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A couple days ago, I had another flashback moment over Gerrit Cole, the great Yankee pitcher. Somebody was pointing, raising their finger in the direction of - well - something. I couldn't look. All I could see was Cole, standing on pitchers mound and gesturing toward first. Nothing else registered.
Dear God, those images aren't going away. They remain as traumatic as the night they crash-landed, and they run the risk of becoming permanent stains on the careers of two great Yankees.
It's now 80 days since the disastrous, infamous Game 5. Eighty days.
Dear God, it feels like 80 weeks. Trump's resurrection. Luigi Mangione. Bird flu. RFK Jr. Assad's collapse. The LA wildfires. Elon Musk. Jimmy Carter. Bob Uecker. Biden. The inauguration. And then the real headlines: The Yankees...
We lost Juan Soto, signed Max Fried, doubled-down on veterans who could be past their sell-by dates. The team won't look the same. But the embarrassment of that one night - Oct. 30, in Yankee Stadium, before a stunned national audience- remains stark and fresh.
For 15 years, we dreamed of the Yankees winning a world series. When they finally got there, they were undressed and humiliated. And the principle architects of that meltdown were the two players we most believed would lead us. Judge and Cole. The Captain and the Ace. The heart and the head.
I still don't know what to make of the fact that Cole briefly sought to renegotiate his Yankee contract, only to find the franchise would not budge; he quickly fell back into line. Was it a momentary miscalculation? Or a sign of fear? If we expect loyalty to and/or from the corporation, that ship sailed long ago.
Eighty days since the meltdown. Seventy until opening day. We're over the winter hump. But we're not over what happened. Not by a longshot. I wonder... will we ever be?
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9 comments:
Thanks for the reminder. And here I was thinking it was going to be a nice day.
to answer your post's final question, E.D. - - - Nope.
Yes it's PTSD. You need some mushrooms to fix that...
I'm with AA. Nope. What happened is something my psyche can never fully comprehend, understand, or accept. Sort of like the election results.
Regarding feelings about the Game 5 miscues, let me quote Basil Fawlty's response to Manuel after he lost his pet rat: "Let me tell you something. Depression is a very bad thing. It's like a virus. If you don't stamp on it, it spreads throughout the mind, and then one day you wake up in the morning and you... you can't face life anymore!" Please remember those words of wisdom for your own sanity.
Thank you CJW - I face life just fine. The New York Yankees on the other hand . . . .
Yep. It will never leave us. Buuuut...we shouldn't focus TOO much on Judge and Cole—players instrumental in getting us there in the first place. Nor should we overemphasize how important that inning was...
...First, that Series was a shitshow all over, full of awful errors, physical and mental, and managerial and general manager flubs. The threadbare lineup that Cashie put together got exposed by a Dodgers staff riddle with injuries. The last of The Gleyber's mindless errors cost us Game 1. As did Boonie's bizarre decision to go with Nestor Cortes in the most important moment of the World Series.
In between Judge and Cole's follies, Anthony Volpe made an atrocious play at short. Even after that 5th inning, let's not forget, the Yanks came back to take the lead, only to lose on a catcher's interference call against Austin Wells, who hit about .110 on the postseason.
For all that winning Game 5 could have given us a real short at a miracle comeback, it's just as likely that Admiral Yamamoto might have returned and shut us down handily in LA, much as he had earlier...
...The Judge flub was unforgivable—but in a game in which he also had a home run, a double, a great catch against the centerfield wall, and two walks. Cole looked ridiculous—but he wasn't going to beat Mookie Betts to the bag in any case. That mistake was on Anthony Rizzo—who should not have been out at first base in the first place.
This Series was, as much as ever, on the usual suspects, our wonderful triptych of Cashman, Hal, and Boone— Can't Do, Won't Do, and What Me Worry?
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