it was all lost, just because he took his eye off the ball for a moment.
I feel very bad for Judge, who seems genuinely likable (as far as we can tell about any player), and easy to root for. Afterwards, even though he kept playing well, he looked like a motherless child, the shock obvious in his eyes. It was a moment for a manager or a teammate to go over to talk to him. I hope that happened, though I didn't see any indication of it.
I think the fans, who tried to cheer him out of his slump on the team's return to New York, will be forgiving in the end. But that moment—that fatal moment—can never be captured again.
There's no forgiving baseball.
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