Yankees Aaron Judge Already Impacting Mickey Mantle’s Legacy

There are certainly special, perhaps magical, qualities to baseball. For instance, baseball is ruled by talent and will. That is not true in soccer, hockey, football, or basketball; they are governed by the clock. You cannot win a Yankees baseball game by having the ball last, and you cannot run out the clock. You can only win by being better than I, and I have something to say about that.

Now, you could say that is true in sports such as golf or tennis, and you’d be right. I want to stick to the right weight class, though, and limit the comparisons primarily to the other major team sports. But the point is worth mentioning, if for no other reason to show that even those quality has some sports equivalents.

But the Home Run is different. There is something special about the home run, something Yankees fans understand innately. And it’s the final and most important magical quality to the game itself, that thing that sets it apart from all the other Big Five, and beyond.

It is the home run, you see, that shows how limitless baseball is. And, by comparison, how constrained and limiting the other sports are, even golf and tennis.

What is the longest touchdown pass the greatest quarterback can ever throw? It can only ever be from the back of one end zone to the back of the opposite one, roughly 140 yards. A mighty heave indeed but one that can be equaled by others. The same happens in all the sports. Soccer fields forever limit the longest goal, as do the rink and the court.

And even in golf, the man who swings the mightiest blade can still only sink a hole in one a par five; there are no pars nine, ten, or eleven.

But Baseball, baseball provides for unlimited success, for infinite glory. A player can hit a ball out of the park, or the stadium—or the world—if he’s a mind to. He can do as much as he can do and be as big as he can be. And the longer the ball flies, the longer it threatens to fly off into the night, the longer does it carry us along.

We are carried along in our imaginations as we wonder how far it might fly, and we fly along with it. And, perhaps more importantly, we are taken along in our souls. We are reminded that a person can do more than any man ever has, and perhaps so can we, or I.

And we remember that there are still places, on this Earth and inside each of us, that are not bound by the laws of man or trappings of the past, where it is just you versus heaven. There, we can still be as big as our imaginations and reach higher than any man ever has. These places are as unbounded, and filled with as many possibilities, as a man’s soul.

Tomorrow Aaron Judge might just hit a ball farther than any Yankees player has ever hit one. He will not be defended, and he will not be restricted by lines on a court or field. In baseball, you can be as great as your will and talent allow. That is one of two places where that is true, and daily life is not the other.

And that is what greatness is all about. It’s not about being the best at something: it’s about doing things that defy imagination; it’s about performing at an inspirational level. I was standing behind Aaron Judge when he hit that home run in the sixth on that fateful Friday night, and I can tell you there was something different about it.

The players have talked about how that homer, which still left the Yankees down by five runs, was inspirational. I know that it struck those of us watching it the same way. It did make you think the Yankees could come back, which a moment ago seemed ludicrous. But that hit, that lightning bolt to the bullpen, made all things possible.

So, I can only imagine the impact of Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth. I doubt any other two men in baseball ever hit the ball consistently as hard and far. And I can make the argument that neither was the best player on his team. Lou Gehrig is a top five player and was regarded as better by many Yankees writers of the time.

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Mickey has competition on his Fifties teams, as well. Yogi won three MVP’s in the 50’s, to Mickey’s two. And Yogi played catcher, which is the hardest and most important position. Then, of course, there is Mays. When you talk about five tools, Mays exemplified every one of them. There is not another player in history who played both sides of the ball better.

But Mickey Mantle was a greater player. He didn’t just hit home runs; he sent Zeusian lightning bolts and audacious thunderclaps straight into the imaginations and souls of baseball fans everywhere. It’s why they revere him, why those who saw him play will always think him more than a man. He didn’t just inspire his Yankees teammates and lift up his team with his 500-feet home runs. No, he inspired the fans and lifted them up by their souls.

Yankees Chase Headley and his Teammates Will to Power

Headley and the Yankees know that the season is long and can swallow a player’s focus. That’s what make baseball so hard.

I don’t know what Aaron Judge will be yet nor what kind of career he will have. I won’t know that until he has had a career to review. There is no part of this that in any way suggests he will have a career like the Mick’s. I am not even claiming he will have a career beyond tomorrow. No, this is about his reminding us of the greatness of the game and the men who played it bigger than any others.

And it’s about the greatness inside each of us, and how big we can be. Now, throw a thunderbolt at heaven.